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.