Mailer statistics logs

The sendmail command tracks the volume of mail being handled by each of the mailer programs that interface with it.

Those mailers are defined in the /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file.

This illustration is a type of top-down organizational chart with Mail and MH at the top. Branching from them are bellmail, BNU and SMTP. Underneath the previous level are local mailbox, UUCP link, and TCP/IP link respectively. Beneath UUCP link is remote mailbox and under TCP/IP link is remote mailbox.

To start the accumulation of mailer statistics, create the /etc/mail/statistics file by typing the following:

touch /etc/mail/statistics

If the sendmail command encounters errors when trying to record statistics information, the command writes a message through the syslog subroutine. These errors do not affect other operations of the sendmail command.

The sendmail command updates the information in the file each time it processes mail. The size of the file does not grow, but the numbers in the file do. They represent the mail volume since the time you created or reset the /etc/mail/statistics file.