Re: Sendmail vs Exim vs Others
On Friday 30 January 2004 02:59 am, Steve Lamb wrote:
> Queue maintenance? Correct me if I'm wrong but is this FUD.
>
> Removing a message from Exim's queue:
> exim -Mrm <message-ID>
>
> Removing a message from qmail's queue:
> Issue command to shut down qmail.
> Sometimes wait up to 20m for it to completely shut down.
> Manually find and delete messages.
> Run the queue fix utility (which, if memory serves, is not part of the
> base qmail package by the original author)
> Start up qmail
Try downloading qmhandle from qmail.org. It's a Perl script that automates
the entire process for you, and you don't have to run queue fix
afterwards.
The queue fix script is almost never needed unless the admin has been
playing around in the queue manually.
> How about searching the logs for meaningful information on a
> message?
> In qmail
> Grep for the address in the logs and look for the basic timeframe of
> the message you want to isolate.
> Realize that qmail's timestamps are not meant for mortals so pipe it
> through tai64nlocal to get meaningful times.
Only if you use multilog (part of daemontools). If you use syslog, then
the timestamps are perfectly human-readable.
> Grab the message ID.
> Grep the logs (remembering to pipe this time) for that message ID to
> see what comes up.
> Get a buttload of beginning delivery status messagess....
> ....for multiple messages since the inode had about 30 messages in it
> in the past couple of hours.
> Grab instead the delivery ID of each attempt and grep manually
> (remembering to pipe this time).
> In the several years of using Exim I have done far more perusing
> of logs and have never seriously gotten outside of grep and less. In
> the 3 months of using QMail I've given up and written a tool just to do
> basic searches for email addresses and the associated deliveries.
I've never needed anything more than grep or less to search qmail's logs.
> By the same token I find simple queue maintenance of Exim a breeze while
> qmail is a chore which, again, requires external tools which had to be
> written by other people just to get simple operations done.
I hardly find it that difficult to download one Perl script.
> Tell me how any of that is FUD and not fact.
If you think it's hard to manage qmail's queue and search its logs, then
that's your opionion. The FUD was labelling it "the Windows of MTAs"
without giving any specifics.
Adam
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