3 fetchmail is a free, full-featured, robust, well-documented POP2, POP3, RPOP,
4 APOP, KPOP, 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 Here are fetchmail's main features. Those unique to fetchmail
17 (relative to fetchpop1.9, PopTart-0.9.3, get-mail, gwpop, pimp-1.0,
18 pop-perl5-1.2, popc, popmail-1.6 and upop) are marked with **.
22 ** Support for a `hunt list' of SMTP hosts
24 ** Support for ESMTP 8BITMIME and SIZE options.
26 ** Support for ESMTP ETRN command.
28 ** The stripcr option to explicitly control carriage-return
29 stripping before mail forwarding.
33 ** Support for secure use with ssh.
35 ** Mailserver passwords can be parsed out of your .netrc file.
37 ** When forwarding mail via SMTP, fetchmail respects the 571
38 "spam filter" response and discards any mail that triggers it.
40 ** Transaction and error logging may optionally be done via syslog.
42 ** (Linux only) Security option to permit fetchmail to poll a host
43 only when a point-to-point link to a particular IP address is up.
45 ** RPOP support (restored; had been removed in 1.8).
47 2.0 and earlier versions:
49 ** Support POP2, APOP, RPOP, IMAP2, IMAP2bis, IMAP3, IMAP4, IMAP4rev1.
51 ** Support for Kerberos user authentication (either MIT or Cygnus).
53 ** Host is auto-probed for a working server if no protocol is
54 specified for the connection. Thus you don't need to know
55 what servers are running on your mail host in advance; the
56 verbose option will tell you which one succeeds.
58 ** Delivery via via SMTP to the client machine's port 25. This
59 means the retrieved mail automatically goes to the system
60 default MDA as if it were normal sender-initiated SMTP mail.
62 ** Configurable timeout to detect if server connection is dropped.
64 ** Support for retrieving and forwarding from multi-drop mailboxes
65 that is guaranteed not to cause mail loops.
69 * Easy control via command line or free-format run control file.
71 * Daemon mode -- fetchmail can be run in background to poll
72 one or more hosts at a specified interval.
74 * From:, To:, Cc:, and Reply-To: headers are rewritten so that
75 usernames relative to the fetchmail host become fully-qualified
76 Internet addresses. This enables replies to work correctly.
77 (Would be unique to fetchmail if I hadn't added it to fetchpop.)
79 * Strict conformance to relevant RFCs and good debugging options.
80 You could use fetchmail to test and debug server implementatations.
82 * Message and header processing are 8-bit clean.
84 * Carefully written, comprehensive and up-to-date man page describing
85 not only modes of operation but also (**) how to diagnose the most
86 common kinds of problems and what to do about deficient servers
88 * Rugged, simple, and well-tested code -- the author relies on it
89 every day and it has never lost mail, not even in experimental
92 * Large user community -- fetchmail has a large user base (the
93 author's beta list includes well over two hundred people). This
94 means feedback is rapid, bugs get found and fixed rapidly.
96 The fetchmail code appears to be stable and free of bugs affecting
97 normal operation (that is, retrieving from POP3 or IMAP in single-drop
98 mode and forwarding via SMTP to sendmail). It will probably undergo
99 substantial change only if and when support for a new retrieval
100 protocol or authentication mode is added. See the distribution files
101 NEWS for detailed information on recent changes and NOTES for design
104 You can easily fetch the latest version of fetchmail via FTP from the
105 following FTP directory:
107 ftp://ftp.ccil.org/pub/esr/fetchmail
109 Or you can get it from Eric's home page:
111 http://www.ccil.org/~esr
113 Just chase the link to Eric's Freeware Collection. Besides fetchmail, it
114 includes a tasty selection of Web authoring tools, programmer's aids,
115 graphics libraries, compilers for bizarre languages, games, and
116 miscellaneous interesting hacks. Enjoy!