1 INSTALL Instructions for fetchmail
3 If you have installed binaries (e.g. from an RPM) you can skip to step 5.
5 If you are a Linux system packager, be aware that the build process generates
6 an RPM spec file at fetchmail.spec, and you can "make rpm" to generate an
9 The Frequently Asked Questions list, included as the file FAQ in this
10 distributions, answers the most common questions about configuring and
13 1. USEFUL THINGS TO INSTALL FIRST
15 If you want support for RFC1938-compliant one-time passwords, you'll
16 need to install Craig Metz's OPIE libraries first and *make sure
17 they're on the normal library path* where configure will find them. Then
18 configure with --enable-OPIE, and fetchmail build process will detect
19 them and compile appropriately.
21 Note: there is no point in doing this unless your server is
22 OTP-enabled. To test this, telnet to the server port and give it
23 a valid USER id. If the OK response includes the string "otp-",
24 you should install OPIE. You need version 2.32 or better.
26 The OPIE library sources are available at http://www.inner.net/pub/opie/
27 You can also find OPIE and IPV6-capable servers there.
29 Building in IPv6 support *requires* glibc 2.1.1 (or newer) or
30 that Craig Metz's inet6-apps kit be installed.
31 The IPsec patches *requires* inet6-apps kit.;
32 the IPsec patches require that the kit be built with network
33 security API support enabled. The kit can be gotten from
34 ftp.ipv6.inner.net:/pub/ipv6 (via IPv6) or ftp.inner.net
39 Installing fetchmail is easy. From within this directory, type:
43 The autoconfiguration script will spend a bit of time figuring out the
44 specifics of your system. If you want to specify a particular compiler
45 (e.g. you have gcc but want to compile with cc), set the environment
46 variable CC before you run configure.
48 The configure script accepts certain standard configuration options.
49 These include --prefix, --exec-prefix, --bindir, --infodir, --mandir,
50 and --srcdir. Do `configure --help' for more.
52 POP2 support is no longer compiled in by default, as POP2 is way obsolete
53 and there don't seem to be any live servers for it anymore. You can
54 configure it back in if you want with `configure --enable-POP2', but
55 leaving it out cuts the executable's size slightly.
57 Support for CompuServe's RPA authentication method (rather similar to
58 APOP) is available but also not included in the standard build. You
59 can compile it in with `configure --enable-RPA'.
61 Support for Microsoft's NTLM authentication method is also available
62 but also not included in the standard build. You can compile it in
63 with `configure --enable-NTLM'.
65 Support for authentication using RFC1731 GSSAPI is available
66 but also not included by default. You can compile it in with
67 `configure --with-gssapi', which looks for GSSAPI support in standard
68 locations (/usr, /usr/local). If you set --with-GSSAPI=DIR
69 you can direct the build to look for GSSAPI support under DIR.
71 Hooks for the OpenSSL library (see http://www.openssl.org/) are
72 included in the distribution. To enable these, configure with
73 --with-ssl; they are not included in the standard build.
75 If you want to build for debugging,
77 CFLAGS=-g LDFLAGS=" " ./configure
81 To specify a fallback MUA in case local port 25 doesn't respond, do one of:
83 configure --enable-fallback=procmail
84 configure --enable-fallback=sendmail
86 A disadvantage of using procmail is that local alias expansion
87 according to /etc/aliases won't get done if we fall back to it.
89 Advanced configuration:
91 Specifying --with-kerberos=DIR or --with-kerberos5=DIR will tell the
92 fetchmail build process to look in DIR for Kerberos support.
93 Configure normally looks in /usr/kerberos and /usr/athena; if you
94 specify this option with an argument it will look in DIR first.
96 Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be good standardization of where
97 Kerberos lives. If your configuration doesn't match one of the four
98 that fetchmail's configure.in knows about, you may find you have to
99 hand-hack the Makefile a bit.
101 You may also want to hand-hack the Makefile if you're writing a custom
102 or bleeding-edge resolver library. In that case you will probably
103 want to add -lresolv or whatever to the definition of LOADLIBS.
105 It is also possible to explicitly condition out the support for
106 POP3, IMAP, and ETRN (with configure arguments of --disable-POP3,
107 --disable-IMAP, and --disable-ETRN respectively). However, none
108 of these wins back more that 3 to 4K on an Intel box.
110 If you're running QNX, edit the distributed Makefile directly. The
111 QNX values for various macros are there but commented out; all you
112 have to do is uncomment them.
116 You may find you need flex at version 2.5.3 or greater to build
117 fetchmail. The stock lex distributed with some versions of Linux does
118 not work -- it yields a parser which core-dumps on syntax errors. You
119 can get flex at the GNU ftp site, ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu.
125 This should compile fetchmail for your system. If fetchmail fails to build
126 properly, see the FAQ section B on build-time problems. Note: parallelized
127 make (e.g. make -j 4) fails due to some weirdness in the yacc productions.
131 Lastly, become root and run
135 This will install fetchmail. By default, fetchmail will be installed
136 in /usr/local/bin, with the man page in /usr/local/man/man1. You can
137 use the configure options --bindir and --mandir to change these.
139 NOTE: If you are using an MTA other than sendmail (such as qmail,
140 exim, or smail), see the FAQ (section T) for discussion of any special
141 configuration steps that may be necessary.
143 5. SET UP A RUN CONTROL FILE
145 See the man page and the file sample.rcfile for a description of how to
146 configure your individual preferences.
148 If you're upgrading from popclient, see question F4 in the FAQ file.
152 I strongly recommend that your first fetchmail run use the -v, -a and -k
153 options, in case there is something not quite right with your server,
154 your local delivery configuration or your port 25 listener. Also,
155 beware of aliases that direct your local mail back to the server host!
157 This software is known to work with the qpop/popper series of freeware
158 POP3 servers; also with the IMAP2bis and IMAP4 servers that are
159 distributed with Pine from the University of Washington; also with the
160 Cyrus IMAP server from CMU. This covers all the servers commonly
161 hosted on Linux and *BSD systems. It also works with the IMAP service
162 of Microsoft Exchange, despite the fact that Microsoft Exchange is
163 extremely broken (returns incorrect message lengths in LIST
166 See the FAQ, section S, for detailed advice on running with various
171 You should read the FAQ file question G3 before reporting a bug.
175 Once you've verified your configuration, you can start fetchmail to
176 run in background and forget about it. Enjoy!