I've managed to narrow down my earlier problem, though I'm still confused.
To reiterate, whenever I qmail-inject anything into the mail queue, it
sits in /var/qmail/control/mess/... without any control files present.
Then maybe 1-2 hours later it is delivered (the log concurs with this).
Running /etc/init.d/qmail restart makes all the mail go off immediately,
but sending an ALRM signal to qmail-send doesn't.
I've still no idea, anyone else care to help?
--
Matthew ( http://www.soup-kitchen.demon.co.uk/ )