Web Hosting Tutorials

Exim Command Basics

Posted on December 25th, 2006 by Alex P..
Categories: Cpanel Hosting, Linux, web Hosting, EXIM, VPS / OpenVZ.

Message-IDs and spool files

The format of the message ID is three groups of base 62 digits, separated by hyphens. and take the form of: XXXXXX-YYYYYY-ZZ. The first group, of six digits, gives the integral number of seconds since the epoch. The second group, also of six digits, gives the process ID. The third group, of two digits, gives the fractional part of the number of seconds since the epoch, in units of 1/2000 of a second (500 us). The function does not return until the clock has advanced far enough that another call would generate a different ID.

Logs Files

Files in /var/spool/exim/msglog contain logging information for each message and are named the same as the message-id.

Files in /var/spool/exim/input are named after the message-id, plus a suffix denoting whether it is the envelope header (-H) or message data (-D).

Basic information

Print a count of the messages in the queue:

root@ashok# exim -bpc

Print a listing of the messages in the queue (time queued, size, message-id, sender, recipient):

root@ashok# exim -bp

Print a summary of messages in the queue (count, volume, oldest, newest, domain, and totals):

root@ashok# exim -bp | exiqsumm

Print what Exim is doing right now:

root@ashok# exiwhat

Run a pretend SMTP transaction from the command line, as if it were coming from the given IP address. This will display Exim’s checks, ACLs, and filters as they are applied. The message will NOT actually be delivered.

root@ashok# exim -bh 192.168.11.22

Display all of Exim’s configuration settings:

root@ashok# exim -bP

Searching the queue with exiqgrep

Exim includes a utility that is quite nice for grepping through the queue, called exiqgrep.

First, various flags that control what messages are matched. These can be combined to come up with a very particular search.

Use -f to search the queue for messages from a specific sender:

root@ashok# exiqgrep -f [luser]@domain

Use -r to search the queue for messages for a specific recipient/domain:

root@ashok# exiqgrep -r [luser]@domain

Use -o to print messages older than the specified number of seconds. For example, messages older than 1 day:

root@ashok# exiqgrep -o 86400 […]

Use -y to print messages that are younger than the specified number of seconds. For example, messages less than an hour old:

root@ashok# exiqgrep -y 3600 […]

Use -s to match the size of a message with a regex. For example, 700-799 bytes:

root@ashok# exiqgrep -s ‘^7..$’ […]

Use -z to match only frozen messages, or -x to match only unfrozen messages.

There are also a few flags that control the display of the output.

Use -i to print just the message-id as a result of one of the above two searches:

root@ashok# exiqgrep -i [ -r | -f ] …

Use -c to print a count of messages matching one of the above searches:

root@ashok# exiqgrep -c …

Print just the message-id of the entire queue:

root@ashok# exiqgrep -i

Managing the queue

The main exim binary (/usr/sbin/exim) is used with various flags to make things happen to messages in the queue. Most of these require one or more message-IDs to be specified in the command line, which is where `exiqgrep -i` as described above really comes in handy.

Start a queue run:

root@ashok# exim -q -v

Start a queue run for just local deliveries:

root@ashok# exim -ql -v

Remove a message from the queue:

root@ashok# exim -Mrm message-id [ message-id … ]

Freeze a message:

root@ashok# exim -Mf message-id [ message-id … ]

Thaw a message:

root@ashok# exim -Mt message-id [ message-id … ]

Deliver a message:

root@ashok# exim -M message-id [ message-id … ]

Force a message to fail and bounce as “cancelled by administrator”:

root@ashok# exim -Mg message-id [ message-id … ]

Remove all frozen messages:

root@ashok# exiqgrep -z -i | xargs exim -Mrm

Remove all messages older than five days (86400 * 5 = 432000 seconds):

root@ashok# exiqgrep -o 432000 -i | xargs exim -Mrm

Freeze all queued mail from a given sender:

root@ashok# exiqgrep -i -f luser@example.tld | xargs exim -Mf

View a message’s headers:

root@ashok# exim -Mvh message-id

View a message’s body:

root@ashok# exim -Mvb message-id

View a message’s logs:

root@ashok# exim -Mvl message-id

Add a recipient to a message:

root@localhost# exim -Mar message-id
 [ address … ]

Edit the sender of a message:

root@localhost# exim -Mes message-id  address

Searching the logs with exigrep

The exigrep utility (not to be confused with exiqgrep) is used to search an exim log for a string or pattern. It will print all log entries with the same internal message-id as those that matched the pattern, which is very handy since any message will take up at least three lines in the log. exigrep will search the entire content of a log entry, not just particular fields.

One can search for messages sent from a particular IP address:

root@ashok# exigrep ‘<= .* [12.34.56.78] ' /path/to/exim_log

Search for messages sent to a particular IP address:

root@ashok# exigrep ‘=> .* [12.34.56.78]’ /path/to/exim_log

This example searches for outgoing messages, which have the “=>” symbol, sent to “user@domain.tld”. The pipe to grep for the “<=" symbol will match only the lines with information on the sender - the From address, the sender's IP address, the message size, the message ID, and the subject line if you have enabled logging the subject. The purpose of doing such a search is that the desired information is not on the same log line as the string being searched for.

root@ashok# exigrep ‘=> .*user@domain.tld’ /path/to/exim_log | fgrep ‘<='

Generate and display Exim stats from a logfile:

root@ashok# eximstats /path/to/exim_mainlog

Same as above, with less verbose output:

root@ashok# eximstats -ne -nr -nt /path/to/exim_mainlog

Same as above, for one particular day:

root@ashok# fgrep YYYY-MM-DD /path/to/exim_mainlog | eximstats

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