Postfix: Email queue management, most common management commands Print

Managing the Mail Queue with Postfix

Check the current SMTP mail queue

postqueue -p

Displays the errors and size of the current queue.

Delete the entire mail queue

postsuper -d ALL

Delete only deferred (retrying) emails

postsuper -d ALL deferred

Force processing of the mail queue

postqueue -f

Delete queued emails from a specific domain

postqueue -p | tail -n +2 | awk 'BEGIN { RS = "" } /username@example\.com/ { print $1 }' | tr -d '*!' | postsuper -d -

Replace username@example.com with the desired address or domain.

Analyze deferred messages

• qshape deferred | head – Shows messages by recipient domain
• qshape -s deferred | head – Shows messages by sender address

Log monitoring

• tail -n 100 /var/log/mail.log – View the last 100 lines
• tail -f /var/log/mail.log – Monitor the mail log in real time
• grep tom@domain.com /var/log/mail.log – Search for a specific address

Postfix service control

• postfix stop – Stop Postfix
• postfix start – Start Postfix

Postfix configuration

• postconf -n – Show active configuration parameters
• /etc/postfix/main.cf – Main configuration file

Mail queue storage path

/var/spool/postfix