how to query mail quesues in postfix

The command:

mailq

will show you the mail queue along with the reasons mails havent been sent yet

postcat -q queuenumber

will show you the contents of the mail queuenumber

thanks dramdrum, but i want to have all the deferred one's in a csv format so that i can take them out from the mailing list, and through your command i would be sitting there for ever to note down

anymore help please

Also postqueue -p is the same as mailq (mailq might not be available on all systems)

You can do a man postqueue and man postcat to see the full options list

hi dramdum,

i am a beginner so you have to teach me if you dont mind, how can i get all the deffered queue messages in a csv file?

all i need is MAIL ID , EMAIL ADDRESS, And the error in a csv file

postqueue -p
will print out all that info

To automatically extract only those 3 fields for only the deffered mails from the output you will need some serious bash/perl scripting abilities, considering the output is in columns and more than one line for each record.

Unfortunatelly mine are not that good yet ;)

I am sure there is a scripting expert around who will help you out with this. :)

is there any way i can extract everything and then i can sort it in excel myslef?

thank you dramdrum, last think how can i email this file to an external email address, i have copied it to the root > desktop

The easiest way is with mutt:

mutt -s "Here are the deferred mails" -a filename.cvs user@domain.com

it says mutt command not found

anyother way?

Well since it is a text file you could just use the simple mail command and put it in the message body (mail cant handle attachments):

mail -s "Here are the deferred mails" > user@domain.com < filename.cvs

its saying no such file found, but it is sitting on the desktop of the root name

 mail -s "here is the file" > atahir@domain.co.uk < /root/desktop/email.xls


but it says file notfound

mail -s "Here are the deferred mails"  user@domain.com < filename.cvs

i have used the above command and it doesnt give me any error but i havent received the email .

how can i check

Take a look if its in the mail queue (with postqueue -p of course)
Look at the mail logs in /var/log/mail.log or /var/log/syslog

it is in the mail queue dramdrum

now mail queue is empty but i havent received it

okay if i dont type < email.csv at the end i get the email straight away but when i do email.csv at the end of the command it does send but i never receive it.

how can i get it

Hmm how big is the file?
Mail queues have a size limit (i think the default is 10MB)

its definately less then 10MB

its 774 KB

I see you closed the question.
You managed to get the file?

yeah well not with your command but what i did is log on to that machine on my web account and emailed that file across :) i know its a way around but i really need to make it working some how so that i can email this file to myself from anywhere in the world.

have you got any other suggestions?