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View the message header and body for an email in the exim mail queue

You’ve checked to see what’s sitting in the exim mail queue, but want to check the email’s header and/or body before deleting it from the queue. Use the -Mvh & -Mvb flags to view these.

Getting the message id

Use “exim -bp” or “mailq” to see what’s in the queue to get the message id; you’ll need it when you want to view the header or body.

$ exim -bp
 1m   321 1aU276-0001cf-DR 
          chris@example.com

In the above example, 1aU276-0001cf-DR is the message id

Viewing the email header with exim

Run “exim -Mvh [message id]” to see the headers (“h” for header), e.g. using the id above:

$ exim -Mvh 1aU276-0001cf-DR

Viewing the email body with exim

Run “exim -Mvb [message id]” to see the headers (“b” for body), e.g. using the id above:

$ exim -Mvb 1aU276-0001cf-DR