How to remove Postfix queue messages sent to a specific domain

Question

I have a server with multiple domains. How can I clear all Postfix queue messages for a specific domain?

Answer 1

UPDATE 2021-04-18:

mailq | tail -n +2 | grep -v '^ *(' | awk  'BEGIN { RS = "" } { if ($8 ~ /@example\.com/ && $9 == "") print $1 }' | tr -d '*!' | postsuper -d -

Whereas $7=sender, $8=recipient1, $9=recipient2. You can also adapt the rule for other recipients ($9) to your needs.

The command is based on an example of the postsuper manpage which an example command matching a full recipient mail address:

mailq | tail -n +2 | grep -v '^ *(' | awk  'BEGIN { RS = "" } { if ($8 == "[email protected]" && $9 == "") print $1 }' | tr -d '*!' | postsuper -d -

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Old content:

This command deletes all mails sent from or to addresses that end with @example.com:

sudo mailq | tail -n +2 | awk 'BEGIN { RS = "" } /@example\.com$/ { print $1 }' | tr -d '*!' | sudo postsuper -d - 

Answer 2

Grep solution

mailq | grep example.com -B1 | grep -oE "^[A-Z0-9]{10,11}" | sudo postsuper -d -

assumes ID is between 10 and 11 digits, (based on inodes)

Answer 3

I have tried this solution in ubuntu 12.04, and it doesn't work this way:

sudo mailq | tail +2 | awk 'BEGIN { RS = "" } / @example\.com$/ { print $1 }' | tr -d '*!' | sudo postsuper -d -

I need to change to this way:

postqueue -p | tail -n +2 | awk 'BEGIN { RS = "" } /@example\.com/ { print $1 }' | tr -d '*!' | postsuper -d -

Answer 4

Look at pfdel.pl, a mandatory tool to manage the queue. It takes a regexp and remove the mails waiting in queue corresponding to your domain.

Answer 5

When you want to delete messages from or to e-mail addresses at a specific domain, this command works for me:

mailq | \
  tail -n +2 | \
  awk 'BEGIN { RS = "" } / @example\.com$/ { print $1 }' | \
  tr -d '*!' | \
  postsuper -d -

Also works for deleting e-mails from or to specific e-mail addresses by supplying for example mail@example\.com$/ instead of @example\.com$/.

Taken from a comment on howtoforge.com. See there for related solutions and the command in one line. (I used bash line continuation for readability).

A very similar command that allows to make deletion dependent on whether the address appears as sender, recipient etc. is found in man postsuper, where it says about -d:

For example, to delete all mail with exactly one recipient [email protected]:

mailq | \
  tail -n +2 | \
  grep -v '^ *(' | \
  awk 'BEGIN { RS = "" } { if ($8 == "[email protected]" && $9 == "") print $1 }' | \
  tr -d '*!' | \
  postsuper -d -

(The variables mean: $7=sender, $8=recipient1, $9=recipient2. I changed the quote to use tail -n +2, since their tail +2 does not work any more, at least on some modern systems.)

Answer 6

I've modified it little bit:

mailq | grep -B1 | grep -oE "^[A-Z0-9]{12}" | xargs -I% postsuper -d %