When a host goes down for an extended period, many messages routed
to (or through) that host might be stored in your mail queue. As a result,
the sendmail command spends a long time sorting the queue, severely degrading
your system performance. If you move the queue to a temporary place and create
a new queue, the old queue can be run later when the host returns to service.
To move the queue to a temporary place and create a new queue:
- Stop the sendmail daemon by following the instructions
in Stopping the sendmail daemon.
- Move the entire queue directory by entering:
cd /var/spool
mv mqueue omqueue
- Restart the sendmail daemon by following the
instructions in Starting the sendmail daemon.
- Process the old mail queue by entering:
/usr/sbin/sendmail -oQ/var/spool/omqueue -q
The
-oQ flag specifies an alternate queue directory. The
-q flag specifies
to run every job in the queue. To get a report about the progress of the operation,
use the
-v flag.
Note: This operation can take some time.
- Remove the log files and the temporary directory when the queue
is empty by entering:
rm /var/spool/omqueue/*
rmdir /var/spool/omqueue