qmail-queue (8)

qmail-queue

qmail-queue reads a mail message from descriptor 0. It then reads envelope information from descriptor 1. It places the message into the outgoing queue for future delivery by qmail-send.

The envelope information is an envelope sender address followed by a list of envelope recipient addresses. The sender address is preceded by the letter F and terminated by a 0 byte. Each recipient address is preceded by the letter T and terminated by a 0 byte. The list of recipient addresses is terminated by an extra 0 byte. If qmail-queue sees end-of-file before the extra 0 byte, it aborts without placing the message into the queue.

Every envelope recipient address should contain a username, an @ sign, and a fully qualified domain name.

qmail-queue always adds a Received line to the top of the message. Other than this, qmail-queue does not inspect the message and does not enforce any restrictions on its contents. However, the recipients probably expect to see a proper header, as described in qmail-header(5).

Programs included with qmail which invoke qmail-queue will invoke the contents of $QMAILQUEUE instead, if that environment variable is set.

qmail-queue imposes two constraints on the queue structure: each mess subdirectory must be in the same filesystem as the pid directory; and each todo subdirectory must be in the same filesystem as the intd directory.

qmail-queue does not print diagnostics. It exits 0 if it has successfully queued the message. It exits between 1 and 99 if it has failed to queue the message.

All qmail-queue error codes between 11 and 40 indicate permanent errors:

11

Address too long.

31

Mail server permanently refuses to send the message to any recipients. (Not used by qmail-queue, but can be used by programs offering the same interface.)

All other qmail-queue error codes indicate temporary errors:

51

Out of memory.

52

Timeout.

53

Write error; e.g., disk full.

54

Unable to read the message or envelope.

55

Unable to read a configuration file. (Not used by qmail-queue.)

56

Problem making a network connection from this host. (Not used by qmail-queue.)

61

Problem with the qmail home directory.

62

Problem with the queue directory.

63

Problem with queue/pid.

64

Problem with queue/mess.

65

Problem with queue/intd.

66

Problem with queue/todo.

71

Mail server temporarily refuses to send the message to any recipients. (Not used by qmail-queue.)

72

Connection to mail server timed out. (Not used by qmail-queue.)

73

Connection to mail server rejected. (Not used by qmail-queue.)

74

Connection to mail server succeeded, but communication failed. (Not used by qmail-queue.)

81

Internal bug; e.g., segmentation fault.

91

Envelope format error.

addresses(5), envelopes(5), qmail-header(5), qmail-inject(8), qmail-qmqpc(8), qmail-send(8), qmail-smtpd(8)