tlug: flushing the mail queue

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Scott" == Scott Stone <sstone@example.com> writes:

    Scott> Basically I need a program that can remove entries from the
    Scott> mail queue.  We have some mailing lists with bad addresses
    Scott> and I want to get them out of the queue.

I don't know sendmail at all, but this sounds like you have a
misconfigured sendmail AND a misconfigured listserv to boot.  Sendmail 
should be kicking out the bad addresses and either returning to sender 
(the listserv) or to postmaster or both.  They shouldn't stay in the
queue.

A good listserv can be configured to autoremove addresses that
bounce.  Of course, it should be arranged that the list owner gets
some information about this, and it will probably require some extra
scripting.  One list I know of does this culling separately from
handling the main list.

For your immediate problem, sendmail should have a spool directory and 
maybe a control file somewhere.  Shut down sendmail (easiest is
probably to reboot to single user mode) and rm all the messages in the 
spool directory.  If there's a control file, you'll have to figure out 
what to do about it.

Having a program to do this without going to maintenance mode is
asking for lost mail.

HTH

Steve

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