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Ghosts in the mail queue

verdon

I use ConfigServer Mail Queues and have for a dozen years or so. I'm seeing something recently I have never seen before. There are a couple messages that it says have been in the queue for well over 100 days. If I try to delete them, it tells me that the messages 'has been removed or did not exist'. When I refresh the queue, they remain in the list. I can't find a way to get rid of them. It's just an annoyance, but I hate untidy and unexplained things. Any suggestions where I can look to tidy this up?

Comments

7 comments

Date Votes
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    Hey there!  In an Exim update earlier this year, they changed the length of the Mail ID value to be a longer string.  I'm wondering if those messages are "stuck" previously from before that value changed.

    It might be best to contact their support at https://configserver.com/technical-support/ for specific details about their software.  Are you able to see the message in the Exim log directly on the server if you check /var/log/exim_mainlog? Can you remove them from WHM >> Mail Queue Manager?

    1
  • verdon

    Thanks for the reply :-)

    1) I just checked and the length of the Mail ID value seems to be the same as newer messages, so probably not that.

    2) I did try the forums at Configserver a week or so ago, with no response. I'll try a direct request to their support.

    3) If I grep /var/log/exim_main_log I get something like this

    # grep "1s1vUE-00000001OKM-43tj" /var/log/exim_mainlog
    2024-08-19 08:43:04 cwd=/usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/docroot 6 args: /usr/sbin/exim -C /etc/exim_outgoing.conf -v -Mrm 1s1vUE-00000001OKM-43tj
    2024-08-19 08:43:04 1s1vUE-00000001OKM-43tj Spool file 1s1vUE-00000001OKM-43tj-D not found
    2024-08-19 10:16:36 cwd=/usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/docroot 5 args: /usr/sbin/exim -C /etc/exim_outgoing.conf -Mvh 1s1vUE-00000001OKM-43tj
    2024-08-19 10:16:36 cwd=/usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/docroot 5 args: /usr/sbin/exim -C /etc/exim_outgoing.conf -Mvb 1s1vUE-00000001OKM-43tj

    4) They do not show up in WHM >> Mail >> Mail Queue Manager

    Thanks again for your input :-)

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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    Perfect - thanks for the reply.  If they aren't showing up in WHM >> Mail Queue Manager then they really aren't on the server and *something* is keeping them in Mail Queues.  I can't say what, but hopefully ConfigServer would have thoughts on that part.

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  • verdon

    Just following up on this for completeness... I contacted Configserver and they kindly replied (great company by the way). This was their response, which was correct, and addressed the issue.

    "Cmq does not have its own database. Those queue files exist somewhere in the exim queue directory structure. I would recommend searching the /var/spool/exim/input/ subdirectories for the queue file names (message id) and deleting them there."

    Thanks for your input cPRex

     

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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    Did that work and resolve the issue?

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  • verdon

    Yes it did. I just went to /var/spool/exim/input/ and did a
    find . “messageID*”

    Which found the message parts in the 0 directory. Deleting those fixed the issue.

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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    I'm glad that worked!  And this post should help others that run into the issue in the future.

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