s/qmail:

Section: Misc. Reference Manual Pages (qmail-log)
Updated: 5
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NAME

qmail-log - s/qmail activity record

DESCRIPTION

qmail-send prints a series of lines describing its activities. Each possible line is described below.

STATUS

status: local l/L remote r/R ...: qmail-send is waiting for l local deliveries and r remote deliveries. The concurrency limits are L and R.
status: exiting: qmail-send is done.

FATAL PROBLEMS

alert: cannot start: ...: qmail-send is unable to prepare itself for delivering messages; it is giving up. This normally indicates a serious configuration error, but it can be caused by a temporary lack of resources.
alert: oh no! lost ...: One of the other daemons has died. qmail-send will exit as soon as possible.

SERIOUS PROBLEMS

alert: unable to append to bounce message...: qmail-send is unable to record a permanent failure, usually because the disk is full. This is a very serious problem; qmail-send cannot proceed without recording the results. It will try again in ten seconds.
alert: out of memory...: qmail-send tried to allocate more memory and failed. It will try again in ten seconds.
alert: unable to opendir...: qmail-send is having trouble reading a file list from disk, usually because the system's file descriptor table is full, but possibly because permissions are set incorrectly. It will try again in ten seconds.
alert: unable to switch back...: qmail-send was sent SIGHUP, and it is unable to reenter the queue directory. This is a very serious problem; qmail-send cannot proceed outside the queue directory. It will try again in ten seconds.
alert: unable to reread...: qmail-send was sent SIGHUP, but it is unable to read the new controls. It will continue operating with the original controls.

MESSAGES

new msg m: qmail-send is going to preprocess a queued message. The message number, m, is its disk inode number. After a message is removed from the queue, its number can be reused immediately.
info msg m: bytes b from <s> qp q uid u: Message with long-term message identifier m contains b bytes; its envelope sender is s; it was queued by a user with user ID u. q is the process ID (PID) of the qmail-queue that queued the message.
bounce msg m qp q: Message m had some delivery failures. The long-term queue identifier of the bounce (or double-bounce) message is q.
double bounce: discarding ...: Message m was discarded due to an 'empty' recipient in doublebounceto.
triple bounce: discarding ...: Message m had some delivery failures, but it is already a double-bounce message, so it must be thrown away. Triple-bounce messages do not exist.
end msg m: qmail-send is about to remove message m from the queue.

DELIVERIES

starting delivery d: msg m to ...: qmail-send is telling qmail-lspawn or qmail-rspawn to deliver message m to one recipient. The delivery number, d, starts at 1 and increases by 1 for each new delivery.
delivery d: success: ...: Delivery d was successful.
delivery d: failure: ...: Delivery d failed permanently. The message will bounce.
delivery d: deferral: ...: Delivery d failed temporarily. This recipient will be retried later.
delivery d: report mangled, will defer: There is a serious bug in qmail-lspawn or qmail-rspawn. This recipient will be retried later.

WARNINGS

internal error: delivery report out of range: qmail-lspawn or qmail-rspawn has supplied a report on a nonexistent delivery. This is a serious bug.
qmail-clean unable to clean up ...: For some reason qmail-clean is unable to remove the indicated file. It will try again later.
trouble fsyncing ...: qmail-send was unable to write to disk the results of preprocessing a queued message. It will try again later.
trouble in select: There is an operating system bug.
trouble injecting bounce message...: qmail-send was unable to queue a bounce message, usually because the disk is full. It will try again later.
trouble marking ...: qmail-send was unable to record the result of a successful or permanently unsuccessful delivery. This means that the delivery will be tried again later.
trouble opening ...: qmail-send was unable to open the list of local or remote recipients for a message. It will try again later.
trouble reading ...: Either qmail-send is unable to read a recipient list, or it is unable to read the envelope of a queued message, or it is out of memory. Whatever it was doing, it will try again later.
trouble writing to ...: qmail-send was unable to preprocess a queued message, usually because the disk is full. It will try again later.
unable to create ...: qmail-send was unable to preprocess a queued message, usually because the disk is out of inodes. It will try again later.
qmail-send: could not setup a valid file descriptor. This is a fatal error.
unable to open ...: qmail-send is unable to read the envelope of a queued message for preprocessing. It will try again later.
unable to start qmail-queue...: qmail-send is unable to queue a bounce message, usually because the machine is almost out of memory. It will try again later. This can also be caused by incorrect settings of $QMAILQUEUE or errors in a program or script which $QMAILQUEUE +points to.
unable to stat ...: qmail-send is unable to obtain information about a file that should exist. It will try again later.
unable to unlink ...: qmail-send is unable to remove a file. It will try again later.
unable to utime ...: qmail-send is about to exit, and it is unable to record on disk the next scheduled delivery time for a message. The message will be retried as soon as qmail-send is restarted.
unknown record type in ...: There is a serious bug in either qmail-queue or qmail-send.

UNIFIED SMTPD/POP3D LOGGING

qmail-smtpd and qmail-popup log additional information in a unified extensible format Action::Type::Condition Information.

Action is either Reject, Accept, or additionally Info.

The Type belongs to the following information:

SNDR: the client's hostname,
SPF: indicating SPF validation,
TLS: labeling TLS connections,
AUTH: for Authenticated sessions. Further
ORIG: relates to the return path F:<Return-Path>, and
RCTP: to the forwarding path T:<Forwarding-Path>, and finally
DATA: to the message.
The following Conditions are provided:
Bad_Helo: the client's HELO/EHLO greeting string was found in badhelo or rejected because of one of the following conditions indicated in the information section: '!' (HELO/EHLO not provided/empty) , '.'/'*' (HELO/EHLO rejected due to a direct/wildmat match with entries in badhelo).
Bad_Loader: the content of a base64 encoded MIME part matched an entry in badloadertypes.cdb.
Bad_MIME: a base64 encoded MIME part matched an entry n badmimetypes.cdb.
Bad_Mailfrom: the provided <Return-Path> matched an entry in badmailfrom additionally with the rejection conditions: '@' (address), '*' (wildmat), '-' (badmailfromunknown), and '+' (spoofing).
Bad_Rcptto: the provided <Forwarding-Path> matched an entry in badrcptto.
DNS_Helo: the client's HELO/EHLO greeting did not match it's FQDN or no DNS A/MX RR was found as indicated with the following symbols: '=' (HELO/EHLO does not match TCPREMOTEHOST) , 'A' (DNS A-Name lookup failed for HELO/EHLO) , 'M' (DNS MX lookup failed for HELO/EHLO).
DNS_MF: no DNS MX RR was found for the <Return-Path>.
Failed_Rcptto: the <Forwarding-Path> did not match entry in the provdided cdbs as per recipients.
Invalid_Relay: the none-RELAYCLIENT provided a <Forwarding-Path> not allowed as per rcpthosts or morercpthosts.cdb.
Invalid_Sender: the <Return-Path> of a RELAYCLIENT did not match the provided value of LOCALMFCHECK or did not match against mailfromrules.cdb or was not found in rcpthosts or morercpthosts.cdb.
Invalid_Size: the message size exceeded the maximum as provided by DATEBYTES or databytes.
Toomany_Rcptto: the number of Recipients ('RCPT TO:') exaggerated the value provided as MAXRECPIENTS.
Cipher: TLS session used this cipher.
Missing: depending on the context, either the required Start-TLS or AUTH s/qmail: is not granted.
Pam: SMTP authentication was granted by pam.
Recipients_Rcptto: the <Forwarding-Path> matched an entry in the cdbs available per reccients.
Recipients_Verp: the Forwarding-Path was recogized as VERP and matched an entry in the cdbs available per recipients.
Recipients_Domain: the Forwarding-Path matched a wildcard domain entry in the cdbs available per recipients.
Rcpthosts_Rcptto: the domain part of the <Forwarding-Path> matched an entry in rcpthosts or morercpthosts.cdb.
The displayed Information:
P:protocol: the effective SMTP or POP3 protocol in use.
S:IP:FQDN: the sender's IP and FQDN address available via TCPREMOTEIP(6) and TCPREMOTEHOST.
H:string: the client's HELO/EHLO greeting string.
F:Return-Path: the provided 'MAIL FROM:' address (if any).
T:Forwarding-Path: the given 'RCPT TO:' address.
?~ 'userid': in case of authentication the provided userid.
!= 'DN': in case of a TLS session, the presented client's 'Subject' Distinguished Name (DN) - if available (otherwise 'unknown').

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 16:40:05 GMT, September 13, 2025