mqueue-client folder size

Published 15 March 2021 08:15 (2-minute read)

When you have provisioned your server using Laravel Forge (or Ploi) and are running cronjobs on it, it could be that your /var/spool/mqueue-client folder contains a lot of files. In my case, the server had around 4GB of files in that folder.

Note: this doesn't mean it is by every server, but some had multiple cron-schedules. That's the reason why it could be that many files in the folder.

What is mqueue-client?

The /var/spool/mqueue directory contains temporary files associated with the messages in the mail queue and may contain the log file.

https://sites.ualberta.ca/dept/chemeng/AIX-43/share/man/info/C/a_doc_lib/files/aixfiles/mqueue.htm

How big is your folder?

To see how big your folder is, you can run the following command:

du -sh /var/spool/mqueue-client

In my case, the folder was around 4GB:

forge@my-server:/var/spool/mqueue-client# du -sh /var/spool/mqueue-client/
4.3G	/var/spool/mqueue-client/

How to clear it?

You can use a command, like rm, to remove the files:

rm /var/spool/mqueue-client/*

But when there are too many files in it, you could get an error like:

-bash: /bin/rm: Argument list too long

This folder can be huge. To clear it, you could use a script like:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

cd /var/spool/mqueue-client

echo "Starting..."
echo "Checking the amount of files in the folder..."

deleted=0
totalFiles=$(ls | wc -l)

echo "Found $totalFiles, time to delete..."

for i in `ls`
do
        rm -f $i
        percentage=$(bc <<< "scale=2; ($deleted / $totalFiles) * 100")
        ((deleted++))

        echo "Deleted $i. Files deleted $deleted / $totalFiles. $percentage% complete."
done

It will log all deleted files; this could take a while:

...
Deleted df12A8K182014661. Files deleted 491. 0% complete.
Deleted df12A8K183014661. Files deleted 492. 0% complete.
Deleted df12A8K184014661. Files deleted 493. 0% complete.
Deleted df12A8K185014661. Files deleted 494. 0% complete.
Deleted df12A8K186014661. Files deleted 495. 0% complete.
Deleted df12A8K187014661. Files deleted 496. 0% complete.
Deleted df12A8K188014661. Files deleted 497. 0% complete.
Deleted df12A8K189014661. Files deleted 498. 0% complete.
...

Source: https://serverfault.com/a/593953

How to prevent it?

You can disable the emails by setting the output of a cronjob to "/dev/null".

For example:

0 1 5 10 * /path/to/script.sh > /dev/null

It's also possible to add an extra variable to your crontab configuration:

MAILTO=""