1 INSTALL Instructions for fetchmail
2 ==================================
4 Building from Git repository: see README.git
6 Packagers and port/emerge maintainers: see README.packaging.
9 If you have installed binaries (e.g. from a Linux RPM or DPKG, Solaris
10 package or FreeBSD port), you can skip to step 5 below.
12 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
13 The Frequently Asked Questions list, included as the file FAQ in this
14 distribution, answers the most common questions about configuring and
16 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
19 1. PREPARATIONS: USEFUL THINGS TO INSTALL FIRST
23 If you are installing OpenSSL yourself, it is recommended that you build
24 shared OpenSSL libraries, it works better and updating OpenSSL does not
25 then require you to reinstall all applications that use OpenSSL.
27 Try after unpacking OpenSSL:
29 ./config shared && make && make test && make install
31 1.2 gettext (internationalization)
33 Internationalization of fetchmail requires GNU gettext (libintl and
34 libiconv). Fetchmail, as of version 6.3.0, no longer ships its own
35 libintl copy. Note that some systems include gettext in their libc.
39 If you want support for RFC1938-compliant one-time passwords, you'll
40 need to install Craig Metz's OPIE libraries first and *make sure
41 they're on the normal library path* where configure will find them. Then
42 configure with --enable-OPIE, and fetchmail build process will detect
43 them and compile appropriately.
45 Note: there is no point in doing this unless your server is
46 OTP-enabled. To test this, telnet to the server port and give it
47 a valid USER id. If the OK response includes the string "otp-",
48 you should install OPIE. You need version 2.32 or better.
50 The OPIE library sources are available at http://www.inner.net/pub/opie/
51 You can also find OPIE and IPV6-capable servers there.
55 Building in IPv6 support *requires* an up-to-date operating system.
56 Recent Linux versions with glibc 2.1.1 or newer, FreeBSD, Solaris should
59 If you have trouble with intl or gettext functions, try using the
60 configure option '--with-included-gettext'.
67 Installing fetchmail is easy. From within this directory, type:
71 The autoconfiguration script will spend a bit of time figuring out the
72 specifics of your system. If you want to specify a particular compiler
73 (e.g. you have gcc but want to compile with cc), set the environment
74 variable CC before you run configure.
76 The configure script accepts certain standard configuration options.
77 These include --prefix, --exec-prefix, --bindir, --infodir, --mandir,
78 and --srcdir. Run 'configure --help' for more.
80 POP2 support is no longer compiled in by default, as POP2 is way obsolete
81 and there don't seem to be any live servers for it anymore. You can
82 configure it back in if you want with 'configure --enable-POP2', but
83 leaving it out cuts the executable's size slightly.
85 Support for CompuServe's RPA authentication method (rather similar to
86 APOP) is available but also not included in the standard build. You
87 can compile it in with 'configure --enable-RPA'.
89 Support for Microsoft's NTLM authentication method is also available
90 but not included in the standard build either. You can compile it in
91 with 'configure --enable-NTLM'.
93 Support for authentication using RFC1731 GSSAPI is available
94 but also not included by default. You can compile it in with
95 'configure --with-gssapi', which looks for GSSAPI support in standard
96 locations (/usr, /usr/local). If you set --with-GSSAPI=DIR
97 you can direct the build to look for GSSAPI support under DIR.
99 Hooks for the OpenSSL library (see http://www.openssl.org/) are
100 included in the distribution. Fetchmail 6.4 enables these by default.
101 Fetchmail's configure script will query pkg-config (pkgconf) or failing that,
102 probe some default locations for the include/openssl/ssl.h file. If this
103 doesn't work (i. e. configure prints "SSL support enabled, but OpenSSL not
104 found" and aborts), you need to give the explicit prefix of your OpenSSL
105 installation (specify the directory that contains OpenSSL's "include"
106 subdirectory), for instance: "--with-ssl=/example/path" would assume that you
107 have an /example/path/include/openssl/ssl.h header file.
111 Specifying --with-kerberos=DIR or --with-kerberos5=DIR will tell the
112 fetchmail build process to look in DIR for Kerberos support.
113 Configure normally looks in /usr/kerberos and /usr/athena; if you
114 specify this option with an argument it will look in DIR first.
116 Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be good standardization of where
117 Kerberos lives. If your configuration doesn't match one of the four
118 that fetchmail's configure.in knows about, you may find you have to
119 hand-hack the Makefile a bit.
121 You may also want to hand-hack the Makefile if you're writing a custom
122 or bleeding-edge resolver library. In that case you will probably
123 want to add -lresolv or whatever to the definition of LOADLIBS.
125 It is also possible to explicitly condition out the support for
126 POP3, IMAP, and ETRN (with configure arguments of --disable-POP3,
127 --disable-IMAP, and --disable-ETRN respectively).
136 This should compile fetchmail for your system. If fetchmail fails to build
137 properly, see the FAQ section B on build-time problems.
139 On multi-core computers, run
143 on a computer that supports 8 CPU threads at the same time (for instance,
144 Octocore computers or Quad-core computers supporting two threads per core).
149 Lastly, become root and run
153 This will install fetchmail. By default, fetchmail will be installed
154 in /usr/local/bin, with the man page in /usr/local/man/man1. You can
155 use the configure options --bindir and --mandir to change these.
157 If you are tight on disk space, you can run instead
161 NOTE: If you are using an MTA other than sendmail (such as qmail,
162 exim, or smail), see the FAQ (section T) for discussion of any special
163 configuration steps that may be necessary.
166 5. SET UP A RUN CONTROL FILE
168 See the man page for a description of how to configure your individual
171 If you're upgrading from popclient, see question F4 in the FAQ file.
176 I strongly recommend that your first fetchmail run use the -v, -a and -k
177 options, in case there is something not quite right with your server,
178 your local delivery configuration or your port 25 listener. Also,
179 beware of aliases that direct your local mail back to the server host!
181 This software is known to work with the qpop/popper series of freeware
182 POP3 servers; also with the IMAP2bis and IMAP4 servers that are
183 distributed with Pine from the University of Washington; also with the
184 Cyrus IMAP server from CMU. This covers all the servers commonly
185 hosted on Linux and *BSD systems. It also works with the IMAP service
186 of Microsoft Exchange, despite the fact that Microsoft Exchange is
187 extremely broken (returns incorrect message lengths in LIST
190 See the FAQ, section S, for detailed advice on running with various
196 You should read the FAQ file question G3 before reporting a bug.
201 Once you've verified your configuration, you can start fetchmail to
202 run in background and forget about it. Enjoy!
205 END of text file INSTALL