A mail message can be delivered
immediately, without ever having been queued, or it can be queued and
retried over and over again until it either times out or succeeds.
The delay= shows the total amount of time the
message took to be delivered. This period of time starts when
sendmail first receives the message and ends
when the message is finally delivered or bounced. This interval is
displayed with the delay=
syslog line equate:
delay=DD+HH:MM:SS
The time expression shows the time it took in hours
(HH), minutes (MM), and seconds
(SS) to handle delivery or rejection of the
message. If the delay exceeds 24 hours, the time expression is
prefixed with the number of days (DD) and a plus
character. For example, the following message took five seconds to
deliver or bounce:
delay=00:00:05
The following message took 4 days, 2 hours, 16 minutes, and 2 seconds
to deliver or bounce:
delay=4+02:16:02
Note that the delay= syslog
equate is shown only for recipient records.
