3 fetchmail is a full-featured, robust, well-documented POP2, POP3,
4 APOP, and IMAP batch mail retrieval/forwarding utility intended to be
5 used over on-demand TCP/IP links (such as SLIP or PPP connections).
6 It retrieves mail from remote mail servers and forwards it to your
7 local (client) machine's delivery system, so it can then be be read by
8 normal mail user agents such as elm(1) or Mail(1).
10 The fetchmail code was developed under Linux, but has also been
11 extensively tested under 4.4BSD, Solaris and NEXTSTEP. It should be
12 readily portable to other Unix variants (it uses GNU autoconf). It
13 has also been ported to QNX; to build under QNX, see the header
14 comments in the Makefile.
16 For those of you already familiar with previous versions, here are the
17 major new features since 2.0:
19 ** Support for secure use with ssh.
21 ** Mailserver passwords can be parsed out of your .netrc file.
23 ** When forwarding mail via SMTP, fetchmail respects the 571
24 "spam filter" response and discards any mail that triggers it.
26 ** Transaction and error logging may optionally be done via syslog.
28 ** (Linux only) Security option to permit fetchmail to poll a host
29 only when a point-to-point link to a particular IP address is up.
31 ** RPOP support is back.
33 There have also been numerous improvements in multidrop mailbox handling.
34 Under many circumstances fetchmail can now determine a mail message's
35 envelope address from its headers, making multidrop forwarding more reliable.
37 Here are fetchmail's main features. Those unique to fetchmail
38 (relative to fetchpop1.9, PopTart-0.9.3, get-mail, gwpop, pimp-1.0,
39 pop-perl5-1.2, popc, popmail-1.6 and upop) are marked with **.
41 * **POP2, POP3, **APOP, **RPOP, **IMAP2bis, **IMAP4 support.
43 ** Support for Kerberos user authentication (either MIT or Cygnus).
45 ** Host is auto-probed for a working server if no protocol is
46 specified for the connection. Thus you don't need to know
47 what servers are running on your mail host in advance; the
48 verbose option will tell you which one succeeds.
50 ** Delivery via via SMTP to the client machine's port 25. This
51 means the retrieved mail automatically goes to the system
52 default MDA as if it were normal sender-initiated SMTP mail.
54 ** Configurable timeout to detect if server connection is dropped.
56 ** Support for retrieving and forwarding from multi-drop mailboxes
57 that is guaranteed not to cause mail loops.
59 * Easy control via command line or free-format run control file.
61 * Daemon mode -- fetchmail can be run in background to poll
62 one or more hosts at a specified interval.
64 * From:, To:, Cc:, and Reply-To: headers are rewritten so that
65 usernames relative to the fetchmail host become fully-qualified
66 Internet addresses. This enables replies to work correctly.
67 (Would be unique to fetchmail if I hadn't added it to fetchpop.)
69 * Strict conformance to relevant RFCs and good debugging options.
70 You could use fetchmail to test and debug server implementatations.
72 * Carefully written, comprehensive and up-to-date man page describing
73 not only modes of operation but also (**) how to diagnose the most
74 common kinds of problems and what to do about deficient servers
76 * Rugged, simple, and well-tested code -- the author relies on it
77 every day and it has never lost mail, not even in experimental
80 * Large user community -- fetchmail has a large user base (the
81 author's beta list includes about two hundred people). This
82 means feedback is rapid, bugs get found and fixed rapidly.
84 The fetchmail code appears to be stable and free of bugs affecting
85 normal operation (that is, retrieving from POP3 or IMAP in single-drop
86 mode and forwarding via SMTP to sendmail). It will probably undergo
87 substantial change only if and when support for a new retrieval
88 protocol or authentication mode is added. See the distribution files
89 NEWS for detailed information on recent changes and NOTES for design
92 You can easily fetch the latest version of fetchmail via FTP from the
93 following FTP directory:
95 ftp://ftp.ccil.org/pub/esr/fetchmail
97 Or you can get it from Eric's home page:
99 http://www.ccil.org/~esr
101 Just chase the link to Eric's Freeware Collection. Besides fetchmail, it
102 includes a tasty selection of Web authoring tools, programmer's aids,
103 graphics libraries, compilers for bizarre languages, games, and
104 miscellaneous interesting hacks. Enjoy!