postqueue: fatal: Cannot flush mail queue - mail system is down

Question

Setting up a server, and I am having the damnest time getting postfix to send out an email!

I have several emails in the queue, but when I force them I get this:

postqueue: warning: unable to look up public/qmgr: No such file or directory
postqueue: fatal: Cannot flush mail queue - mail system is down

What am I missing?

Just now I'm seeing this on a system which is delivering mail OK. It's just the manual forcing of the queue that's failing. In my case I'm using postmulti, and postqueue winds up talking to the wrong instance of postfix. — mc0e, Apr 12, 2016 at 13:40

Saif · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-01 15:07:59Z

3

Make sure postfix service is running.

In my case it wasn't, so service postfix start fixed it for me.

After running postfix then issue postfix flush

answered Jul 1, 2018 at 15:07

Saif

1313 bronze badges

Starting postfix helps, but cleaning all the queue is not wise, better clean only deferred messages with postsuper -d ALL deferred. You should run it a few minutes later because it needs some time to detect which messages are deferred. So I ran it several times.
– sekrett
Oct 5, 2020 at 7:54
@sekrett postfix flush does NOT delete any message... (unlike postsuper -d ALL deferred)
– Étienne Miret
Jan 16, 2023 at 8:40
Yes, you are right. Flush just forces to start processing the queue again.
– sekrett
Jan 16, 2023 at 8:48

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