Re: [exim] Clearing out old spool files

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Author: Heiko Schlittermann
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: Re: [exim] Clearing out old spool files
John Horne <john.horne@???> (Mi 01 Jul 2009 00:36:14 CEST):
> On Wed, 2009-07-01 at 00:03 +0200, Heiko Schlittermann wrote:
> > John Horne <john.horne@???> (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
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