Delay and Delays in Postfix

Feb 8 12:46:24 relayserver postfix/smtp[21315]: 2vJLYX0Wghz7f3t: to=, relay=91.199.74.14[91.199.74.14]:25, delay=0.09, delays=0.01/0/0.04/0.05, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as 200698166A)

If we take a look at the example email from above:

The delay parameter (delay=0.09) is fairly self explanatory, it is the total amount of time this email (2vJLYX0Wghz7f3t) has been on this server.
But what is the delays parameter all about?

delays=0.01/0/0.04/0.05

NOTE: Numbers smaller than 0.01 seconds are truncated to 0, to reduce the noise level in the logfile.

You might have guessed it is a break down of the total delay, but what do each number represent?

delays=a/b/c/d:
a=time before queue manager, including message transmission;
b=time in queue manager;
c=connection setup time including DNS, HELO and TLS;
d=message transmission time.

More explanation:

a (0.01): The time before getting to the queue manager, so the time it took to be transmitted onto the mail server and into postfix.
b (0): The time in queue manager, so this email didn’t hit the queues, so it was emailed straight away.
c (0.04): The time it took to set up a connection with the destination mail relay.
d (0.05): The time it took to transmit the email to the destination mail relay.

More information can be found here: http://www.postfix.org/OVERVIEW.html

Rotate cron.daily on SUSE at a certain time.

At the moment my logs are rotating via logrotate at various different time.
To rotate at a certain time edit variable DAILY_TIME in /etc/sysconfig/cron

For example: DAILY_TIME="00:01"

Otherwise the way to do it involves making the creation time of /var/spool/cron/lastrun/cron.daily the hour and minute you want. This can be done by an at job since you don’t want to hang around to do that. To understand why creation time and not modification time, read /usr/lib/cron/run-crons, in particular the find statement.