qmqtool.doc.txt

qmqtool v1.13
Copyright 2003-2006 Jeremy Kister
http://jeremy.kister.net/code/qmqtool/

qmqtool is a qmail queue manipulation program geared towards the
viewing and safe modification of the contents in a qmail queue.

qmqtool may be copied and distributed under the terms found in the
Perl "Artistic License".  A copy of this license may be found in the
standard Perl distribution, or in the file "Artistic".

please report all bugs to: qmqtool-devel @t jeremykister.com.

qmqtool was designed with Michele Beltrame's "qmHandle" in mind,
however no source code from qmHandle was used within qmqtool. 

qmqtool is significantly faster than qmHandle 1.2.0 on my system,
even though it has more work to do (such as examining the todo queue):

> time qmqtool -s
Messages in local queue: 0
Messages in remote queue: 0
Messages in todo queue: 0

real    0m0.777s
user    0m0.650s
sys     0m0.110s
> time qmHandle -s
Messages in local queue: 0
Messages in remote queue: 0

real    0m3.746s
user    0m3.110s
sys     0m0.360s


Notes:

This program makes use of several shell utilities, such as "ps"
and "grep".  Please ensure the syntax to these utilities are correct
for your operating system (i.e. ps -ef vs ps auxc).  Also note that
GNU's grep is much faster than Solaris's grep, so you should consider
telling qmqtool to use it, as your searches (with -f) will be about 
five times faster.  GNU grep can also use a pipe as a logical OR
(i.e. qmqtool -f 'this|that').

qmqtool supports many arguments, each which must be used separately
unless specifically allowed.  All syntax is described with qmqtool -h.

qmqtool [-l] [-L] [-R] [-T]
   show queue information: use -l for all parts of the queue, -L for
	local, -R for remote, or -T for todo.

	qmqtool starts by stating the message number, followed by a space,
	an open-parenthesis, the message number, the string 'remote' or
	'local' (representing which part of the queue the message is in),
	followed by a close-parenthesis.  It continues displaying
	"Envelope Sender", "Envelope Recipient", "From", "To",
	"Subject", and "Date", if it can.  Lastly, it displays the
	size of the message, in the highest reasonable unit, followed
	by an empty line.  Note that using the -l option does not
	include information about the "todo queue".  After all
	messages are displayed, it then prints a few statistics
	similar to running qmqtool -s.
	
qmqtool [-l] [-L] [-R] [-T] -Q
	will print just the message names listed in the given queue,
	separated by a comma.  will print 0 if there are no messages
	contained in the requested queue.

qmqtool -T
	will list messages in the "todo queue".  This "queue" changes
	very quickly, and will most likely be stale by the time you
	can run qmqtool again.  It's useful to ensure your qmail-send
	is running, as it is quite annoying when you've purposely
	down'd the service, and forgot to restart it (todo will only
	grow in this scenario).  It could also be useful if an evil
	spammer's messages are being bounced through your machine --
	you could disable qmail-send, look at the todo queue, find
	the spammer, block the source, and eliminate his messages all
	before they reach your queue.

qmqtool -s -Q
	will print the number of messages in the 'local', 'remote',
	and 'todo' queues, in that order, one per line.  This is
	very useful for graphing your queue via cricket/mrtg/cacti,
	or, more importantly, monitoring your queue, with Argus.

	check the contrib/argus/README and contrib/cricket/README
	for more information.

qmqtool -d -f 'STRING'
	This will behave the same as qmqtool -dN, except that instead of
	specifying the message ids, you specify a string.  For example:
	qmqtool -d -f 'Football Game'
	will delete all messages with 'Football Game' in it.
	
	Note this does not remind you to restart qmail-send, unless you
	also specify -V (for verbose).

	If used with -o N, will only show messages both older than N
	hours, and containing STRING.

qmqtool -d -o N
	This will behave the same as qmqtool -dN, except that instead of
	specifying a message id, you specify age (in hours).  For example,
	to delete all messages that have been queued for 18 hours:
	qmqtool -d -o 18

qmqtool -c
	using the chart listed in qmail's INTERNALS file, qmqtool will
	try it's best to ensure each file in your queue is in a
	consistent state.  Since the entire queue changes so rapidly,
	the qmail-send program must be stopped before asking qmqtool
	to check queue integrity.  Once it is stopped, qmqtool will
	display found fragments of emails left behind from a most
	likely clueless admin, who tried to delete messages directly
	from the queue.  qmqtool could stop and start the queue
	processing program for you, but it's author decided that it's
	your job.

qmqtool -r
	will remove all fragments of messages deemed rouge by qmqtool
	while using the -c option.

qmqtool -i
	will show how many messages are queued per ip.  this pays
	attention only to the server that gave the message to us.
	useful for tracking down an abuser.

	will report '127.0.0.2' when qmqtool can not find who sent us
	the message.  this usually happens when the message was
	injected into the queue manually, ie via qmail-inject. 

	if your configuration uses front-end smtp servers who send their
	messages to a set of backend servers, this option would not be
	very helpful, as qmqtool would report the sending IP as the front-
	end server.  To overcome this, you can supply an argument to -n,
	specifing what smtp hop to pay attention to -- for example:

	'qmqtool -i -n2' will sort the messages based on the second to
	last server to handle the message.

	use -V to display a third column containing message numbers that
	this host has queued.

qmqtool -S
	similar to -i, except will show you how many bytes are
	queued per ip.

	note that the listed amount of bytes is not necessarily the amount
	of bytes stored on your disk; a single 200 byte email sent to 10
	envelope recipients will show up as 2000 bytes.

qmqtool -eN
	will expire message N, by setting the modified time to two weeks
	ago on info/N, where N is the queued message number.  N may be a
	message number, or multiple message numbers separated by a comma.
	If the specified message is found in the todo queue, qmqtool will
	warn you that todo messages are not expirable.

qmqtool -e -f 'STRING'
	This will behave the same as qmqtool -eN, except that instead of
	specifying a message id, you specify a string.  For example:
 	qmqtool -e -f 'Football Game'
	will expire all messages with 'Football Game' in it.

	If used with -o N, will only expire messages both older than N
	hours, and containing STRING.

qmqtool -e -o N
	This will behave the same as qmqtool -eN, except that instead of
	specifying a message id, you specify age (in hours).  For example,
	to expire all messages that have been queued for 18 hours:
	qmqtool -e -o 18
 
qmqtool -uN
	This option is sometimes referred to as "Re-Queueing"

	will un-expire message N, by setting the modified time to now on
	info/N, where N is the queued message number.  N may be a message
	number, or multiple message numbers separated by a comma (,).  This
	option may not be used with messages in the todo queue.

	This may be useful when you never want a particular message to
	be bounced after the default 7 day period.  For example, if
	you are queuing mail for someone's currently off-line server,
	you probably wouldn't want to bounce their mail after 7 days:
	you'd want to keep it for them as long as you could, so that
	when their server regains Internet access, the mail can be
	delivered.

	Although you could be using AutoTURN for this, it can be
	achieved be using qmail itself.  Supposing the site's domain
	name you are queuing for is "example.com", simply run
	qmqtool -u -f "example\.com"
	on a daily (or similar) basis, which will first find all
	message numbers that contain the string "example.com" and
	will then set the modification time to now: giving them an
	extra 7 day life span in the queue.

qmqtool -u -f 'STRING'
	This will behave the same as qmqtool -uN, except that instead of
	specifying a message id, you specify a string.  For example:
 	qmqtool -u -f 'Football Game'
	will unexpire all messages with 'Football Game' in it.

	If used with -o N, will only unexpire messages both older than N
	hours, and containing STRING.

qmqtool -u -o N
	This will behave the same as qmqtool -uN, except that instead of
	specifying a message id, you specify age (in hours).  For example,
	to unexpire all messages that have been queued for 18 hours:
	qmqtool -u -o 18

qmqtool -E(A|R|L)
	will set the expire time to [A]ll, [R]emote, or [L]ocal messages to
	two weeks ago.  I don't know when this this function would be
	useful, but can think of lots of times it'd be dangerous -- beware.

qmqtool -U(A|R|L)
	the same as qmqtool -E, except that it will set the
	modification time to now, instead of two weeks ago.  Very
	useful when you've just typed qmqtool -EA, and shouted "oh, shit!".

	This function could also be useful if your qmail server's sole
	purpose is a backup mail server:  you don't have to bother
	looking for strings and un-expiring them individually, rather,
	simply keep everything in the queue.

	This option is sometimes referred to as "Re-Queueing"

qmqtool -vN
	will show you the first 100 lines of queued message N.  Limiting
	the viewed message to 100 lines is good, because it trims off the
	otherwise [hundreds of] thousands of useless encoded lines of
	Microsoft worms.

	use -w in conjunction with -v to view the whole message (i.e.
	qmqtool -wvN (or qmqtool -w -v N).

qmqtool -f 'STRING'
	will print a comma separated list of message numbers who's
	messages contain STRING.  Be sure to quote STRING, as spaces
	are treated as possible new arguments on the command line.

	note that STRING is a regexp; characters such as ^ ? . + () 
	must be escaped appropriately.

qmqtool -oN
	will print a comma seperated list of messages numbers who have
	been in the queue N or longer hours.
   
qmqtool -B(b|r)
	will either (b)ackup the current queue in /var/qmail/queue/ to
	/var/qmail/queue.backup/, or will (r)estore the queue in
	/var/qmail/queue.backup/ to /var/qmail/queue/.
	
	Note that qmail-send must be stopped for this process.  Also
	beware that the restore action does not replace the current
	queue, rather, it appends to it.  The queue layout in
	/var/qmail/queue must be correct before either backing it up
	or restoring to it.  The easiest way to ensure this is to run
	'make setup check' from the qmail-1.03 source directory.  Most
	inconsitencies in queue structure will be backed up or
	restored, as is.