How to: Purge, Flush or Delete Postfix Queue, or a Single Email

Written by Guillermo Garron

Date: 2012-04-25 14:53:30 00:00

To flush or purge the postfix mail queue, just enter this command

postfix -f

But if you need to delete an individual email from the queue, you’ll first need to see the queue. Traditionally you use mailq this time we’ll use:

postqueue -p

And the output should show all messages in queue:

5642B4D8647* 1683500 Tue Jun  3 08:37:27  xxxxxx@xxxxxxx.com
                                         rrrrrrrrr@hotmail.com

9359B4D82B1* 1635730 Tue Jun  3 08:36:53  xxxxxx@xxxxxxx.com
                                         yyyyyyyy@hotmail.com

The first number is the message ID, if you only want to delete one of them, enter:

postsuper -d 5642B4D8647

That will only delete one email for the queue, that specific email you want to delete from it.

If you want to delete all deferred mails, you can use:

postsuper -d deferred

Source: How to: Purge, Flush or Delete Postfix Queue, or a Single Email