1 INSTALL Instructions for fetchmail
2 ==================================
4 If you are installing from the subversion repository, see README.svn for
5 further instructions on how to set up the checked out repository.
7 If you have installed binaries (e.g. from a Linux RPM or DPKG, Solaris
8 package or FreeBSD port), you can skip to step 5.
10 The Frequently Asked Questions list, included as the file FAQ in this
11 distributions, answers the most common questions about configuring and
14 1. USEFUL THINGS TO INSTALL FIRST
18 If you want support for RFC1938-compliant one-time passwords, you'll
19 need to install Craig Metz's OPIE libraries first and *make sure
20 they're on the normal library path* where configure will find them. Then
21 configure with --enable-OPIE, and fetchmail build process will detect
22 them and compile appropriately.
24 Note: there is no point in doing this unless your server is
25 OTP-enabled. To test this, telnet to the server port and give it
26 a valid USER id. If the OK response includes the string "otp-",
27 you should install OPIE. You need version 2.32 or better.
29 The OPIE library sources are available at http://www.inner.net/pub/opie/
30 You can also find OPIE and IPV6-capable servers there.
34 If you are installing OpenSSL yourself, it is recommended that you build
35 shared OpenSSL libraries, it works better and updating OpenSSL does not
36 then require you to reinstall all applications that use OpenSSL.
38 Try after unpacking OpenSSL:
40 ./config shared && make && make test && make install
42 1.3 gettext (internationalization)
44 Internationalization of fetchmail requires GNU gettext (libintl and
45 libiconv). Fetchmail, as of version 6.3.0, no longer ships its own
46 libintl copy. Note that some systems include gettext in their libc.
50 Building in IPv6 support *requires* an up-to-date operating system.
51 Recent Linux versions with glibc 2.1.1 or newer, FreeBSD, Solaris should
54 If you have trouble with intl or gettext functions, try using the
55 configure option '--with-included-gettext'.
62 Installing fetchmail is easy. From within this directory, type:
64 ./configure --with-ssl
66 if you have OpenSSL (and its developer packages, if separate) installed
67 on your system, or if you don't or do not need SSL/TLS support:
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. Do '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. To enable these, configure with
101 --with-ssl; they are not included in the standard build. Fetchmail's
102 configure script will probe some default locations for the
103 include/openssl/ssl.h file. If this doesn't work (i. e. configure prints
104 "SSL support enabled, but OpenSSL not found" and aborts), you need to
105 give the explicit prefix of your OpenSSL installation (specify the
106 directory that contains OpenSSL's "include" subdirectory), for instance:
107 "--with-ssl=/example/path" would assume that you have an
108 /example/path/include/openssl/ssl.h header file.
112 Specifying --with-kerberos=DIR or --with-kerberos5=DIR will tell the
113 fetchmail build process to look in DIR for Kerberos support.
114 Configure normally looks in /usr/kerberos and /usr/athena; if you
115 specify this option with an argument it will look in DIR first.
117 Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be good standardization of where
118 Kerberos lives. If your configuration doesn't match one of the four
119 that fetchmail's configure.in knows about, you may find you have to
120 hand-hack the Makefile a bit.
122 You may also want to hand-hack the Makefile if you're writing a custom
123 or bleeding-edge resolver library. In that case you will probably
124 want to add -lresolv or whatever to the definition of LOADLIBS.
126 It is also possible to explicitly condition out the support for
127 POP3, IMAP, and ETRN (with configure arguments of --disable-POP3,
128 --disable-IMAP, and --disable-ETRN respectively).
137 This should compile fetchmail for your system. If fetchmail fails to build
138 properly, see the FAQ section B on build-time problems.
143 Lastly, become root and run
147 This will install fetchmail. By default, fetchmail will be installed
148 in /usr/local/bin, with the man page in /usr/local/man/man1. You can
149 use the configure options --bindir and --mandir to change these.
151 If you are tight on disk space, you can run instead
155 NOTE: If you are using an MTA other than sendmail (such as qmail,
156 exim, or smail), see the FAQ (section T) for discussion of any special
157 configuration steps that may be necessary.
160 5. SET UP A RUN CONTROL FILE
162 See the man page for a description of how to configure your individual
165 If you're upgrading from popclient, see question F4 in the FAQ file.
170 I strongly recommend that your first fetchmail run use the -v, -a and -k
171 options, in case there is something not quite right with your server,
172 your local delivery configuration or your port 25 listener. Also,
173 beware of aliases that direct your local mail back to the server host!
175 This software is known to work with the qpop/popper series of freeware
176 POP3 servers; also with the IMAP2bis and IMAP4 servers that are
177 distributed with Pine from the University of Washington; also with the
178 Cyrus IMAP server from CMU. This covers all the servers commonly
179 hosted on Linux and *BSD systems. It also works with the IMAP service
180 of Microsoft Exchange, despite the fact that Microsoft Exchange is
181 extremely broken (returns incorrect message lengths in LIST
184 See the FAQ, section S, for detailed advice on running with various
190 You should read the FAQ file question G3 before reporting a bug.
195 Once you've verified your configuration, you can start fetchmail to
196 run in background and forget about it. Enjoy!
199 END of text file INSTALL