The Temporary qf Rewrite Image: tf
When processing a queued message, it is often
necessary for sendmail to
modify the contents of the qf
file. This usually occurs if
delivery has failed or if delivery for only a part
of the recipient list succeeded. In either event, at
least the message priority needs to be
incremented.
To prevent damage to the original qf
file,
sendmail makes changes to a
temporary copy of that file. The temporary copy has
the same queue identifier as the original, but its
name begins with a t
.
After the tf
file
has been successfully written and closed,
sendmail calls
rename(2) to replace the
original with the copy. If the renaming fails,
sendmail syslog(3)s at
LOG_CRIT a message such as the following:
cannot rename(tfdB91brx04175, qfdB91brx04175), df=dfdB91brx04175
Failure to rename is an unusual but serious problem: a
queued message has been processed, but its qf
file contains old and
incorrect information. This failure might, for
example, indicate a hardware error, a corrupted
queue directory, or that the system administrator
accidentally removed the queue directory.
Get sendmail, 4th Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.