sendmail 8.13 Companion

Useful Tables

• Table 11-2 shows the parts of a queued message.

• Table 11-3 shows the meaning of each line in the qf file, by key letter.

Parts of a Queued Message

When a message is stored in the queue, it is split into pieces. Each piece is stored as a separate file in the queue directory. That is, the header and other information about the message are stored in one file, while the body (the data) is stored in another. All told, eight different types of files can appear in the queue directory. The type of each is indicated by the first two letters of the filename, which begins with a single letter followed by an f character. The complete list is shown in Table 11-2.

Table 11-2. Queue file types

File	sendmail text reference	Description
df	11.2.2[3ed]	Data (message body)
lf	11.2.3[3ed]	Lock file (obsolete and removed as of V5.62)
nf	11.2.4[3ed]	ID creation file (obsolete and removed as of V5.62)
tf	11.2.6[3ed]	Temporary qf rewrite image
xf	11.2.7[3ed]	Transcript file
qf	11.2.5[3ed]	Queue control file (and headers)
Qf	11.5[3ed]	qf file that has been lost
hf	Section 11.1.2 [V8.13]	qf file that has been quarantined

The complete form for each filename is:

               Xfident

The X is one of the leading letters shown in Table 11-2. The f is the constant letter f. The ident is a unique queue identifier associated with each mail message.

The qf File Internals

The qf file holds all the information that is needed to perform delivery of a queued mail message. ...