How to flush Postfix’ mail queue from the command line and delete all mail from the queue? Easy, use the Postfix postsuper
command as explained in this post. The postsuper
command controls different types of queues in the Postfix mail system, like the deferred or hold queue. This post shows you some Postfix queue operations to maintain your mail servers.
The Postfix superintendent postsuper command does maintenance jobs on the Postfix queue. Use of the command is restricted to the superuser. The following commands releases or deletes mail:
To see the Postfix mail queue, simply enter the following command on your Linux Bash shell:
mailq
Code language: Bash (bash)
To delete all mail from the Postfix mail queue:
postsuper -d ALL
Code language: Bash (bash)
To remove all mails in the deferred queue:
postsuper -d ALL deferred
Code language: Bash (bash)
Remove all mails in the hold queue:
postsuper -d ALL hold
Code language: Bash (bash)
You can use -H
to release an email that was put “on hold” in Postfix’ queues. Release an email by its queue-id:
postsuper -H <queue_id>
Code language: Bash (bash)
Or release all hold mails from the hold queue:
postsuper -H ALL
Code language: Bash (bash)
Are you running multiple Postfix mail instances? Use postmulti
, the multi-instance manager:
postmulti -i <instance> -x mailq
postmulti -i <instance> -x postsuper -d ALL
postmulti -i <instance> -x postsuper -d ALL deferred
postmulti -i <instance> -x postsuper -d ALL hold
Code language: Bash (bash)
Sort Postfix’ mailq by date
It is always nice to sort mailq’s output by date. @climagic posted on Twitter:
# Show your postfix mail queue sender/queueid lines and order them by time
# (day and hour at least)
mailq |grep "^[A-F0-9]" |sort -k5n -k6n
# or add -r to sort to reverse the date sort output (may not always be correct)
mailq |grep "^[A-F0-9]" |sort -k5rn -k6n
Code language: Bash (bash)
Display email subject in Postfix queue
If you want to show the subject line of an email in Postfix’ queue, you can use this:
# deferred queue
mailq | grep -v [\!\*] | grep ^[0-9A-Z] | cut -d " " -f 1 | xargs postcat -qh | grep ^Subject
# hold queue
mailq | grep \! | grep ^[0-9A-Z] | cut -d '!' -f 1 | xargs postcat -qh | grep ^Subject
Code language: 1C:Enterprise (v7, v8) (1c)