Hello,
I am trying to clear my mail queue with the following command:
rm /var/spool/mqueue/*
But when I do this I get this error:
/bin/rm: Argument list too long.
Can someone tell me what that error means and what I can do to correct it so I can clear my mail queue?
Thanks
The shell expands that * into a list of filenames and then tries to run the rm command with that list. But there's a limit to how long that list can be and you exceeded it.
Since you are using the full path, you might try a relative path instead:
cd /var/spool/mqueue
rm *
Now each individual file no longer has the /var/spool/mqueue/ prefix so the expanded command is much shorter. But if this is still too long, you can try this...
cd /var/spool/mqueue
ls | xargs rm
The ls produces a list of file names which xargs reads. It then assembles them into a bunch of rm commands. It knows how long each one can be and it won't assemble a command that is too long.
But are sure that you want to do this? You are going to discard all of your mail! My idea of clearing the queue is
/usr/lib/sendmail -q -v
Yes I am sure...I made a script to email all of my 2,000 members but I forgot to put in the "from" part so my mail queue was filling up with error messages. The queue was over 2.5 MB at one point.
I got this problem solved though...
Thank You 