Display number of messages in linux mail queue

Solution 1:

If you just want to know the number of messages sitting in the deferred queue, then the following should get you a quick answer:

find /var/spool/postfix/deferred -type f | wc -l

There are three other queues. See http://www.porcupine.org/postfix/queueing.html for details.

Solution 2:

You could filter the output and display only the last line:

mailq | tail -n 1

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Solution 3:

As a related matter, you can also obtain the number of messages in your mailbox stored in mbox format, by modifying Brian Showalter's suggestion using the command "mail --headers."  For example, I have this line in my .bashrc file:

if [ -s /var/mail/$(whoami) ] ; then echo -e "\nYou have $(ls -s -h /var/mail/$(whoami) | cut -d" " -f 1) of mail.  Number of messages: $(mail --file /var/mail/$(whoami) --headers | wc -l) ($(mail --file /var/mail/$(whoami) --headers | sed '/^>* *[0-9]/d' | wc -l) unread)" ; fi