sendmail, 4th Edition

Bad qf Owner or Permissions

Each qf file must be owned by the effective user ID under which sendmail runs (usually root). A qf file must not be group- or world-writable. If a qf file fails either test, it is considered bogus and is renamed to a Qf file. Then sendmail logs these messages:

id: bogus queue file, uid=owner, mode=perms
Losing qffile: bogus file uid in mqueue

Here, id is the identifier portion of the qf filename, owner is the uid of the user that owns the qf file, and perms are the file permissions of the qf file, printed in octal.

This problem might point to bad queue directory permissions that allow anyone (or some group) to place files there. Or it might indicate that some process other than sendmail is writing to your queue.