Managing the Exim mail queue

Exim is a popular Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) used on many Unix-like systems. Every message passing through Exim receives a unique identifier called a Message ID.
Example: 1TrXS1-0003SL-3h

These IDs are used to monitor the queue, view message details, and remove unwanted emails.

Basic Exim queue commands

All commands should be executed as root.

Viewing the Queue

• Show the total number of messages in the queue:

  exim -bpc
  

• Display the full list of queued messages (time, size, ID, sender, recipient):

  exim -bp
  

• View message headers:

  exim -Mvh [ID]
  

• View message body:

  exim -Mvb [ID]
  

• View message logs:

  exim -Mvl [ID]
  

Removing Messages

• Delete a single message by ID:

  exim -Mrm 1TrXgs-0004t8-0W
  

• Delete all frozen messages:

  exipick -z -i | xargs exim -Mrm
  

• Delete all messages from a specific sender domain:

  exipick -f @spamdomain.com -i | xargs exim -Mrm
  

• Delete all messages to a specific recipient domain:

  exipick -r @victimdomain.com -i | xargs exim -Mrm
  

• Delete all messages in the queue:

  exipick -i | xargs exim -Mrm
  

• Fast queue cleanup (when there are hundreds of thousands of messages)
  If the queue is heavily overloaded, the fastest way to clear it is:

  rm -rfv /var/spool/exim4/input/
  rm -rfv /var/spool/exim4/msglog/
  sudo systemctl restart exim
  

If you’re using Postfix instead

• View the mail queue:

  mailq
  

• Delete all messages in the queue:

  postsuper -d ALL
  

Useful tips

• Before mass-deleting messages, it’s recommended to back up the /var/spool/exim4/ directory.
• Regularly monitor the queue with exim -bpc. A constantly growing number of messages is often a sign of a spam attack or misconfiguration.
• For advanced filtering, use the exipick utility — it allows you to select messages based on various criteria (sender, recipient, age, etc.).