The Sysadmin’s Daily Grind: Mail and Queuegraph
MAIL HELP
Worms, mail bombs, and users who send multiple megabyte Powerpoint files across the wire give Postfix administrators plenty of reasons to view their charges with a critical eye from time to time.
Mailgraph has been giving me useful information for a long while now [1]. It is time to turn the spotlight on this visualization tool for Postfix logfiles and to introduce the related Queuegraph project. Mailgraph [2] is a small footprint daemon that continuously reads the Postfix logfile and shovels the data it gathers into a round robin database (RRD). The front-end is a CGI script that generates a graph based on the RRD data. The program requires the ubiquitous Perl interpreter, RRDTool [3] for the database, and the File::Tail Perl module, which you can obtain from the CPAN archive. The heart of Mailgraph is a Perl script called mailgraph.pl; the daemon I referred to earlier. You can launch the daemon manually, but it makes more sense to add the init script provided by the distribution to run the daemon when you boot your machine. I use the following command to launch Mailgraph:
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.
-
IBM Announces Powerhouse Linux Server
IBM has unleashed a seriously powerful Linux server with the LinuxONE Emperor 5.
-
Plasma Ends LTS Releases
The KDE Plasma development team is doing away with the LTS releases for a good reason.
-
Arch Linux Available for Windows Subsystem for Linux
If you've ever wanted to use a rolling release distribution with WSL, now's your chance.
-
System76 Releases COSMIC Alpha 7
With scores of bug fixes and a really cool workspaces feature, COSMIC is looking to soon migrate from alpha to beta.
-
OpenMandriva Lx 6.0 Available for Installation
The latest release of OpenMandriva has arrived with a new kernel, an updated Plasma desktop, and a server edition.
-
TrueNAS 25.04 Arrives with Thousands of Changes
One of the most popular Linux-based NAS solutions has rolled out the latest edition, based on Ubuntu 25.04.
-
Fedora 42 Available with Two New Spins
The latest release from the Fedora Project includes the usual updates, a new kernel, an official KDE Plasma spin, and a new System76 spin.