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Clearing out old spool files

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john.horne at plymouth

Jun 30, 2009, 9:39 AM

Post #1 of 4 (429 views)
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Clearing out old spool files

Hello,

We are running exim 4.69 on CentOS 5.3, and I have been looking through
the '/var/spool/exim/input' and '/var/spool/exim/msglog' directories on
one of our mailhubs and can see some quite old files in there (the
oldest was from 2007).

It is no problem to just delete them using something like
'find ... -type f -mtime +6 -exec /bin/rm ...', but it is possible that
something could be on the queue for 6 days or more I guess (in our case
this is an inbound mailhub and there is nothing on the queue).

Perhaps there could be a sort of cleanup utility that could see what is
supposed to be on the queue, and remove anything that has been 'left'
for some reason in these directories? Or is there another way to get
exim to clear out these old files automatically?

Thanks,

John.

--
---------------------------------------------------------------
John Horne, University of Plymouth, UK Tel: +44 (0)1752 587287
E-mail: John.Horne[at]plymouth.ac.uk Fax: +44 (0)1752 587001

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hs at schlittermann

Jun 30, 2009, 3:03 PM

Post #2 of 4 (400 views)
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Re: Clearing out old spool files [In reply to]

John Horne <john.horne[at]plymouth.ac.uk> (Di 30 Jun 2009 18:39:53 CEST):
> Hello,
>
> We are running exim 4.69 on CentOS 5.3, and I have been looking through
> the '/var/spool/exim/input' and '/var/spool/exim/msglog' directories on
> one of our mailhubs and can see some quite old files in there (the
> oldest was from 2007).

AFAIK: The msglog is not used by exim it all (except writing to the
msglog as long as the message is in transit, the same information can be
found in the mainlog).

The old spool files (2 per message (-H and -D)) can be removed too. (There
is no information stored somewhere else.)

Better than using find is using `expick' and exim itself. (IMHO part of the exim
package). Consult it's man page for information about exipick and pass
its output to `exim -Mrm'.

Best regards from Dresden/Germany
Viele Grüße aus Dresden
Heiko Schlittermann
--
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Heiko Schlittermann HS12-RIPE -----------------------------------------
gnupg encrypted messages are welcome - key ID: 48D0359B ---------------
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john.horne at plymouth

Jun 30, 2009, 3:36 PM

Post #3 of 4 (399 views)
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Re: Clearing out old spool files [In reply to]

On Wed, 2009-07-01 at 00:03 +0200, Heiko Schlittermann wrote:
> John Horne <john.horne[at]plymouth.ac.uk> (Di 30 Jun 2009 18:39:53 CEST):
> > Hello,
> >
> > We are running exim 4.69 on CentOS 5.3, and I have been looking through
> > the '/var/spool/exim/input' and '/var/spool/exim/msglog' directories on
> > one of our mailhubs and can see some quite old files in there (the
> > oldest was from 2007).
>
> AFAIK: The msglog is not used by exim it all (except writing to the
> msglog as long as the message is in transit, the same information can be
> found in the mainlog).
>
> The old spool files (2 per message (-H and -D)) can be removed too. (There
> is no information stored somewhere else.)
>
> Better than using find is using `expick' and exim itself. (IMHO part of the exim
> package). Consult it's man page for information about exipick and pass
> its output to `exim -Mrm'.
>
No, exipick works on the mail queue. The files I found were not
associated with any existing message (I certainly haven't had a message
waiting in the queue since 2007!).

I suspect the files had been dumped there by exim in the past when it
had either stopped, paniced or crashed (although I don't remember any
actual crashes). So the original message was either delivered on, or
resent (hence causing a new message ID, new file names, etc), but the
previous spool files were just left behind.

John.

--
---------------------------------------------------------------
John Horne, University of Plymouth, UK Tel: +44 (0)1752 587287
E-mail: John.Horne[at]plymouth.ac.uk Fax: +44 (0)1752 587001

--
## List details at http://lists.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/exim-users
## Exim details at http://www.exim.org/
## Please use the Wiki with this list - http://wiki.exim.org/

hs at schlittermann

Jun 30, 2009, 11:49 PM

Post #4 of 4 (395 views)
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Re: Clearing out old spool files [In reply to]

John Horne <john.horne[at]plymouth.ac.uk> (Mi 01 Jul 2009 00:36:14 CEST):
> On Wed, 2009-07-01 at 00:03 +0200, Heiko Schlittermann wrote:
> > John Horne <john.horne[at]plymouth.ac.uk> (Di 30 Jun 2009 18:39:53 CEST):
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > We are running exim 4.69 on CentOS 5.3, and I have been looking through
> > > the '/var/spool/exim/input' and '/var/spool/exim/msglog' directories on
> > > one of our mailhubs and can see some quite old files in there (the
> > > oldest was from 2007).
> >
> > AFAIK: The msglog is not used by exim it all (except writing to the
> > msglog as long as the message is in transit, the same information can be
> > found in the mainlog).
> >
> > The old spool files (2 per message (-H and -D)) can be removed too. (There
> > is no information stored somewhere else.)
> >
> > Better than using find is using `expick' and exim itself. (IMHO part of the exim
> > package). Consult it's man page for information about exipick and pass
> > its output to `exim -Mrm'.
> >
> No, exipick works on the mail queue. The files I found were not
> associated with any existing message (I certainly haven't had a message
> waiting in the queue since 2007!).

Yes, exipick works on the mail queue. The mail queue is nothing else
than the contents of /var/spool/exim/input, es long the files names
follow a specific format and as long as the file format is that, what
exi{m,pick} expect.

> I suspect the files had been dumped there by exim in the past when it
> had either stopped, paniced or crashed (although I don't remember any
> actual crashes). So the original message was either delivered on, or
> resent (hence causing a new message ID, new file names, etc), but the
> previous spool files were just left behind.

Of course, if the spool files do not follow the expectations of exipick
and exim (e.g. only the *-D without the associated *-H file), they're
really of no use anymore.

Best regards from Dresden/Germany
Viele Grüße aus Dresden
Heiko Schlittermann
--
SCHLITTERMANN.de ---------------------------- internet & unix support -
Heiko Schlittermann HS12-RIPE -----------------------------------------
gnupg encrypted messages are welcome - key ID: 48D0359B ---------------
gnupg fingerprint: 3061 CFBF 2D88 F034 E8D2 7E92 EE4E AC98 48D0 359B -

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