List messages in exim queue from command line

If you already know how many emails are in the queue and want to see certain short information regarding each email in the queue, you can print a list of the emails currently queued by performing this command:

exim -bp

If you have a lot of emails in the queue it may be hard to find the exact one you’re looking for! You may want to grep against the output for a certain string. (eg. # exim -bp |grep “frozen” )

Reviewing an example from that output:

14m 1.5K 1XSY39-0001i8-7z <> *** frozen ***

root@knownhost.support

Let’s break down each part of the output:

’14m’ is the amount of time since it was originally attempted for delivery. ‘m’ standing for minutes, ‘h’ for hours, and ‘d’ for days.

‘1.5K’ is the size of the original message attempted for delivery. ‘K’ standing for Kilobytes.

‘1XSY39-0001i8-7z’ is the email ID for that specific delivery attempt. This is very useful and should be noted for further research (such as viewing the email header and body).

‘*** frozen ***’ is the status of this particular email. Frozen obviously suggesting there’s something from preventing further delivery attempts.

‘root@knownhost.support’ is the email address “TO” or delivery address for the email.