Introduction
This article aims to provide steps to clear the retry database to allow emails to try again after fixing an email delivery issue. This database is also known as the hints database.
Example:
I was experiencing an issue with sending mail such as port 25 being blocked (see: Why can I receive, but not send, emails?), but I've fixed that. Why do emails still say, "retry time not reached"?
Procedure
If you don't want to wait for the retry time, you can clear out the retry db with the following commands run as root via SSH or the WHM Terminal:
/usr/sbin/exim_tidydb -t 1d /var/spool/exim retry
mv -vi /var/spool/exim/db/retry{,.original}
mv -vi /var/spool/exim/db/retry.lockfile{,.original}
You can then force an email queue delivery through the Mail Queue Manager in WHM, or start a new Exim queue run with this command:
exim -q