System Administration Guide: Resource Management and Network Services

How to Move the Mail Queue, /var/spool/mqueue

If you are moving the mail queue, follow these instructions.

  1. Become root on the mail host or assume an equivalent role.

    For information about roles, refer to "Using Privileged Applications" in System Administration Guide: Security Services.

  2. Kill the sendmail daemon.


    # /etc/init.d/sendmail stop
    

    Now sendmail is no longer processing the queue directory.

  3. Change to the /var/spool directory.


    # cd /var/spool
    
  4. Move the directory, mqueue, and all its contents to the omqueue directory. Then create a new empty directory that is named mqueue.


    # mv mqueue omqueue; mkdir mqueue
    
  5. Set the permissions of the directory to read/write/execute by owner, and read/execute by group. Also, set the owner and group to daemon.


    # chmod 750 mqueue; chown root:bin mqueue
    
  6. Start sendmail.


    # /etc/init.d/sendmail start