sendmail, 4th Edition

QueueDirectory

Location of queue directory All versions

Mail messages that have not yet been delivered are stored in the sendmail program’s queue directory. The location of that directory is defined by the QueueDirectory option. That location can be a relative pathname (for testing) or an absolute pathname. If the specified location does not exist, sendmail prints something such as the following:

cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue): No such file or directory

If the location exists but is not a directory, sendmail prints something such as the following:

cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue): Not a directory

In both cases, sendmail also logs an error message via syslog(8) if the logging level of the LogLevel option (LogLevel on page 1040) permits. In both cases, sendmail aborts immediately.

The forms of the QueueDirectory option are as follows:

O QueueDirectory=path        ← configuration file (V8.7 and later)
-OQueueDirectory=path        ← command line (V8.7 and later)
define(`QUEUE_DIR',`path')   ← mc configuration (V8.7 and later)
OQpath                       ← configuration file (deprecated)
-oQpath                      ← command line (deprecated)

The path argument is of type string. If it is missing, the value for path defaults to mqueue. Relative names for the queue are always relative to the directory in which sendmail was invoked. If the entire QueueDirectory option is missing, the value for path defaults to a null string, and sendmail complains with:

QueueDirectory (Q) option must be set

The default in configuring with the mc technique varies depending ...