What does "domain or user is in the queue only list. Message queued" mean?

Question

Emails to my domain are periodically being delayed. I see in Exim's log file /var/log/exim_mainlog messages like the following:

2013-05-16 18:58:18 1Ud77q-0002ns-Rd <= email@my.host.name U=ssupport P=local S=4350 id=B72DE31368745098-alerts@my.host.name T="Some Subject" for my@email.com
2013-05-16 18:58:18 cwd=/var/spool/exim 3 args: /usr/sbin/exim -Mc 1Ud77q-0002ns-Rd
2013-05-16 18:58:18 1Ud77q-0002ns-Rd == my@email.com R=queueonly defer (-1): domain or user is in the queue only list.  Message queued

I found in /etc/exim.conf the following router configuration:

queueonly:
    driver = redirect
    domains = +queue_domains
    condition = ${if eq {$domain}{$primary_hostname}{${if eq {${lookup passwd{$local_part}{$value}}}{}{1}{0}}}{1}}
    allow_defer
    data = :defer: domain or user is in the queue only list.  Message queued

That's clearly where the domain or user is in the queue only list. Message queued message originates from. It looks like this will run if the domain is listed in /etc/queuedomains

I am not familiar with the file /etc/queuedomains. What process manages this file? Is there a setting in Webhost Manager that controls which domains get listed in /etc/queuedomains?

How can I prevent the Exim message domain or user is in the queue only list. Message queued for my particular domain?

UPDATE: Upon further investigation, I am getting the message "domain or user is in the queue only list. Message queued" even when /etc/queuedomains is empty. I was watching the exim_mainlog and as soon as I saw "domain or user is in the queue only list. Message queued" I executed a cat /etc/queuedomains in a second terminal and it was 0 bytes. So something else is at play here.

I am guessing this is due to a new cPanel/WHM feature. I am going to research this further and will answer my own question when/if I find the answer. — Josh, May 16 '13 at 23:23
Hmm, It is something new, i've never seen that before. Did it make your sending performance worse? I mean how big the queue gets? — Danila Ladner, May 17 '13 at 00:41
Sending performance is not dramatically worse that I have noticed. The messages which do get queued show up in the WHM "Mail Queue Manager" but it doesn't appear like other email is affected. Not sure yet though. — Josh, May 17 '13 at 04:06
This question appears to be off-topic because it is about a bug in cPanel, the use of which is not professional system administration within the scope of the FAQ. — Falcon Momot, Jun 30 '13 at 08:10
@FalconMomot unfortunately some professional systems administrators like myself are required to support and maintain cPanel for our customers. cPanel is used in large scale web hosting and **is** on topic. I didn't ask to have to maintain cPanel but it *is* one of my responsibilities as a systems administrator. Questions about cPanel from a *user* perspective are off-topic; questions about cPanel from the *sysadmin* side are on-topic. — Josh, Aug 29 '13 at 14:56

Josh · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-31T17:40:47.477

Apparently, this is a bug in cPanel 11.38. I opened a support ticket with cPanel and their response was:

A new internal case, 68457, was opened by Nick concerning the issue with the queued domain handling for users outside the jail or virtfs environment. A new router is set to be added for handling in that case, which would deliver the message via SMTP rather than using the prior /etc/queuedomains behavior.

When this case has gone into production, it would appear in http://go.cpanel.net/changelog for 11.38 tier. You can see which version is available for each tier at http://httpupdate.cpanel.net location.

Updating to cPanel/WHM 11.38.0 (build 10) resolved this issue.

What does "domain or user is in the queue only list. Message queued" mean?

1 Answers1