Provided by: qmail_1.06-5_amd64 
NAME
qmail-log - the qmail activity record
DESCRIPTION
qmail-send prints a series of lines describing its activities. Each possible line is described below.
STATUS
status: local l/L remote r/R ...
qmail-send is waiting for l local deliveries and r remote deliveries. The concurrency limits are
L and R.
status: exiting
qmail-send is done.
FATAL PROBLEMS
alert: cannot start: ...
qmail-send is unable to prepare itself for delivering messages; it is giving up. This normally
indicates a serious configuration error, but it can be caused by a temporary lack of resources.
alert: oh no! lost ...
One of the other daemons has died. qmail-send will exit as soon as possible.
SERIOUS PROBLEMS
alert: unable to append to bounce message...
qmail-send is unable to record a permanent failure, usually because the disk is full. This is a
very serious problem; qmail-send cannot proceed without recording the results. It will try again
in ten seconds.
alert: out of memory...
qmail-send tried to allocate more memory and failed. It will try again in ten seconds.
alert: unable to opendir...
qmail-send is having trouble reading a file list from disk, usually because the system's file
descriptor table is full, but possibly because permissions are set incorrectly. It will try again
in ten seconds.
alert: unable to switch back...
qmail-send was sent SIGHUP, and it is unable to reenter the queue directory. This is a very
serious problem; qmail-send cannot proceed outside the queue directory. It will try again in ten
seconds.
alert: unable to reread...
qmail-send was sent SIGHUP, but it is unable to read the new controls. It will continue operating
with the original controls.
MESSAGES
new msg m
qmail-send is going to preprocess a queued message. The message number, m, is its disk inode
number. After a message is removed from the queue, its number can be reused immediately.
info msg m: bytes b from <s> qp q uid u
Message m contains b bytes; its envelope sender is s; it was queued by a user with user ID u. q
is a long-term queue identifier, the process ID of the qmail-queue that queued the message.
bounce msg m qp q
Message m had some delivery failures. The long-term queue identifier of the bounce (or double-
bounce) message is q.
triple bounce: discarding ...
Message m had some delivery failures, but it is already a double-bounce message, so it must be
thrown away. Triple-bounce messages do not exist.
end msg m
qmail-send is about to remove message m from the queue.
DELIVERIES
starting delivery d: msg m to ...
qmail-send is telling qmail-lspawn or qmail-rspawn to deliver message m to one recipient. The
delivery number, d, starts at 1 and increases by 1 for each new delivery.
delivery d: success: ...
Delivery d was successful.
delivery d: failure: ...
Delivery d failed permanently. The message will bounce.
delivery d: deferral: ...
Delivery d failed temporarily. This recipient will be retried later.
delivery d: report mangled, will defer
There is a serious bug in qmail-lspawn or qmail-rspawn. This recipient will be retried later.
WARNINGS
internal error: delivery report out of range
qmail-lspawn or qmail-rspawn has supplied a report on a nonexistent delivery. This is a serious
bug.
qmail-clean unable to clean up ...
For some reason qmail-clean is unable to remove the indicated file. It will try again later.
trouble fsyncing ...
qmail-send was unable to write to disk the results of preprocessing a queued message. It will try
again later.
trouble in select
There is an operating system bug.
trouble injecting bounce message...
qmail-send was unable to queue a bounce message, usually because the disk is full. It will try
again later.
trouble marking ...
qmail-send was unable to record the result of a successful or permanently unsuccessful delivery.
This means that the delivery will be tried again later.
trouble opening ...
qmail-send was unable to open the list of local or remote recipients for a message. It will try
again later.
trouble reading ...
Either qmail-send is unable to read a recipient list, or it is unable to read the envelope of a
queued message, or it is out of memory. Whatever it was doing, it will try again later.
trouble writing to ...
qmail-send was unable to preprocess a queued message, usually because the disk is full. It will
try again later.
unable to create ...
qmail-send was unable to preprocess a queued message, usually because the disk is out of inodes.
It will try again later.
unable to open ...
qmail-send is unable to read the envelope of a queued message for preprocessing. It will try
again later.
unable to start qmail-queue...
qmail-send is unable to queue a bounce message, usually because the machine is almost out of
memory. It will try again later. This can also be caused by incorrect settings of $QMAILQUEUE or
errors in a program or script which $QMAILQUEUE points to.
unable to stat ...
qmail-send is unable to obtain information about a file that should exist. It will try again
later.
unable to unlink ...
qmail-send is unable to remove a file. It will try again later.
unable to utime ...
qmail-send is about to exit, and it is unable to record on disk the next scheduled delivery time
for a message. The message will be retried as soon as qmail-send is restarted.
unknown record type in ...
There is a serious bug in either qmail-queue or qmail-send.
SEE ALSO
qmail-send(8) qmail-log(5)