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.
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13 The Frequently Asked Questions list, included as the file FAQ in this
14 distribution, answers the most common questions about configuring and
16 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
18 NOTE This is an alpha version that has not been thoroughly tested!
22 1. PREPARATIONS: USEFUL THINGS TO INSTALL FIRST
26 If you are installing OpenSSL yourself, it is recommended that you build
27 shared OpenSSL libraries, it works better and updating OpenSSL does not
28 then require you to reinstall all applications that use OpenSSL.
30 Try after unpacking OpenSSL:
32 ./config shared && make && make test && make install
34 1.2 gettext (internationalization)
36 Internationalization of fetchmail requires GNU gettext (libintl and
37 libiconv). Fetchmail, as of version 6.3.0, no longer ships its own
38 libintl copy. Note that some systems include gettext in their libc.
42 If you want support for RFC1938-compliant one-time passwords, you'll
43 need to install Craig Metz's OPIE libraries first and *make sure
44 they're on the normal library path* where configure will find them. Then
45 configure with --enable-OPIE, and fetchmail build process will detect
46 them and compile appropriately.
48 Note: there is no point in doing this unless your server is
49 OTP-enabled. To test this, telnet to the server port and give it
50 a valid USER id. If the OK response includes the string "otp-",
51 you should install OPIE. You need version 2.32 or better.
53 The OPIE library sources are available at http://www.inner.net/pub/opie/
54 You can also find OPIE and IPV6-capable servers there.
58 Building in IPv6 support *requires* an up-to-date operating system.
59 Recent Linux versions with glibc 2.1.1 or newer, FreeBSD, Solaris should
62 If you have trouble with intl or gettext functions, try using the
63 configure option '--with-included-gettext'.
70 Installing fetchmail is easy. From within this directory, type:
72 ./configure --with-ssl
74 if you have OpenSSL (and its developer packages, if separate) installed
75 on your system, or if you don't or do not need SSL/TLS support:
79 The autoconfiguration script will spend a bit of time figuring out the
80 specifics of your system. If you want to specify a particular compiler
81 (e.g. you have gcc but want to compile with cc), set the environment
82 variable CC before you run configure.
84 The configure script accepts certain standard configuration options.
85 These include --prefix, --exec-prefix, --bindir, --infodir, --mandir,
86 and --srcdir. Do 'configure --help' for more.
88 Support for CompuServe's RPA authentication method (rather similar to
89 APOP) is available but also not included in the standard build. You
90 can compile it in with 'configure --enable-RPA'.
92 Support for Microsoft's NTLM authentication method is also available
93 but not included in the standard build either. You can compile it in
94 with 'configure --enable-NTLM'.
96 Support for authentication using RFC1731 GSSAPI is available
97 but also not included by default. You can compile it in with
98 'configure --with-gssapi', which looks for GSSAPI support in standard
99 locations (/usr, /usr/local). If you set --with-GSSAPI=DIR
100 you can direct the build to look for GSSAPI support under DIR.
102 Hooks for the OpenSSL library (see http://www.openssl.org/) are
103 included in the distribution. To enable these, configure with
104 --with-ssl; they are not included in the standard build. Fetchmail's
105 configure script will probe some default locations for the
106 include/openssl/ssl.h file. If this doesn't work (i. e. configure prints
107 "SSL support enabled, but OpenSSL not found" and aborts), you need to
108 give the explicit prefix of your OpenSSL installation (specify the
109 directory that contains OpenSSL's "include" subdirectory), for instance:
110 "--with-ssl=/example/path" would assume that you have an
111 /example/path/include/openssl/ssl.h header file.
115 Specifying --with-kerberos=DIR or --with-kerberos5=DIR will tell the
116 fetchmail build process to look in DIR for Kerberos support.
117 Configure normally looks in /usr/kerberos and /usr/athena; if you
118 specify this option with an argument it will look in DIR first.
120 Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be good standardization of where
121 Kerberos lives. If your configuration doesn't match one of the four
122 that fetchmail's configure.in knows about, you may find you have to
123 hand-hack the Makefile a bit.
125 You may also want to hand-hack the Makefile if you're writing a custom
126 or bleeding-edge resolver library. In that case you will probably
127 want to add -lresolv or whatever to the definition of LOADLIBS.
129 It is also possible to explicitly condition out the support for
130 POP3, IMAP, and ETRN (with configure arguments of --disable-POP3,
131 --disable-IMAP, and --disable-ETRN respectively).
140 This should compile fetchmail for your system. If fetchmail fails to build
141 properly, see the FAQ section B on build-time problems.
146 Lastly, become root and run
150 This will install fetchmail. By default, fetchmail will be installed
151 in /usr/local/bin, with the man page in /usr/local/man/man1. You can
152 use the configure options --bindir and --mandir to change these.
154 If you are tight on disk space, you can run instead
158 NOTE: If you are using an MTA other than sendmail (such as qmail,
159 exim, or smail), see the FAQ (section T) for discussion of any special
160 configuration steps that may be necessary.
163 5. SET UP A RUN CONTROL FILE
165 See the man page for a description of how to configure your individual
168 If you're upgrading from popclient, see question F4 in the FAQ file.
173 I strongly recommend that your first fetchmail run use the -v, -a and -k
174 options, in case there is something not quite right with your server,
175 your local delivery configuration or your port 25 listener. Also,
176 beware of aliases that direct your local mail back to the server host!
178 This software is known to work with the qpop/popper series of freeware
179 POP3 servers; also with the IMAP2bis and IMAP4 servers that are
180 distributed with Pine from the University of Washington; also with the
181 Cyrus IMAP server from CMU. This covers all the servers commonly
182 hosted on Linux and *BSD systems. It also works with the IMAP service
183 of Microsoft Exchange, despite the fact that Microsoft Exchange is
184 extremely broken (returns incorrect message lengths in LIST
187 See the FAQ, section S, for detailed advice on running with various
193 You should read the FAQ file question G3 before reporting a bug.
198 Once you've verified your configuration, you can start fetchmail to
199 run in background and forget about it. Enjoy!
202 END of text file INSTALL