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13 <td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 2000/10/08 14:34:19 $
16 <H1>Frequently Asked Questions About Fetchmail</H1>
18 Before reporting any bug, please read <a href="#G3">G3</a> for advice
19 on how to include diagnostic information that will get your bug fixed
20 as quickly as possible. <p>
22 If you have a question or answer you think ought to be added to this FAQ list,
23 mail it to fetchmail's maintainer, Eric S. Raymond, at
24 <A HREF="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com">esr@snark.thyrsus.com</A>.<p>
26 <h1>General questions:</h1>
28 <a href="#G1">G1. What is fetchmail and why should I bother?</a><br>
29 <a href="#G2">G2. Where do I find the latest FAQ and fetchmail sources?</a><br>
30 <a href="#G3">G3. I think I've found a bug. Will you fix it?</a><br>
31 <a href="#G4">G4. I have this idea for a neat feature. Will you add it?</a><br>
32 <a href="#G5">G5. Is there a mailing list for exchanging tips?</a><br>
33 <a href="#G6">G6. So, what's this I hear about a fetchmail paper?</a><br>
34 <a href="#G7">G7. What is the best server to use with fetchmail?</a><br>
35 <a href="#G8">G8. What is the best mail program to use with fetchmail?</a><br>
36 <a href="#G9">G9. How can I avoid sending my password en clair?</a><br>
37 <a href="#G10">G10. Is any special configuration needed to use a dynamic
39 <a href="#G11">G11. Is any special configuration needed to use firewalls?</a><br>
40 <a href="#G12">G12. Is any special configuration needed to <em>send</em> mail?</a><br>
41 <a href="#G13">G13. Is fetchmail Y2K-compliant?</a><br>
42 <a href="#G14">G14. Is there a way in fetchmail to support disconnected IMAP mode?</a><br>
43 <a href="#G15">G15. How will fetchmail perform under heavy loads?</a><br>
45 <h1>Build-time problems:</h1>
47 <a href="#B1">B1. Lex bombs out while building the fetchmail lexer.</a><br>
48 <a href="#B2">B2. I get link failures when I try to build fetchmail.</a><br>
50 <h1>Fetchmail configuration file grammar questions:</h1>
52 <a href="#F1">F1. Why does my old .fetchmailrc no longer work?</a><br>
53 <a href="#F2">F2. The .fetchmailrc parser won't accept my all-numeric user name.</a><br>
54 <a href="#F3">F3. The .fetchmailrc parser won't accept my host or username beginning with `no'.</a><br>
55 <a href="#F4">F4. I'm getting a `parse error' message I don't understand.</a><br>
57 <h1>Configuration questions:</h1>
59 <a href="#C1">C1. Why do I need a .fetchmailrc when running as root on my own machine?</a><br>
60 <a href="#C2">C2. How can I arrange for a fetchmail daemon to get killed when I log out?</a><br>
61 <a href="#C3">C3. How do I know what interface and address to use with --interface?</a><br>
62 <a href="#C4">C4. How can I set up support for sendmail's anti-spam features?</a><br>
63 <a href="#C5">C5. How can I poll some of my mailboxes more/less often than others?</a><br>
64 <a href="#C6">C6. Fetchmail works OK started up manually, but not from an init script.</a><br>
65 <a href="#C7">C7. How can I forward mail to another host?.</a><br>
67 <h1>How to make fetchmail play nice with various MTAs:</h1>
69 <a href="#T1">T1. How can I use fetchmail with sendmail?</a><br>
70 <a href="#T2">T2. How can I use fetchmail with qmail?</a><br>
71 <a href="#T3">T3. How can I use fetchmail with exim?</a><br>
72 <a href="#T4">T4. How can I use fetchmail with smail?</a><br>
73 <a href="#T5">T5. How can I use fetchmail with SCO's MMDF?</a><br>
74 <a href="#T6">T6. How can I use fetchmail with Lotus Notes?</a><br>
76 <h1>How to make fetchmail work with various servers:</h1>
78 <a href="#S1">S1. How can I use fetchmail with qpopper?</a><br>
79 <a href="#S2">S2. How can I use fetchmail with Microsoft Exchange?</a><br>
80 <a href="#S3">S3. How can I use fetchmail with Compuserve RPA?</a><br>
81 <a href="#S4">S4. How can I use fetchmail with Demon Internet's SDPS?</a><br>
82 <a href="#S5">S5. How can I use fetchmail with usa.net's servers?</a><br>
83 <a href="#S6">S6. How can I use fetchmail with HP OpenMail?</a><br>
84 <a href="#S7">S7. How can I use fetchmail with geocities POP3 servers?</a><br>
85 <a href="#S8">S8. How can I use fetchmail with Hotmail?</a><br>
86 <a href="#S9">S9. How can I use fetchmail with MSN?</a><br>
87 <a href="#S10">S10. How can I use fetchmail with SpryNet?</a><br>
88 <a href="#S11">S11. How can I use fetchmail with FTGate?</a><br>
89 <a href="#S12">S12. How can I use fetchmail with MailMax?</a><br>
90 <a href="#S13">S13. How can I use fetchmail with Novell GroupWise?</a><br>
91 <a href="#S14">S14. How can I use fetchmail with InterChange?</a><br>
93 <h1>How to set up well-known security and authentication methods:</h1>
95 <a href="#K1">K1. How can I use fetchmail with SOCKS?</a><br>
96 <a href="#K2">K2. How can I use fetchmail with IPv6 and IPsec?</a><br>
97 <a href="#K3">K3. How can I get fetchmail to work with ssh?</a><br>
98 <a href="#K4">K4. What do I have to do to use the IMAP-GSS protocol?</a><br>
99 <a href="#K5">K5. How can I use fetchmail with SSL?</a><br>
101 <h1>Runtime fatal errors:</h1>
103 <a href="#R1">R1. Fetchmail isn't working, and -v shows `SMTP connect failed' messages.</a><br>
104 <a href="#R2">R2. When I try to configure an MDA, fetchmail doesn't work.</a><br>
105 <a href="#R3">R3. Fetchmail dumps core when given an invalid rc file.</a><br>
106 <a href="#R4">R4. Fetchmail dumps core in -V mode, but operates normally otherwise.</a><br>
107 <a href="#R5">R5. Running fetchmail in daemon mode doesn't work.</a><br>
108 <a href="#R6">R6. Fetchmail hangs when used with pppd.</a><br>
109 <a href="#R7">R7. Fetchmail randomly dies with socket errors.</a><br>
110 <a href="#R8">R8. Fetchmail running as root stopped working after an OS upgrade</a><br>
111 <a href="#R9">R9. Fetchmail is timing out after fetching certain
112 messages but before deleting them</a><br>
113 <a href="#R10">R10. Fetchmail is timing out during message fetches</a></br>
115 <h1>Disappearing mail</h1>
117 <a href="#D1">D1. I think I've set up fetchmail correctly, but I'm not getting any mail.</a><br>
118 <a href="#D2">D2. All my mail seems to disappear after a dropped connection.</a><br>
119 <a href="#D3">D3. Mail that was being fetched when I interrupted my fetchmail seems to have been vanished.</a><br>
121 <h1>Multidrop-mode problems:</h1>
123 <a href="#M1">M1. I've declared local names, but all my multidrop mail is going to root anyway.</a><br>
124 <a href="#M2">M2. I can't seem to get fetchmail to route to a local domain properly.</a><br>
125 <a href="#M3">M3. I tried to run a mailing list using multidrop, and I have a mail loop!</a><br>
126 <a href="#M4">M4. My multidrop fetchmail seems to be having DNS problems.</a><br>
127 <a href="#M5">M5. I'm seeing long DNS delays before each message is processed.</a><br>
128 <a href="#M6">M6. How do I get multidrop mode to work with majordomo?</a><br>
129 <a href="#M7">M7. Multidrop mode isn't parsing envelope addresses from
130 my Received headers as it should.</a><br>
131 <a href="#M8">M8. Users are getting multiple copies of messages.</a><br>
133 <h1>Mangled mail:</h1>
135 <a href="#X1">X1. Spurious blank lines are appearing in the headers of fetched mail.</a><br>
136 <a href="#X2">X2. My mail client can't see a Subject line.</a><br>
137 <a href="#X3">X3. Messages containing "From" at start of line are being split.</a><br>
138 <a href="#X4">X4. My mail is being mangled in a new and different way.</a><br>
139 <a href="#X5">X5. Using POP3, retrievals seems to be fetching too much!</a><br>
140 <a href="#X6">X6. My mail attachments are being dropped or mangled.</a><br>
142 <h1>Other problems:</h1>
144 <a href="#O1">O1. The --logfile option doesn't work if the logfile doesn't exist.</a><br>
145 <a href="#O2">O2. Every time I get a POP or IMAP message the header is
146 dumped to all my terminal sessions.</a><br>
147 <a href="#O3">O3. Does fetchmail reread its rc file every poll cycle?</a><br>
148 <a href="#O4">O4. Why do deleted messages show up again when I take
149 a line hit while downloading?</a><br>
150 <a href="#O5">O5. Why is fetched mail being logged with my name, not the real From address?</a><br>
151 <a href="#O6">O6. I'm seeing long sendmail delays or hangs near the start of each poll cycle.</a><br>
152 <a href="#O7">O7. Why doesn't fetchmail deliver mail in date-sorted order?</a><br>
153 <a href="#O8">O8. I'm using pppd. Why isn't my monitor option working?</a><br>
154 <a href="#O9">O9. Why does fetchmail keep retrieving the same messages
155 over and over?</a><br>
159 <h2><a name="G1">G1. What is fetchmail and why should I bother?</a></h2>
161 Fetchmail is a one-stop solution to the remote mail retrieval problem
162 for Unix machines, quite useful to anyone with an intermittent PPP or
163 SLIP connection to a remote mailserver. It can collect mail using any
164 variant of POP or IMAP and forwards via port 25 to the local SMTP
165 listener, enabling all the normal forwarding/filtering/aliasing
166 mechanisms that would apply to local mail or mail arriving via a
167 full-time TCP/IP connection.<p>
169 Fetchmail is not a toy or a coder's learning exercise, but an
170 industrial-strength tool capable of transparently handling every
171 retrieval demand from those of a simple single-user ISP connection up
172 to mail retrieval and rerouting for an entire client domain.
173 Fetchmail is easy to configure, unobtrusive in operation, powerful,
174 feature-rich, and well documented. <P>
176 Fetchmail is <a href="http://www.opensource.org">Open Source</a>
177 software. The openness of the sources is the strongest assurance of
178 quality you can have. Extensive peer review by a large,
179 multi-platform user community has shown that fetchmail is as near
180 bulletproof as the underlying protocols permit.<p>
182 Fetchmail is licensed under the <a
183 href="http://gnu.org//copyleft/gpl.html">GNU General Public
186 If you found this FAQ in the distribution, see the README for fetchmail's
187 full feature list.<p>
190 <h2><a name="G2">G2. Where do I find the latest FAQ and fetchmail
193 The latest HTML FAQ is available alongside the latest fetchmail
194 sources at the fetchmail home page:
195 <a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail">
196 http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail</a>. You can also usually find
198 href="http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/mail/pop/!INDEX.html">POP
199 mail tools directory on Sunsite</a>.<p>
201 A text dump of this FAQ is included in the fetchmail
202 distribution. Because it freezes at distribution release time, it may
203 not be completely current.<p>
206 <h2><a name="G3">G3. I think I've found a bug. Will you fix it?</a></h2>
208 Yes I will, provided you include enough diagnostic information for me
209 to go on. Send bugs to <a
210 href="mailto:fetchmail-friends@ccil.org">fetchmail-friends</a>. When reporting
211 bugs, please include the following:
214 <li>Your operating system.
215 <li>Your compiler version, if you built from source; otherwise, the
216 name and origin ogf the RPM or other binary package you installed.
217 <li>A copy of your POP or IMAP server's greeting line.
218 <li>The name and version of the SMTP listener or MDA you are forwarding to.
219 <li>Any command-line options you used.
220 <li>The output of fetchmail -V called with whatever other
221 command-line options you used.
224 If you have FTP access to your remote mail account, and you have any
225 suspicion that the bug was triggered by a particular message, please
226 include a copy of the message that triggered the bug.<p>
228 Often, the first thing I will do when you report a bug is tell you to
229 upgrade to the newest version of fetchmail, and then see if the
230 problem reproduces. So you'll probably save us both time if you
231 upgrade and test with the latest version <em>before</em> sending in a
234 Another useful thing you can do, if you're using POP3, is to test for
235 IMAP4 support on your mailserver using the autoprobe function of
236 fetchmailconf. If you have IMAP4, and fetchmailconf doesn't tell you
237 it's broken, switch immediately. POP3 is a weak, poorly-designed
238 protocol with chronic problems, and the later versions after RFC1725
239 actually get worse rather than better. Changing over to IMAP4 may well
240 make your problem go away -- and if your ISP doesn't have IMAP4
241 support, bug them to supply it.<p>
243 It is helpful if you include your .fetchmailrc file, but not necessary
244 unless your symptom seems to involve an error in configuration
245 parsing. If you do send in your .fetchmailrc, mask the passwords
248 If fetchmail seems to run and fetch mail, but the headers look mangled
249 (that is, headers are missing or blank lines are inserted in the
250 headers) then read the FAQ items in section <a href="#X1">X</a>
251 before submitting a bug report. Pay special attention to the item on
252 <a href="#generic_mangling">diagnosing mail mangling</a>. There are
253 lots of ways for other programs in the mail chain to screw up that
254 look like fetchmail's fault, but you may be able to fix these by
255 tweaking your configuration.<P>
257 A transcript of the failed session with -v -v (yes, that's
258 <em>two</em> -v options, enabling debug mode) will almost always be useful.
259 It is very important that the transcript include your POP/IMAP server's
260 greeting line, so I can identify it in case of server problems. This
261 transcript will not reveal your passwords, which are specially masked
262 out precisely so the transcript can be passed around.<P>
264 If the bug involves a core dump or hang, a gdb stack trace is good to have.
265 (Bear in mind that you can attach gdb to a running but hung process by
266 giving the process ID as a second argument.) You will need to
270 CFLAGS=-g LDFLAGS=" " ./configure
273 and then rebuild in order to generate a version that can be gdb-traced.<p>
275 Best of all is a mail file which, when fetched, will reproduce the
276 bug under the latest (current) version.<p>
278 Any bug I can reproduce will usually get fixed very quickly, often
279 within 48 hours. Bugs I can't reproduce are a crapshoot. If the
280 solution isn't obvious when I first look, it may evade me for a long
281 time (or to put it another way, fetchmail is well enough tested that the
282 easy bugs have long since been found). So if you want your bug fixed
283 rapidly, it is not just sufficient but nearly <em>necessary</em> that
284 you give me a way to reproduce it.<p>
287 <h2><a name="G4">G4. I have this idea for a neat feature. Will you add it?</a></h2>
289 Probably not. Most of the feature suggestions I get are for ways to
290 set various kinds of administrative policy or add more spam filtering
291 (the most common one, which I used to get about four million times a week
292 and got <em>really</em> tired of, is for tin-like kill files).<p>
294 You can do spam filtering better with procmail or maildrop on the
295 server side and (if you're the server sysadmin) sendmail.cf domain
296 exclusions. You can do other policy things better with the
297 <CODE>mda</CODE> option and script wrappers around fetchmail. If
298 it's a prime-time-vs.-non-prime-time issue, ask yourself whether a
299 wrapper script called from crontab would do the job.<p>
301 I'm not going to do these; fetchmail's job is transport, not policy, and I
302 refuse to change it from doing one thing well to attempting many things badly.
303 One of my objectives is to keep fetchmail simple so it stays reliable.<p>
305 For reasons fetchmail doesn't have other commonly-requested features
306 (such as password encryption, or multiple concurrent polls from the
307 same instance of fetchmail) see the <a
308 href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail/design-notes.html">design notes</a>.<p>
310 Fetchmail is a mature project, no longer in constant active
311 development. It is no longer my top project, and I am going to be
312 quite reluctant to add features that might either jeopardize its
313 stability or involve me in large amounts of coding.<p>
315 All that said, if you have a feature idea that really is about a transport
316 problem that can't be handled anywhere but fetchmail, lay it on me. I'm
317 very accommodating about good ideas.<p>
320 <h2><a name="G5">G5. Is there a mailing list for exchanging tips?</a></h2>
322 There is a fetchmail-friends list for people who want to discuss fixes
323 and improvements in fetchmail and help co-develop it. It's at <a
324 href="mailto:fetchmail-friends@thyrsus.com">fetchmail-friends@thyrsus.com</a>.
325 There is also an announcements-only list, <em>fetchmail-announce@thyrsus.com</em>.<P>
327 Both lists are SmartList reflectors; sign up in the usual way with a
328 message containing the word "subscribe" in the subject line sent to
329 <a href="mailto:fetchmail-friends-request@thyrsus.com?subject=subscribe">
330 fetchmail-friends-request@thyrsus.com</a> or
331 <a href="mailto:fetchmail-announce-request@thyrsus.com?subject=subscribe">
332 fetchmail-announce-request@thyrsus.com</a>. (Similarly, "unsubscribe"
333 in the Subject line unsubscribes you, and "help" returns general list help) <p>
336 <h2><a name="G6">G6. So, what's this I hear about a fetchmail paper?</a></h2>
338 The fetchmail development was also a sociological experiment, an
339 extended test to see if my theory about the critical features of the
340 Linux development model is correct.<p>
342 The experiment was a success. I wrote a paper about it titled <a
343 href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral.html">The
344 Cathedral and the Bazaar</a> which was first presented at Linux
345 Kongress '97 in Bavaria and very well received there. It was also
346 given at Atlanta Linux Expo, Linux Pro '97 in Warsaw, and the first
347 Perl Conference, at UniForum '98, and was the basis of an invited
348 presentation at Usenix '98. The folks at Netscape tell me it helped
350 href="http://www.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease558.html"> give
351 away the source for Netscape Communicator</a>.<p>
353 If you're reading a non-HTML dump of this FAQ, you can find the paper
354 on the Web with a search for that title.<p>
357 <h2><a name="G7">G7. What is the best server to use with fetchmail?</a></h2>
359 The short answer: IMAP4rev1 running over Unix.<P>
361 Here's a longer answer: <P>
363 Fetchmail will work with any POP, IMAP, or ESMTP/ETRN server that
364 conforms to the relevant RFCs (and even some outright broken ones like
365 <a href="#S2">Microsoft Exchange</a> and <a href="#S12">Novell
366 GroupWise</a>). This doesn't mean it works equally well with all,
367 however. POP2 servers, and POP3 servers without LAST, limit
368 fetchmail's capabilities in various ways described on the manual
371 Most modern Unixes (and effectively all Linux/*BSD systems) come with
372 POP3 support preconfigured (but beware of the horribly broken POP3
373 server mentioned in <a href="#D2">D2</a>). An increasing minority
374 also feature IMAP (you can detect IMAP support by running fetchmail in
375 AUTO mode, or by using the `Probe for supported protocols' function in
376 the fetchmailconf utility).<P>
378 If you have the option, we recommend using or installing an IMAP4rev1
379 server; it has the best facilities for tracking message `seen' states.
380 It also recovers from interrupted connections more gracefully than
381 POP3, and enables some significant performance optimizations.<P>
383 Don't be fooled by NT/Exchange propaganda. M$ Exchange is just plain
384 broken (see item <a href="#S2">S2</a>) and NT cannot handle the
385 sustained load of a high-volume remote mail server. Even Microsoft
386 itself knows better than to try this; their own Hotmail service runs
387 over Solaris! For extended discussion, see John Kirch's excellent <a
388 href="http://unix-vs-nt.org/kirch/">white paper</a> on Unix
389 vs. NT performance.<P>
391 You can find sources for IMAP software at <a
392 href="http://www.imap.org">The IMAP Connection</a>; we like the
393 open-source <a href="ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/imap/">UW IMAP</a>
394 server, which is the reference implementation of IMAP. UW IMAP's
395 support for GSSAPI gives you a good way to authenticate without
396 sending a password en clair.<P>
398 Source for a high-quality supported implementation of POP is available
399 from the <a href="ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com/eudora/servers/unix/popper/">Eudora
400 FTP site</a>. Don't use 2.5, which has a rather restrictive license.
401 The 2.5.2 version appears to restore the open-source license of
402 previous versions.<P>
405 <h2><a name="G8">G8. What is the best mail program to use with fetchmail?</a></h2>
407 Fetchmail will work with all popular <a href="#T1">mail transport programs</a>.
408 It also doesn't care which user agent you use, and user agents are as a
409 rule almost equally indifferent to how mail is delivered into your system
410 mailbox. So any of the popular Unix mail agents --
411 <a href="http://www.myxa.com/old/elm.html">elm</a>,
412 <a href="http://www.washington.edu/pine/">pine</a>
413 <a href="http://www.cs.indiana.edu/docproject/mail/mh.html">mh</a>,
414 or <a href="http://www.mutt.org">mutt</a>
415 -- will work fine with fetchmail.<p>
417 All this having been said, I can't resist putting in a discreet plug
418 for <a href="http://www.mutt.org">mutt</a>. My own personal mail
419 setup is sendmail plus fetchmail plus mutt. Mutt's interface is only
420 a little different from that of its now-moribund ancestor elm, but its
421 excellent handling of MIME and PGP put it in a class by itself. You
422 won't need its built-in POP3 support, though; most of the mutt
423 developers will cheerfully admit that fetchmail's is better :-).<p>
426 <h2><a name="G9">G9. How can I avoid sending my password en clair?</a></h2>
428 Depending on what your mail server you are talking to, this ranges
429 from trivial to impossible. It may even be next to useless.<P>
431 Most people use fetchmail over phone wires, which are hard to tap.
432 Anybody with the skill and resources to do this could get into your
433 server mailbox with much less effort by subverting the server host.
434 So if your provider setup is modem wires going straight into a service
435 box, you probably don't need to worry.<P>
437 In general there is little point in trying to secure your fetchmail
438 transaction unless you trust the security of the server host you are
439 retrieving mail from. Your vulnerability is more likely to be an
440 insecure local network on the server end (e.g. to somebody with a TCP/IP
441 packet sniffer intercepting Ethernet traffic between the modem
442 concentrator you dial in to and the mailserver host).<P>
444 Having realized this, you need to ask whether password encryption
445 alone will really address your security exposure. If you think you
446 might be snooped between server and client, it's better to use
447 end-to-end encryption on your whole mail stream so none of it can be
448 read. One of the advantages of fetchmail over conventional SMTP-push
449 delivery is that you may be able to arrange this by using ssh(1); see
450 <a href="#K3">K3</a>.<P>
452 Note that ssh is not a complete privacy solution either, as your mail
453 could have been snooped in transit to your POP server from wherever it
454 originated. For best security, agree with your correspondents to use
455 a tool such as <a href="http://www.gnupg.org/">GPG</a> (Gnu Privacy
456 Guard) or PGP (Pretty Good Privacy).<P>
458 If ssh/sshd isn't available, or you find it too complicated for you to
459 set up, password encryption will at least keep a malicious cracker
460 from deleting your mail, and require him to either tap your connection
461 continuously or crack root on the server in order to read it.<P>
463 You can deduce what encryptions your mail server has available
464 by looking at the server greeting line (and, for IMAP, the
465 response to a CAPABILITY query). Do a <code>fetchmail -v</code>
466 to see these, or telnet direct to the server port (110 for POP3, 143 for
469 The facility you are most likely to have available is APOP. This is a
470 POP3 feature supported by many servers (fetchmailconf's autoprobe
471 facility will detect it and tell you if you have it). If you see
472 something in the greeting line that looks like an
473 angle-bracket-enclosed Internet address with a numeric left-hand part,
474 that's an APOP challenge (it will vary each time you log in). You can
475 register a secret on the host (using <code>popauth(8)</code> or some
476 program like it). Specify the secret as your password in your
477 .fetchmailrc; it will be used to encrypt the current challenge, and
478 the encrypted form will be sent back the the server for
481 Alternatively, you may have Kerberos available. This may require you
482 to set up some magic files in your home directory on your client
483 machine, but means you can omit specifying any password at all.<P>
485 Fetchmail supports two different Kerberos schemes. One is a
486 POP3 variant called KPOP; consult the documentation of your mail
487 server to see if you have it (one clue is the string "krb-IV" in the
488 greeting line on port 110). The other is an IMAP facility described
489 by RFC1731. You can tell if this one is present by looking for
490 AUTH=KERBEROS_V4 in the CAPABILITY response.<P>
492 If you are fetching mail from a CompuServe POP3 account, you can use
493 their RPA authentication (which works much like APOP). See <a
494 href="#S3">S3</a> for details. If you are fetching mail from
495 Microsoft Exchange, you will be able to use NTLM.<P>
497 Your POP3 server may have the RFC1938 OTP capability to use one-time
498 passwords (if it doesn't, you can get OTP patches for the 2.2 version
499 of the Qualcomm popper from <a href="#cmetz">Craig Metz</a>). To check
500 this, look for the string "otp-" in the greeting line. If you see it,
501 and your fetchmail was built with OPIE support compiled in (see the
502 distribution INSTALL file), fetchmail will detect it also. When using
503 OTP, you will specify a password but it will not be sent en clair.<P>
505 Sadly, there is at present (September 1999) no OTP or APOP-like
506 facility generally available on IMAP servers. However, there do exist
507 patches which will OTP-enable the University of Washington IMAP
508 daemon, version 4.2-FINAL. We have a report that the GSSAPI support
509 in fetchmail works with the GSSAPI support in the most recent version
510 of UW IMAP. Or you can use <a href="#K5">SSL</a> for complete
511 end-to-end encryption if you have an SSL-enabled mailserver.<P>
513 You can get both POP3 and IMAP OTP patches from <a name="cmetz">Craig
515 href="http://www.inner.net/pub/">http://www.inner.net/pub/</a>.<P>
516 These patches use a SASL authentication method named "X-OTP" because
517 there is not currently a standard way to do this; fetchmail also uses
518 this method, so the two will interoperate happily. They better,
519 because this is how Craig gets his mail ;-)<P>
522 <h2><a name="G10">G10. Is any special configuration needed to use a dynamic IP address?</a></h2>
524 Yes. In order to avoid giving indigestion to certain picky MTAs
525 (notably <a href="#T3">exim</a>), fetchmail always makes the RCPT TO
526 address it feeds the MTA a fully qualified one with a hostname part.
527 Normally it does this by appending @ and "localhost", but when you are
528 using Kerberos or ETRN mode it will append @ and your machine's
529 fully-qualified domain name (FQDN).<P>
531 Appending the FQDN can create problems when fetchmail is running in daemon
532 mode and outlasts the dynamic IP address assignment your client
533 machine had when it started up.<P>
535 Since the new IP address (looked up at RCPT TO interpretation time)
536 doesn't match the original, the most benign possible result is that
537 your MTA thinks it's seeing a relaying attempt and refuses. More
538 frequently, fetchmail will try to connect to a nonexistent host
539 address and time out. Worst case, you could up forwarding your mail
540 to the wrong machine!<P>
542 Use the <code>smtpaddress</code> option to force the appended hostname
543 to one with a (fixed) IP address of 127.0.0.1 in your
544 <code>/etc/hosts</code>. (The name `localhost' will usually work; or
545 you can use the IP address itself).<P>
547 Only one fetchmail option interacts directly with your IP address,
548 `<code>interface</code>'. This option can be used to set the gateway
549 device and restrict the IP address range fetchmail will use. Such a
550 restriction is sometimes useful for security reasons, especially on
551 multihomed sites. See <a href="#C3">C3</a>.<P>
553 I recommend against trying to set up the <code>interface</code> option
554 when initially developing your poll configuration -- it's never
555 necessary to do this just to get a link working. Get the link working
556 first, observe the actual address range you see on connections, and
557 add an <code>interface</code> option (if you need one) later.<P>
559 If you're using a dynamic-IP configuration, one other (non-fetchmail)
560 problem you may run into with outgoing mail is that some sites will
561 bounce your email because the hostname your giving them isn't real
562 (and doesn't match what they get doing a reverse DNS on your
563 dynamically-assigned IP address). If this happens, you need to hack
564 your sendmail so it masquerades as your host. Setting<P>
570 in your <code>sendmail.cf</code> will work, or you can set<P>
573 MASQUERADE_AS(smarthost.here)
576 in the m4 configuration and do a reconfigure. (In both cases, replace
577 <code>smarthost.here</code> with the actual name of your mailhost.)
578 See the <a href="http://www.lege.com/sendmail-FAQ.txt">sendmail
579 FAQ</a> for more details.<P>
582 <h2><a name="G11">G11. Is any special configuration needed to use firewalls?</a></h2>
584 No. You can use fetchmail with SOCKS, the standard tool for
585 indirecting TCP/IP through a firewall. You can find out about SOCKS,
586 and download the SOCKS software including server and client code, at
587 the <a href="http://www.socks.nec.com/">SOCKS distribution
590 The specific recipe for using fetchmail with a firewall is at <a
594 <h2><a name="G12">G12. Is any special configuration needed to <em>send</em> mail?</a></h2>
596 A user asks: but how do we send mail out to the POP3 server? Do I need
597 to implement another tool or will fetchmail do this too?<p>
599 Fetchmail only handles the receiving side. The sendmail or other
600 preinstalled MTA on your client machine will handle sending mail
601 automatically; it will ship mail that is submitted while the
602 connection is active, and put mail that is submitted while
603 the connection is inactive into the outgoing queue.<P>
605 Normally, sendmail is also run periodically (every 15 minutes on most
606 Linux systems) in a mode that tries to ship all the mail in the
607 outgoing queue. If you have set up something like pppd to
608 automatically dial out when your kernel is called to open a TCP/IP
609 connection, this will ensure that the mail gets out.<P>
612 <h2><a name="G13">G13. Is fetchmail Y2K-compliant?</a></h2>
614 Fetchmail is fully Y2K-compliant.<P>
616 Fetchmail could theoretically have problems when the 32-bit time_t
617 counters roll over in 2038, but I doubt it. Timestamps aren't used
618 for anything but log entry generation. Anyway, if you aren't running
619 on a 64-bit machine by then, you deserve to lose.<P>
622 <h2><a name="G14">G14. Is there a way in fetchmail to support disconnected IMAP mode?</a></H2>
624 No. Fetchmail is a mail transport agent, best understood as a protocol
625 gateway between POP3/IMAP servers and SMTP. Disconnected operation
626 requires an elaborate interactive client. It's a very different problem.<p>
629 <h2><a name="G15">G15. How will fetchmail perform under heavy loads?</a></h2>
631 Fetchmail streams message bodies line-by-line; the most core it
632 ever requires per message is enough memory to hold the RFC822 header, and
633 that storage is freed when body processing begins. It is, accordingly,
634 quite economical in its use of memory.<p>
636 After startup time, a fetchmail running in daemon mode stats its
637 configuration file once per poll cycle to see whether it has changed
638 and should be rescanned. Other than that, a fetchmail in normal
639 operation doesn't touch the disk at all; that job is left up to the
640 MTA or MDA the fetchmail talks to.<p>
642 Fetchmail's performance is usually bottlenecked by latency on the POP
643 server or (less often) on the TCP/IP link to the server. This is not
644 a problem readily solved by tuning fetchmail, or even by buying more
645 TCP/IP capacity (which tends to improve bandwidth but not necessarily
649 <h2><a name="B1">B1. Lex bombs out while building the fetchmail lexer.</a></h2>
651 In the immortal words of Alan Cox the last time this came up: ``Take
652 the Solaris lex and stick it up the backside of a passing Sun
653 salesman, then install <a
654 href="ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/non-gnu/flex/">flex</a> and use that. All
655 will be happier.''<P>
657 I couldn't have put it better myself, and ain't going to try now.<P>
659 (The same problem has been reported under HP-UX v10.20 and IRIX)<P>
662 <h2><a name="B2">B2. I get link failures when I try to build fetchmail.</a></h2>
664 If you get errors resembling these<P>
667 mxget.o(.text+0x35): undefined referenceto `__res_search'
668 mxget.o(.text+0x99): undefined reference to`__dn_skipname'
669 mxget.o(.text+0x11c): undefined reference to`__dn_expand'
670 mxget.o(.text+0x187): undefined reference to`__dn_expand'
671 make: *** [fetchmail] Error 1
674 then you must add "-lresolv" to the LOADLIBS line in your Makefile
675 once you have installed the `bind' package.<P>
678 <h2><a name="F1">F1. Why does my old .fetchmailrc file no longer work?</a></h2>
680 <h3>If your file predates 5.1.0</h3>
682 In 5.1.0, the <tt>auth</tt> keyword and option were changed to
685 <h3>If your file predates 4.5.5</h3>
687 If the <code>dns</code> option is on (the default), you may need to
688 make sure that any hostname you specify (for mail hosts or for an SMTP
689 target) is a canonical fully-qualified hostname). In order to avoid
690 DNS overhead and complications, fetchmail no longer tries to derive
691 the fetchmail client machine's canonical DNS name at startup.<P>
693 <h3>If your file predates 4.0.6:</h3>
695 Just after the `<CODE>via</CODE>' option was introduced, I realized
696 that the interactions between the `<CODE>via</CODE>',
697 `<CODE>aka</CODE>', and `<CODE>localdomains</CODE>' options were out
698 of control. Their behavior had become complex and confusing, so much so
699 that I was no longer sure I understood it myself. Users were being
700 unpleasantly surprised.<P>
702 Rather than add more options or crock the code, I re-thought it. The
703 redesign simplified the code and made the options more orthogonal, but
704 may have broken some complex multidrop configurations.
706 Any multidrop configurations that depended on the name just after the
707 `<CODE>poll</CODE>' or `<CODE>skip</CODE>' keyword being still
708 interpreted as a DNS name for address-matching purposes, even in the
709 presence of a `<CODE>via</CODE>' option, will break.<P>
711 It is theoretically possible that other unusual configurations (such
712 as those using a non-FQDN poll name to generate Kerberos IV tickets) might
713 also break; the old behavior was sufficiently murky that we can't be
714 sure. If you think this has happened to you, contact the maintainer.<P>
716 <h3>If your file predates 3.9.5:</h3>
718 The `<code>remote</code>' keyword has been changed to `<code>folder</code>'.
719 If you try to use the old keyword, the parser will utter a warning.<P>
721 <h3>If your file predates 3.9:</h3>
723 It could be because you're using a .fetchmailrc that's written in the
724 old popclient syntax without an explicit `<CODE>username</CODE>'
725 keyword leading the first user entry attached to a server entry.
727 This error can be triggered by having a user option such as `<CODE>keep</CODE>'
728 or `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>' before the first explicit username. For
729 example, if you write<p>
732 poll openmail protocol pop3
733 keep user "Hal DeVore" there is hdevore here
736 the `<CODE>keep</CODE>' option will generate an entire user entry with
737 the default username (the name of fetchmail's invoking user).<p>
739 The popclient compatibility syntax was removed in 4.0. It complicated
740 the configuration file grammar and confused users.<p>
742 <h3>If your file predates 2.8:</h3>
744 The `<CODE>interface</CODE>', `<CODE>monitor</CODE>' and
745 `<CODE>batchlimit</CODE>' options changed after 2.8.<p>
747 They used to be global options with `<CODE>set</CODE>' syntax like the
748 batchlimit and logfile options. Now they're per-server options, like
749 `<CODE>protocol</CODE>'.<p>
751 If you had something like<p>
754 set interface = "sl0/10.0.2.15"
757 in your .fetchmailrc file, simply delete that line and insert
758 `interface sl0/10.0.2.15' in the server options part of your `defaults'
761 Do similarly for any `<CODE>monitor</CODE>' or `<CODE>batchlimit</CODE>' options.<p>
764 <h2><a name="F2">F2. The .fetchmailrc parser won't accept my all-numeric user name.</a></h2>
766 Either upgrade to a post-5.0.5 fetchmail or put string quotes around it. :-)<p>
768 The configuration file parser in older fetchmail versions treated any
769 all-numeric token as a number, which confused it when it was
770 expecting a name. String quoting forces the token's class.<p>
772 The lexical analyzer in 5.0.6 and beyond is smarter and assumes
773 any token following "username" or "password" is a string.
776 <h2><a name="F3">F3. The .fetchmailrc parser won't accept my host or username beginning with `no'.</a></h2>
778 See <a href="#F2">F2</a> You're caught in an unfortunate crack between
779 the newer-style syntax for negated options (`no keep', `no rewrite'
780 etc.) and the older style run-on syntax (`nokeep', `norewrite'
783 Upgrade to a 5.0.6 or later fetchmail, or put string quotes around your
787 <h2><a name="F4">F4. I'm getting a `parse error' message I don't understand.</a></h2>
789 The most common cause of mysterious parse errors is putting a server
790 option after a user option. Check the manual page; you'll probably
791 find that by moving one or more options closer to the `poll' keyword
792 you can eliminate the problem.<p>
794 Yes, I know these ordering restrictions are hard to understand.
795 Unfortunately, they're necessary in order to allow the `defaults'
799 <h2><a name="C1">C1. Why do I need a .fetchmailrc when running as root on my own machine?</a></h2>
801 Ian T. Zimmerman <itz@rahul.net> asked:<p>
803 On the machine where I'm the only real user, I run fetchmail as root
804 from a cron job, like this:<p>
807 fetchmail -u "itz" -p POP3 -s bolero.rahul.net
810 This used to work as is (with no .fetchmailrc file in root's home
811 directory) with the last version I had (1.7 or 1.8, I don't
812 remember). But with 2.0, it RECPs all mail to the local root user,
813 unless I create a .fetchmailrc in root's home directory containing:<p>
816 skip bolero.rahul.net proto POP3
820 It won't work if the second line is just "<CODE>user itz</CODE>". This is silly.<p>
822 It seems fetchmail decides to RECP the `default local user' (i.e. the
823 uid running fetchmail) unless there are local aliases, and the
824 `default' aliases (itz->itz) don't count. They should.<p>
828 No they shouldn't. I thought about this for a while, and I don't much
829 like the conclusion I reached, but it's unavoidable. The problem is
830 that fetchmail has no way to know, in general, that a local user `itz'
833 "Ah!" you say, "Why doesn't it check the password file to see if the remote
834 name matches a local one?" Well, there are two reasons.<p>
836 One: it's not always possible. Suppose you have an SMTP host declared
837 that's not the machine fetchmail is running on? You lose.<p>
839 Two: How do you know server itz and SMTP-host itz are the same person?
840 They might not be, and fetchmail shouldn't assume they are unless
841 local-itz can explicitly produce credentials to prove it (that is, the
842 server-itz password in local-itz's .fetchmailrc file.).<p>
844 Once you start running down possible failure modes and thinking about
845 ways to tinker with the mapping rules, you'll quickly find that all the
846 alternatives to the present default are worse or unacceptably
847 more complicated or both.<p>
850 <h2><a name="C2">C2. How can I arrange for a fetchmail daemon to get killed when I log out?</a></h2>
852 The easiest way to dispatch fetchmail on logout (which will work
853 reliably only if you have just one login going at any time) is to
854 arrange for the command `fetchmail -q' to be called on logout. Under
855 bash, you can arrange this by putting `fetchmail -q' in the file
856 `~/.bash_logout'. Most csh variants execute `~/.logout' on logout.
857 For other shells, consult your shell manual page.<p>
859 Automatic startup/shutdown of fetchmail is a little harder to arrange
860 if you may have multiple login sessions going. In the contrib
861 subdirectory of the fetchmail distribution there is some shell code
862 you can add to your .bash_login and .bash_logout profiles that will
863 accomplish this. Thank James Laferriere <babydr@nwrain.net> for
866 Some people start up and shut down fetchmail using the ppp-up and
867 ppp-down scripts of pppd.<p>
870 <h2><a name="C3">C3. How do I know what interface and address to use with --interface?</a></h2>
872 This depends a lot on your local networking configuration (and right
873 now you can't use it at all except under Linux and the newer BSDs). However,
874 here are some important rules of thumb that can help. If they don't
875 work, ask your local sysop or your Internet provider.<p>
877 First, you may not need to use --interface at all. If your machine
878 only ever does SLIP or PPP to one provider, it's almost certainly by a
879 point to point modem connection to your provider's local subnet that's
880 pretty secure against snooping (unless someone can tap your phone or
881 the provider's local subnet!). Under these circumstances, specifying
882 an interface address is fairly pointless.<p>
884 What the option is really for is sites that use more than one
885 provider. Under these circumstances, typically one of your provider
886 IP addresses is your mailserver (reachable fairly securely via the
887 modem and provider's subnet) but the others might ship your packets
888 (including your password) over unknown portions of the general
889 Internet that could be vulnerable to snooping. What you'll use
890 --interface for is to make sure your password only goes over the
893 To determine the device:<p>
896 <li> If you're using a SLIP link, the correct device is probably sl0.
897 <li> If you're using a PPP link, the correct device is probably ppp0.
898 <li> If you're using a direct connection over a local network such as
899 an ethernet, use the command `netstat -r' to look at your routing table.
900 Try to match your mailserver name to a destination entry; if you don't
901 see it in the first column, use the `default' entry. The device name
902 will be in the rightmost column.
905 To determine the address and netmask:<p>
908 <li> If you're talking to slirp, the correct address is probably 10.0.2.15,
909 with no netmask specified. (It's possible to configure slirp to present
910 other addresses, but that's the default.)
912 <li> If you have a static IP address, run `ifconfig <device>', where <device>
913 is whichever one you've determined. Use the IP address given after
914 "inet addr:". That is the IP address for your end of the link, and is
915 what you need. You won't need to specify a netmask.
917 <li> If you have a dynamic IP address, your connection IP will vary randomly
918 over some given range (that is, some number of the least significant bits
919 change from connection to connection). You need to declare an address
920 with the variable bits zero and a complementary netmask that sets
924 To illustrate the rule for dynamic IP addresses, let's suppose you're
925 hooked up via SLIP and your IP provider tells you that the dynamic
926 address pool is 255 addresses ranging from 205.164.136.1 to
927 205.164.136.255. Then<p>
930 interface "sl0/205.164.136.0/255.255.255.0"
933 would work. To range over any value of the last two octets
934 (65536 addresses) you would use<p>
937 interface "sl0/205.164.0.0/255.255.0.0"
941 <h2><a name="C4">C4. How can I set up support for sendmail's anti-spam features?</a></h2>
943 This answer covers versions of sendmail from 8.8.7 (the version
944 installed in Red Hat 5.1) upwards. If you have an older version,
945 upgrade to sendmail 8.9.<P>
947 Stock sendmails can now do anti-spam exclusions based on a database of
948 filter rules. The human-readable form of the database is at
949 <tt>/etc/mail/deny</tt>. The database itself is at
950 <tt>/etc/mail/deny.db</tt>.<P>
952 The table itself uses email addresses, domain names, and network
953 numbers as keys. For example,</P>
955 spammer@aol.com REJECT
956 cyberspammer.com REJECT
959 <P>would refuse mail from spammer@aol.com, any user from
960 cyberspammer.com (or any host within the cyberspammer.com domain), and
961 any host on the 192.168.212.* network. (This feature can be used to
962 do other things as well; see the <a
963 href="http://www.sendmail.org/m4/anti-spam.html">sendmail
964 documentation</a> for details)</P>
966 To actually set up the database, run
969 makemap hash deny <deny
973 To test, send a message to your mailing address from that host and
974 then pop off the message with fetchmail, using the -v argument. You
975 can monitor the SMTP transaction, and when the FROM address is parsed,
976 if sendmail sees that it is an address in spamlist, fetchmail will
977 flush and delete it.<p>
979 Under no circumstances put your <strong>mailhost</strong> or <strong>any host
980 you accept mail from</strong> using fetchmail into your reject file. You
981 <strong>will</strong> lose mail if you do this!!!<p>
984 <h2><a name="C5">C5. How can I poll some of my mailboxes more/less
985 often than others?</a></h2>
987 Use the <cite>interval</cite> keyword on the ones that should be
988 checked less often. For example, if you do a poll every 5 minutes,
989 and want to poll some mailboxes every 5 minutes and some every 30
990 minutes, use something like this:<p>
993 poll mainsite.example.com proto pop3 user ....
994 poll secondary.example.com proto pop3 interval 6 user ...
997 Then secondary.example.com will be polled every 6th time that
998 mainsite.example.com is polled, which with a polling interval of every
999 5 minutes means that secondary.example.com will be polled every 30
1003 <h2><a name="C6">Fetchmail works OK started up manually, but not from an init script.</a></h2>
1005 Often, startup scripts have a different environment than an interactive
1006 login shell. For instance, $HOME might point to "/root" when you are
1007 logged in as root, but it might be either unset, or set to "/" when the
1008 startup scripts are running. That means fetchmail at startup can't find
1009 the .fetchmailrc.<p>
1011 Pick a location (such as /etc/fetchmailrc) and use fetchmail's -f
1012 option to point fetchmail at it. That should solve the problem.<p>
1015 <h2><a name="C7">C7. How can I forward mail to another host?</a></h2>
1017 To forward mail to a host other than the one you are running fetchmail
1018 on, use the <code>smtphost</code> or <code>smtpname</code> option.
1019 See the manual page for details.<p>
1022 <h2><a name="T1">T1. How can I use fetchmail with sendmail?</a></h2>
1024 For most sendmails, no special configuration is required. Eric Allman
1025 tells me that if <code>FEATURE(always_add_domain)</code> is included
1026 in sendmail's configuration, you can leave the <code>rewrite</code>
1029 If your sendmail complains ``sendmail does not relay'', make sure
1030 your sendmail.cf file says <code>Cwlocalhost</code>
1031 so that sendmail recognizes `localhost' as a name of its host.<p>
1033 If you're mailing from another machine on your local network, also
1034 ensure that its IP address is listed in ip_allow or name in name_allow
1035 (usually in /etc/mail/)<p>
1037 If you find that your sendmail doesn't like the address
1038 `FETCHMAIL-DAEMON@localhost' (which is used in the bouncemail
1039 that fetchmail generates), you may have to set
1040 <code>FEATURE(accept_unqualified_senders)</code>.<P>
1042 Günther Leber reports that Digital Unix sendmails won't work with
1043 fetchmail. The symptom is an error message "<code>553 Local configuration
1044 error, hostname not recognized as local</code>". The problem is that
1045 fetchmail normally feeds sendmail with the client machine's host
1046 address in the MAIL FROM line. These sendmails think this means
1047 they're seeing the result of a mail loop and suppress the mail. You
1048 may be able to work around this by running in <code>--invisible</code> mode.<P>
1050 If you want to support multidrop mode, and you can get access to your
1051 mailserver's sendmail.cf file, it's a good idea to add this rule:<P>
1054 H?l?Delivered-To: $h
1057 This will cause the mailserver's sendmail to reliably write the
1058 appropriate envelope address into each message before fetchmail sees
1059 it, and tell fetchmail which header it is. With this change,
1060 multidrop mode should work reliably even when the Received header
1061 omits the envelope address (which will typically be the case when
1062 the message has multiple recipients). However it will still not
1063 distinguish the recipients, your only advantage is that no bounce
1064 will be sent if a message is BCC addressed to multiple users at
1065 your site. To fix even that problem, you might want to try the
1066 following hack, which is however untested and quite experimental:<P>
1069 H?J?Delivered-To: $u
1071 Mmdrop, P=/usr/bin/procmail, F=lsDFMqSPfhnu9J,
1072 S=EnvFromSMTP/HdrFromSMTP, R=EnvToSMTP/HdrToSMTP,
1073 T=DNS/RFC822/X-Unix,
1074 A=procmail -Y -a $u -d $h
1077 For both hacks, you have to declare `<CODE>envelope "Delivered-To:"</CODE>' on
1078 the fetchmail side, to put the virtual domain (e.g. `domain.com')
1079 with RELAY permission into your access file and to add a line
1080 reading `<CODE>domain.com local:local-pop-user</CODE>' for the first and
1081 `<CODE>domain.com mdrop:local-pop-user</CODE>' for the second hack to your
1084 You will notice that if the mail already has a Delivered-To header,
1085 sendmail will not add another. Further, editing sendmail.cf
1086 directly is not very comfortable. Solutions for both problems
1087 can be found in Peter `Rattacresh' Backes' `hybrid' patch against
1088 sendmail. Have a look at it, you can find it in the contrib
1091 Feel free to try Martijn Lievaart's detailed recipe in the contrib
1092 subdirectory of the fetchmail source distribution, it attempts
1093 to realize multidrop mailboxes with an external script.<P>
1096 <h2><a name="T2">T2. How can I use fetchmail with qmail?</a></h2>
1098 Turn on the <CODE>forcecr</CODE> option; qmail's listener mode doesn't like
1099 header or message lines terminated with bare linefeeds.<p>
1101 (This information is thanks to Robert de Bath
1102 <robert@mayday.cix.co.uk>.)<p>
1104 If a mailhost is using the qmail package (see <a
1105 href="http://pobox.com/~djb/qmail.html">http://pobox.com/~djb/qmail.html</a>)
1106 then, providing the local hosts are also using qmail, it is possible
1107 to set up one fetchmail link to be reliably collect the mail for an
1110 One of the basic features of qmail is the `Delivered-To:' message
1111 header. Whenever qmail delivers a message to a local mailbox it puts
1112 the username and hostname of the envelope recipient on this line. The
1113 major reason for this is to prevent mail loops. <p>
1115 To set up qmail to batch mail for a disconnected site the ISP-mailhost
1116 will have normally put that site in its `virtualhosts' control file so
1117 it will add a prefix to all mail addresses for this site. This results
1118 in mail sent to 'username@userhost.userdom.dom.com' having a
1119 'Delivered-To:' line of the form:<p>
1122 Delivered-To: mbox-userstr-username@userhost.userdom.dom.com
1125 A single host maildrop will be slightly simpler:
1128 Delivered-To: mbox-userstr-username@userhost.dom.com
1131 The ISP can make the 'mbox-userstr-' prefix anything they choose
1132 but a string matching the user host name is likely.<p>
1134 To use this line you must:<p>
1137 <li>Ensure the option `envelope Delivered-To:' is in the fetchmail
1140 <li>Ensure you have a localdomains containing 'userdom.dom.com' or
1141 `userhost.dom.com' respectively.
1144 So far this reliably delivers messages to the correct machine of the
1145 local network, to deliver to the correct user the 'mbox-userstr-'
1146 prefix must be stripped off of the user name. This can be done by
1147 setting up an alias within the qmail MTA on each local machine.
1148 Simply create a dot-qmail file called '.qmail-mbox-userstr-default'
1149 in the alias directory (normally /var/qmail/alias) with the contents:<p>
1152 | ../bin/qmail-inject -a -f"$SENDER" "${LOCAL#mbox-userstr-}@$HOST"
1155 Note this <em>does</em> require a modern /bin/sh.<p>
1157 Peter Wilson adds: <P>
1159 ``My ISP uses "alias-unzzippedcom-" as the prefix, which means that I
1160 need to name my file ".qmail-unzzippedcom-default". This is due to
1161 qmail's assumption that a message sent to user-xyz is handled by the
1162 file ~user/.qmail-xyz (or ~user/.qmail-default).''<p>
1164 Luca Olivetti adds:<P>
1166 If you aren't using qmail locally, or you don't want to set up the
1167 alias mechanism described above, you can use the option `<code>qvirtual
1168 "mbox-userstr-"</code>' in your fetchmail config file to strip the prefix
1169 from the local user name.<p>
1172 <h2><a name="T3">T3. How can I use fetchmail with exim?</a></h2><p>
1174 If you have <CODE>rewrite</CODE> on: <P>
1176 There is an RFC1123 requirement that MAIL FROM and RCPT TO addresses
1177 you pass to it have to be canonical (e.g. with a fully qualified
1178 hostname part). Therefore fetchmail tries to pass fully qualified
1179 RCPT TO addresses. But exim does not by default accept `localhost' as
1180 a fully qualified domain. This can be fixed.<P>
1182 In exim.conf, add `localhost' to your local_domains declaration if it's not
1183 already present. For example, the author's site at thyrsus.com would
1184 have a line reading:<P>
1187 local_domains = thyrsus.com:localhost
1190 If you have <CODE>rewrite</CODE> off:<P>
1192 MAIL FROM is a potential problem if the MTAs upstream from your fetchmail
1193 don't necessarily pass canonicalized From and Return-Path addresses,
1194 and fetchmail's <CODE>rewrite</CODE> option is off. The specific case
1195 where this has come up involves bounce messages generated by sendmail
1196 on your mailer host, which have the (un-canonicalized) origin address
1199 The right way to fix this is to enable the <CODE>rewrite</CODE> option and
1200 have fetchmail canonicalize From and Return-Path addresses with the
1201 mailserver hostname before exim sees them. This option is enabled by
1202 default, so it won't be off unless you turned it off.<p>
1204 If you must run with <CODE>rewrite</CODE> off, there is a switch in exim's
1205 configuration files that allows it to accept domainless MAIL FROM
1206 addresses; you will have to flip it by putting the line <p>
1209 sender_unqualified_hosts = localhost
1212 in the main section of the exim configuration file. Note that this
1213 will result in such messages having an incorrect domain name attached
1214 to their return address (your SMTP listener's hostname rather than
1215 that of the remote mail server). <p>
1218 <h2><a name="T4">T4. How can I use fetchmail with smail?</a></h2><p>
1220 Smail 3.2 is very nearly plug-compatible with sendmail, and may work
1221 fine out of the box.<P>
1223 We have one report that when processing multiple messages from a
1224 single fetchmail session, smail sometimes delivers them in an
1225 order other than received-date order. This can be annoying because it
1226 scrambles conversational threads. This is not fetchmail's problem,
1227 it is an smail `feature' and has been reported to the maintainers
1230 Very recent smail versions require an <code>-smtp_hello_verify</code>
1231 option in the smail config file. This overrides smail's check to see
1232 that the HELO address is actually that of the client machine, which
1233 is never going to be the case when fetchmail is in the picture.
1234 According to RFC1123 an SMTP listener <em>must</em> allow this
1235 mismatch, so smail's new behavior (introduced sometime between
1236 3.2.0.90 and 3.2.0.95) is a bug.<P>
1239 <h2><a name="T5">T5. How can I use fetchmail with SCO's MMDF?</a></h2><p>
1241 MMDF itself is difficult to configure, but it turns out that
1242 connecting fetchmail to MMDF's SMTP channel isn't that hard.
1244 href="http://www.aplawrence.com/Unixart/uucptofetch.html">
1245 MMDF recipe</a> that describes replacing a UUCP link with
1246 fetchmail feeding MMDF.<P>
1249 <h2><a name="T6">T6. How can I use fetchmail with Lotus Notes?</a></h2><p>
1251 The Lotus Notes SMTP gateway tries to deduce when it should convert \n
1252 to \r\n, but its rules are not the intuitive and correct-for-RFC822
1253 ones. Use `forcecr'.<P>
1256 <h2><a name="S1">S1. How can I use fetchmail with qpopper?</a></h2>
1258 Qualcomm's qpopper is probably the best-of-breed among POP3 servers, and
1259 is very widely deployed. Nevertheless, it has some problems which
1260 fetchmail exposes. We recommend using <a href="#G7">IMAP</a> instead if at
1261 all possible. If you must talk to qpopper, here are some problems to
1264 <h3>Problems with retrieving large messages from qpopper 2.53</h3>
1266 Tony Tang <a href="mailto:tony@atn.com.hk"><tony@atn.com.hk></a>
1267 reports that there is a bad intercation between fetchmail and qpopper
1268 2.5.3 under Red Hat Linux versions 5.0 to 5.2, kernels 2.0.34 to
1269 2.0.35. When fetching very large messages (over 700K) from 2.5.3,
1270 fetchmail will hang with a socket error.<p>
1272 This is probably not a fetchmail bug, but rather a symptom of some
1273 problem in the networking stack that qpopper's transmission pattern is
1274 tickling, as fetchpop (another Linux POP client) also displays the hang
1275 but Netscape running under Win95 does not. The problem can also be
1277 href="http://www.eudora.com/freeware/qpop.html">upgrading to qpopper
1280 <h3>Bad interaction with fetchmail 4.4.2 to 4.4.7</h3>
1282 Versions of fetchmail from 4.4.2 through 4.4.7 had a bad interaction
1283 with Eudora qpopper versions 2.3 and later. See <a href="#X5">X5</a>
1284 for details. The solution is to upgrade your fetchmail.<p>
1287 <h2><a name="S2">S2. How can I use fetchmail with Microsoft Exchange?</a></h2>
1289 Fetchmail now supports the proprietary NTLM mode used with M$ Exchange
1290 servers. To enable this, configure fetchmail with the --enable-NTLM
1291 option and recompile it. Note: if you specify a user option value
1292 that looks like `user@domain', the part to the left of the @ will
1293 be passed as the username and the part to the right as the NTLM domain.<P>
1295 M$ Exchange violates the POP3 RFCs. Its LIST command does not reveal
1296 the real sizes of mail in the pop mailbox, but the sizes of the
1297 compressed versions in the exchange mail database (thanks to Arjan De
1298 Vet and Guido Van Rooij for alerting us to this problem).<P>
1300 Fetchmail works with M$ Exchange, despite this brain damage. Two
1301 features are compromised. One is that the --limit option will not
1302 work right (it will check against compressed and not actual sizes).
1303 The other is that a too-small SIZE argument may be passed to your
1304 ESMTP listener, assuming you're using one (this should not be a
1305 problem unless the actual size of the message is above the listener's
1306 configured length limit).<P>
1308 Somewhat belatedly, I've learned that there's supposed to be a
1309 registry bit that can fix this breakage:<P>
1312 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MsExchangeIs\Parameters
1313 System\Pop3 Compatibility
1316 This is a bitmask that controls the variations from the standard protocol.
1317 The bits defined are:<P>
1321 <DD>Report exact message sizes for the LIST command
1323 <DD>Allow arbitrary linear whitespace between commands and arguments
1325 <DD>Enable the LAST command
1327 <DD>Allow an empty PASS command (needed for users with blank
1328 passwords, but illegal in the protocol)
1330 <DD>Relax the length restrictions for arguments to commands (protocol
1331 requires 40, but some user names may be longer than that).
1333 <DD>Allow spaces in the argument to the USER command.
1336 There's another one that may be useful to know about:<P>
1339 KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MsExchangeIs\Parameters
1340 System\Pop3 Performance
1345 <DD>Render messages to a temporary stream instead of sending directly
1346 from the database (should always be on)
1348 Flag unrenderable messages (instead of just failing commands)
1349 (should only be on if you are seeing the problems reported
1352 <DD>Return from the QUIT command before all messages have been deleted.
1355 The Microsoft pod-person who revealed this information to me admitted
1356 that he couldn't find it anywhere in their public knowledge base.<P>
1358 Another specific problem we have seen with Exchange servers has as its
1359 symptom a response to LOGIN that says "NO Ambiguous Alias". Grant
1362 This means that Exchange Server is too f*&#ing stupid to figure
1363 out which mailbox belongs to you. Instead of actually keeping
1364 track of which inbox belongs to which user, it uses some
1365 half-witted, guess-o-matic heuristic to try to guess your
1366 mailbox name from your username.<p>
1368 In your case it doesn't work because your username maps to more
1369 than one mailbox. For some people it doesn't work because
1370 their username maps to zero mailboxes. This is yet another
1371 inept, lame, almost criminally negligent design decision from
1372 our friends in Redmond.<p>
1374 You've got several options:
1378 Try giving fetchmail a username of "/NTDomain/NTUsername/MailboxName".
1380 Get your administrator to configure the server so that
1381 usernames and mailbox names are the same.
1383 Get your administrator to add an alias that maps your
1384 username explicitly to your mailbox name.
1387 But, the best option involves a tactical nuclear weapon (an old
1388 ASROC will do), pissing off a lot people who live downwind from
1389 Redmond, and your choice of any Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, or
1392 I'll provide the CD.
1395 <h2><a name="S3">S3. How can I use fetchmail with CompuServe RPA?</a></h2>
1397 First, make sure your fetchmail has the RPA support compiled in.
1398 Stock fetchmail binaries (such as you might get from an RPM) don't.
1399 You can check this by looking at the output of <code>fetchmail -V</code>;
1400 if you see the string "+RPA" after the version ID you're good to go,
1401 otherwise you'll have to build your own from sources (see the INSTALL
1402 file in the source distribution for directions).<P>
1404 Give your CompuServe pass-phrase in lower case as your password. Add
1405 `@compuserve.com' to your user ID so that it looks like `user
1406 <UserID>@compuserve.com', where <UserID> can be either
1407 your numerical userID or your E-mail nickname. An RPA-enabled
1408 fetchmail will automatically check for csi.com in the POP server's
1409 greeting line. If that's found, and your user ID ends with
1410 `@compuserve.com', it will query the server to see if it
1411 is RPA-capable, and if so do an RPA transaction rather than a
1412 plain-text password handshake.<P>
1414 <strong>Warning:</strong> the debug (-v -v) output of fetchmail will show
1415 your pass-phrase in Unicode!<P>
1417 These two .fetchmailrc entries show the difference between an RPA and
1418 non-RPA configuration:
1421 # This version will use RPA
1422 poll csi.com via "pop.site1.csi.com" with proto POP3 and options no dns
1423 user "CSERVE_USER@compuserve.com" there with password "CSERVE_PASSWORD"
1424 is LOCAL_USER here options fetchall stripcr
1426 # This version will not use RPA
1427 poll non-rpa.csi.com via "pop.site1.csi.com" with proto POP3 and options no dns
1428 user "CSERVE_USER" there with password "CSERVE_POP3_PASSWORD"
1429 is LOCAL_USER here options fetchall stripcr
1433 <h2><a name="S4">S4. How can I use fetchmail with Demon Internet's SDPS?</a></h2>
1435 <h3>Single-drop mode</h3>
1437 You can get fetchmail to download the email for just one user from
1438 Demon Internet's POP3 server by giving it a username consisting of your
1439 Demon user name followed by your account name, with an at-sign between
1442 For example, to download email for the user <philh@vision25.demon.co.uk>,
1443 you could use the following .fetchmailrc file:<P>
1446 set postmaster "philh"
1447 poll pop3.demon.co.uk with protocol POP3:
1448 user "philh@vision25" is philh
1451 <h3>Multi-drop mode</h3>
1453 Demon Internet's SDPS service is an implementation of POP3. All messages
1454 have a Received: header added when they enter the maildrop, like this:
1457 Received: from punt-1.mail.demon.net by mailstore.com for fred@xyz.demon.co.uk
1458 id 899963657:10:27896:0; Thu, 09 Jul 98 05:54:17 GMT
1461 To enable multi-drop mode you need to tell fetchmail that 'mailstore.com' is
1462 the name of the host which accepted the mail, and let it know the
1463 hostname part(s) of your E-mail address. The following example assumes
1464 that your hostname is xyz.demon.co.uk, and that you have also bought
1465 "mail forwarding" for the domain my-company.co.uk (in which case your
1466 MTA must also be configured to accept mail sent to user@my-company.co.uk)
1469 poll pop3.demon.co.uk proto pop3 aka mailstore.com no dns:
1470 localdomains xyz.demon.co.uk my-company.co.uk
1471 user xyz is * fetchall
1474 The `fetchall' command ensures that all mail is downloaded. If you
1475 want to leave mail on the server use `uidl' and `keep'; Demon does not
1476 implement the obsolete `top' command, because SDPS combines messages
1477 residing on two separate punt clusters into a single POP3 maildrop.
1478 If you do use UIDL, be aware that the "user@host" form for fetching
1479 mail from a particular Demon host will confuse fetchmail's UIDL code;
1482 Note that Demon may delete mail on the server which is more than 30
1483 days old; see their <a
1484 href="http://www.demon.net/info/helpdesk/demon_products/mail/sdps-tech.shtml">
1485 POP3 page</a> for details.<P>
1487 <h3>The SDPS extension</h3>
1489 There's a different way to do multidrop. It's not necessary on Demon
1490 Internet, since fetchmail can parse Received addresses, but the person
1491 who implemented this didn't know that. It may be useful if Demon
1492 Internet ever changes mail transports.<P>
1494 SDPS includes a non-standard extension for retrieving the envelope of a
1495 message (*ENV), which fetchmail optionally supports if compiled with the
1496 --enable-SDPS option. If you have it, the first line of the fetchmail -V
1497 response will include the string "+SDPS".<P>
1499 Once you have SDPS compiled in, fetchmail in POP3 mode will
1500 automatically detect when it's talking to a Demon Internet host in
1501 multidrop mode, and use the *ENV extension to get an envelope To address.<P>
1503 The autodetection works by looking at the hostname in the POP3
1504 greeting line; if you're accessing Demon Internet through a proxy it
1505 may fail. To force SDPS mode, pick "sdps" as your protocol.<P>
1508 <h2><a name="S5">S5. How can I use fetchmail with usa.net's servers?</a></h2>
1510 Enable `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>'. A user reports that the 2.2 version
1511 of USA.NET's POP server reports that you must use the
1512 `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>' option to make sure that all of the mail is
1513 retrieved, otherwise some may be left on the server. This is almost
1514 certainly a server bug.<P>
1516 The usa.net servers (at least in their 2.2 version, June 1998) don't
1517 handle the TOP command properly, either. Regardless of the argument
1518 you give it, they retrieve only about 10 lines of the message.
1519 Fetchmail normally uses TOP for message retrieval in order to avoid
1520 marking messages seen, but `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>' forces it to use
1523 (Note: Other failure modes have been reported on usa.net's servers.
1524 They seem to be chronically flaky. We recommend finding another
1528 <h2><a name="S6">S6. How can I use fetchmail with HP OpenMail?</a></h2>
1530 No special configuration is required, but OpenMail versions prior to
1531 6.0 have an annoying bug similar to the big one in <a
1532 href="#S2">Microsoft Exchange</a>. The message sizes it gives in the
1533 LIST are rounded to the nearest 1024 bytes. It also has a nasty habit
1534 of discarding headers it doesn't recognize, such as X- and Resent-
1537 As with M$ Exchange, the only real fix for these problems is to get a
1538 POP (or preferably IMAP) server that isn't brain-dead. OpenMail's
1539 project manager claims these bugs have been fixed in 6.0.<P>
1542 <h2><a name="S8">S8. How can I use fetchmail with Hotmail?</a></h2>
1544 You can't, yet. But <a
1545 href="http://www.ozemail.com.au/~peterhawkins/gotmail/">gotmail</a>
1546 might be what you need.<P>
1549 <h2><a name="S9">S9. How can I use fetchmail with MSN?</a></h2>
1551 You can't. MSN uses something that looks like POP3, except the
1552 authentication part is nonstandard. And of course they don't
1553 document it, so nobody but their Windows clients can speak it.<p>
1555 This is a customer lock-in tactic; we recommend boycotting MSN as the
1556 only appropriate response.<p>
1558 As of 5.0.8, we have support for the client side of NTLM
1559 authentication. It's possible this may enable fetchmail to talk to
1560 MSN; if so, somebody should report it so this FAQ can be corrected.<p>
1563 <h2><a name="S10">S10. How can I use fetchmail with SpryNet?</a></h2>
1565 The SpryNet POP3 servers mark a message queried with TOP as seen.
1566 This means that if your connection drops in mid-message, it may end
1567 up invisibly stuck on your mail spool. Use the <code>fetchall</code>
1568 flag to ensure that it's recovered on the next cycle.<p>
1571 <h2><a name="S11">S11. How can I use fetchmail with FTGate?</a></h2>
1573 The FTGate V2 server (and possibly older versions as well) has a weird
1574 bug. It answers OK twice to a TOP request! Use the
1575 <code>fetchall</code> option to force use of RETR and work around this
1579 <h2><a name="S12">S12. How can I use fetchmail with MailMax?</a></h2>
1581 You can't. At least not if you want to be able to see attachments.
1582 MailMax has a bug; it reports the message length with attachments
1583 but doesn't download them on TOP or RETR.<P>
1585 Also, we're told that TOP sometimes fails to retrieve the entire
1586 message even when enough lines have been specified. The MailMax
1587 developers have acknowledged this bug as of 4 May 2000, but there is
1588 no fix yet. If you must use this server, force RETR with the
1589 <tt>fetchall</tt> option.<p>
1592 <h2><a name="S13">S13. How can I use fetchmail with Novell GroupWise?</a></h2>
1594 The Novell GroupWise IMAP server would be better named GroupFoolish;
1595 it is (according to the designer of IMAP) unusably broken. Among
1596 other things, it doesn't include a required content length in its
1597 BODY[TEXT] response.<p>
1599 Fetchmail works around this problem, but we strongly recommend voting
1600 with your dollars for a server that isn't brain-dead. If you stick
1601 with code as shoddy as GroupWise seems to be, you will probably pay
1602 for it with other problems.<p>
1605 <h2><a name="S14">S14. How can I use fetchmail with InterChange?</a></h2>
1607 You can't. At least not if you want to be able to see attachments.
1608 InterChange has a bug similar to the MailMax server; it reports the
1609 message length with attachments but doesn't download them on TOP or
1613 <h2><a name="K1">K1. How can I use fetchmail with SOCKS?</a></h2>
1615 Giuseppe Guerini added a --with-socks option that supports linking
1616 with socks library. If you specify the value of this option as
1617 ``yes'', the configure script will try to find the Rconnect library
1618 and set the makefile up to link it. You can also specify a directory
1619 containing the Rconnect library.<p>
1621 Alan Schmitt has added a similar --with-socks5 option that may work
1622 better if you have a recent version of the SOCKS library.
1625 <h2><a name="S7">S7. How can I use fetchmail with geocities POP3 servers?</a></h2>
1627 Nathan Cutler reports that the the mail.geocities.com POP3 servers
1628 fail to include the first Received line of the message in the send to
1629 fetchmail. This can solve problems if your MUA interprets Received
1630 continuations as body lines and doesn't parse any of the following
1633 Workaround is to use "mda" keyword or "-mda" switch:
1635 mda "sed -e '1s/^\t/Received: /' | formail | /usr/bin/procmail -d <user>"
1637 Replace \t with exactly one tabulation character.
1639 You should also consider using "fetchall" option because Geocities' servers
1640 sometimes think that the first 45 messages have already been read.<P>
1642 Fix: Get an email provider that doesn't suck. The pop-up ads on
1643 Geocities are lame, you should boycott them anyway.<P>
1646 <h2><a name="K2">K2. How can I use fetchmail with IPv6 and IPsec?</a></h2>
1648 To use fetchmail with IPv6, you need a system that supports IPv6, the "Basic
1649 Socket Interface Extensions for IPv6" (RFC 2133).
1650 This currently means that you need to have a BSD/OS or NetBSD system with
1651 the NRL IPv6+IPsec software distribution or a Linux system with the latest
1652 experimental kernel and net-tools. It should not be hard to build fetchmail on
1653 other IPv6 implementations if you can port the inet6-apps kit.<P>
1655 To use fetchmail with networking security (read: IPsec), you need a system that
1656 supports IPsec, the API described in the "Network Security API for Sockets"
1657 (draft-metz-net-security-api-01.txt), and the inet6-apps kit. This currently
1658 means that you need to have a BSD/OS or NetBSD system with the NRL IPv6+IPsec
1659 software distribution. A Linux IPsec implementation supporting this API will
1660 probably appear in the coming months.<P>
1662 The NRL IPv6+IPsec software distribution can be obtained from: <a
1663 href="http://web.mit.edu/network/isakmp">http://web.mit.edu/network/isakmp</a>
1666 The inet6-apps kit can be obtained from <a
1667 href="ftp://ftp.ipv6.inner.net/pub/ipv6">ftp://ftp.ipv6.inner.net/pub/ipv6</a>
1668 (via IPv6) or <a href="ftp://ftp.inner.net/pub/ipv6">
1669 ftp://ftp.inner.net/pub/ipv6</a> (via IPv4).<P>
1671 More information on using IPv6 with Linux can be obtained from:
1674 <a href="http://www.bieringer.de/linux/IPv6/IPv6-HOWTO/IPv6-HOWTO.html">
1675 http://www.bieringer.de/linux/IPv6/IPv6-HOWTO/IPv6-HOWTO.html</a>
1677 <a href="http://www.ipv6.inner.net/ipv6">http://www.ipv6.inner.net/ipv6</a>
1680 <a href="http://www.inner.net/ipv6">http://www.inner.net/ipv6</a> (via IPv4)
1684 <h2><a name="K3">K3. How can I get fetchmail to work with ssh?</a></h2>
1686 We have five recipes for this.<P>
1688 <h3>Single-User POP3</h3>
1690 First, a lightly edited version of a recipe from Masafumi NAKANE.
1691 This one is easy to set up, but only supports one user at a time.<p>
1693 1. You must have ssh (the ssh client) on the local host and sshd (ssh
1694 server) on the remote mail server. And you have to configure ssh so
1695 you can login to the sshd server host without a password. (Refer to ssh
1696 man page for several authentication methods.)<p>
1698 2. Add something like following to your .fetchmailrc file: <p>
1701 poll mailhost port 1234 via localhost with proto pop3:
1702 preconnect "ssh -l username -f mailhost -L 1234:mailhost:110 sleep 5"
1705 The sleep is needed on slower machines to prevent fetchmail from
1706 trying to open the socket before ssh actually makes it ready. Faster
1707 machines may not need it.<p>
1709 (Note that 1234 can be an arbitrary port number. Privileged ports can
1710 be specified only by root.) The effect of this ssh command is to
1711 forward connections made to localhost port 1234 (in above example) to
1714 This configuration will enable secure mail transfer. All the
1715 conversation between fetchmail and remote pop server will be
1718 If sshd is not running on the remote mail server, you can specify
1719 intermediate host running it. If you do this, however, communication
1720 between the machine running sshd and the POP server will not be encrypted.
1721 And the preconnect line would be like this:<p>
1724 preconnect "ssh -f -L 1234:mailhost:110 sshdhost sleep 20 </dev/null >/dev/null"
1727 You can work this trick with IMAP too, but the port number 110 in the
1728 above would need to become 143. In either case you'll have to specify
1729 a password but the password will not be sent in clear.<p>
1731 There is an explanation of a similar recipe at <a
1732 href="http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/mini/Secure-POP+SSH.html">Secure
1733 POP via SSH mini-HOWTO</a>.<P>
1735 <h3>Multi-User POP3</h3>
1737 Second, a recipe from Charlie Brady <cbrady@ind.tansu.com.au>:<p>
1739 Charlie says: "The recipe [from Masafume NAKANE] certainly works, but
1740 the solution I post here is better in a few respects":
1743 <LI>this method will not fail if two or more users attempt to use fetchmail
1745 <LI>you are able to use the full facilities of tcpd to control access
1746 <LI>this method does not depend on the preconnect feature of fetchmail, so
1747 can be used for tunneling of other services as well.
1754 Make sure that the "socket" program is installed on the server
1755 machine. Presently it lives at <a
1756 href="ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/linux/system/network/misc/socket-1.1.tar.gz">
1757 ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/linux/system/network/misc/socket-1.1.tar.gz</a>,
1758 but watch out for a change in version number.<P>
1760 Set up an unprivileged account on your system with a .ssh directory
1761 containing an SSH identity file "identity" with no pass phrase,
1762 "identity.pub" and "known_hosts" containing the host key of your
1763 mailhost. Let's call this account "noddy".
1765 On mailhost, set up no-password access for noddy@yourhost. Add to your
1766 SSH authorized_keys file:
1769 command="socket localhost 110",no-port-forwarding 1024 ......
1772 where "<code>1024 ......</code>" is the content of noddy's identity.pub file.
1774 Create a script /usr/local/bin/ssh.fm and make it executable:
1778 exec ssh -q -C -l your.login.id -e none mailhost socket localhost 110
1781 Add an entry in inetd.conf for whatever port you choose to use - say:
1784 1234 stream tcp nowait noddy /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/local/bin/ssh.fm
1787 Send a HUP signal to your inetd.
1790 Now just use localhost:1234 to access your POP server.<P>
1792 <h3>Multi-User IMAP</h3>
1794 This one comes comes to us from Joerg Dorchain.
1795 The basic idea is to set up a bidirectional encrypted socket connection:<p>
1798 fetchmail <--> ssh <---> sshd <--> imapd
1799 \---local side--/ \-remote side-/
1802 Use ssh-keygen(1) to set up a special ssh identity with no password
1803 and RSA-only authentication, which executes /usr/sbin/imapd when
1804 authenticated. For security reasons all other commands should be
1805 disabled. (There is some security exposure in using an identity
1806 without a passphrase; it means anyone who can get access to your
1807 account could use it to read your mail).<p>
1809 Running ssh-keygen will generate two files. Have it create the
1810 private key to ~/.ssh/identity-imap. Once you have generated the
1811 corresponding public key, prepend this to the line of key data in it:
1814 command="/usr/sbin/imapd",no-port-forwarding,no-agent-forwarding
1817 This identity data has to be appended to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the
1818 remote machine, as usual for RSA authentication. Whenever your ssh
1819 uses this identity, the remote side will run imapd. The imapd will
1820 see that it is not running as root and go into preauthenticated
1823 On the client side, use the <code>plugin</code> keyword to make
1824 fetchmail talk to the stdin of the remote ssh. Here's an examople:
1827 poll mail.dorchain.net
1828 with options proto imap, preauth ssh, plugin fetchmail-imap-wrapper
1831 The wrapper script should look like this:<p>
1835 exec ssh -i $HOME/.ssh/identity-imap $1 /usr/sbin/imapd
1838 <h3>Netcat-based POP or IMAP tunnelling</h3>
1840 Oren Tirosh <oren@mimique.com> sends us a method of using
1841 fetchmail over ssh without port forwarding, using the plugin keyword.<P>
1843 First, set up a poll entry resembling thius one:
1846 poll target.host plugin sshtunnel proto pop3 user foo password *
1849 The important part is the "plugin sshtunnel". Now set up sshtunnel
1853 This is the sshtunnel script:
1855 ssh $1 "nc localhost $2"
1858 Thia method uses netcat to connect to the pop3 port locally on the
1859 target host and create a two-way channel over the ssh connection.<P>
1861 Oren says: "In my experience it is much more reliable than the methods
1862 described in your FAQ. ssh port forwarding often keeps the local port
1863 bound for along timeout and has timing issues requiring tricks like
1864 sleep, etc. I use this method for fetching all the mail for
1867 <h3>Using plugin</h3>
1869 Since 5.4.5, there's been a very simple recipe. Use the following option:
1872 plugin "ssh %h /usr/sbin/rimapd"
1875 You may have to use a different absolute pathname. This option tells
1876 fetchmail that instead of opening a connection on the server's port
1877 143 and doing standard IMAP authentication, fetchmail should ssh to
1878 the server and run rimapd, using the more secure ssh authentication
1879 (as well as getting ssh's encryption).<p>
1882 <h2><a name="K4">K4. What do I have to do to use the IMAP-GSS protocol?</a></h2>
1884 Fetchmail can use RFC1731 GSSAPI authorization to safely identify you
1885 to your IMAP server, as long as you can share Kerberos V credentials
1886 with your mail host and you have a GSSAPI-capable IMAP server.
1887 UW-IMAP (available via FTP at <a
1888 href="ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/mail/">ftp.cac.washington.edu</a>)
1889 is the only one I'm aware of and the one I recommend anyway for other
1890 reasons. You'll need version 4.1-FINAL or greater though, and it has
1891 to have GSS support compiled in.<p>
1893 Neither UW-IMAP nor fetchmail compile in support for GSS by default,
1894 since it requires libraries from the Kerberos V distribution
1895 (available via FTP at <a
1896 href="ftp://athena-dist.mit.edu/pub/ATHENA/kerberos">athena-dist.mit.edu</a).
1897 If you have these, compiling in GSS support is simple: add a
1898 <pre>--with-gssapi=[/path/to/krb5/root]</pre> option to configure. For
1899 instance, I have all of my Kerberos V libraries installed under
1900 /usr/krb5 so I run <pre>configure --with-gssapi=/usr/krb5</pre><p>
1902 Setting up Kerberos V authentication is beyond the scope of this FAQ
1903 (you may find Jim Rome's paper <a
1904 href="http://www.ornl.gov/~jar/HowToKerb.html"> How to Kerberize your
1905 site</a> helpful), but you'll at least need to add a credential for
1906 imap/[mailhost] to the keytab of the mail server (IMAP doesn't just
1907 use the host key). Then you'll need to have your credentials ready on
1908 your machine (cf. kinit).<p>
1910 After that things are very simple. Set your protocol to imap-gss in your
1911 .fetchmailrc, and omit the password, since imap-gss doesn't need one. You
1912 can specify a username if you want, but this is only useful if your mailbox
1913 belongs to a username different from your Kerberos principal. <p>
1915 Now you don't have to worry about your password appearing in cleartext in
1916 your .fetchmailrc, or across the network.<p>
1919 <h2><a name="K5">K5. How can I use fetchmail with SSL?</a></h2>
1921 You'll need to have the <a href="http://www.openssl.org/">OpenSSL</a>
1922 libraries installed. Configure with --with-ssl. If you have the
1923 OpenSSL libraries installed in the default location (/usr/local/ssl)
1924 this will suffice. If you have them installed in a non-default
1925 location, you'll need to specify it as an argument to --with-ssl after
1928 Fetchmail binaries built this way support <code>ssl</code>,
1929 <code>sslkey</code>, and <code>sslcert</code> options that control
1930 SSL encryption. You will need to have an SSL-enabled mailserver
1931 to use these options. See the manual page for detals.<p>
1933 If your open OpenSSL session dies with a message that complains "PRNG
1934 not seeded", update or improve your operating system. This means that
1935 the OpenSSL library on your machine has been unable to locate a source
1936 of random bits from which to seed its random-number generator;
1937 normally these come from the <tt>/dev/urandom</tt>, and this message
1938 probably means your OS doesn't have that device.<P>.
1940 An interactive program could seed the random number generator from
1941 keystroke timings or some other form of user input. Because fetchmail
1942 is primarily designed to run forever as a background daemon, that option
1943 option is not available in this case.<P>
1946 <h2><a name="R1">R1. Fetchmail isn't working, and -v shows `SMTP connect failed' messages.</a></h2>
1948 Fetchmail itself is probably working, but your SMTP port 25 listener
1949 is down or inaccessible.<p>
1951 The first thing to check is if you can telnet to port 25 on your smtp
1952 host (which is normally `localhost' unless you've specified an smtp
1953 option in your .fetchmailrc or on the command line) and get a greeting
1954 line from the listener. If the SMTP host is inaccessible or the listener
1955 is down, fix that first.<p>
1957 In Red Hat Linux 6.9, SMTP is disabled by default. To fix this,
1958 set "DAEMON=yes" in your /etc/sysconfig/sendmail file, then restart
1959 sendmail by running "/sbin/service sendmail restart".<p>
1961 If the listener seems to be up when you test with telnet, the most
1962 benign and typical problem is that the listener had a momentary seizure
1963 due to resource exhaustion while fetchmail was polling it -- process
1964 table full or some other problem that stopped the listener process
1965 from forking. If your SMTP host is not `localhost' or something else
1966 in /etc/hosts, the fetchmail glitch could also have been caused by
1967 transient nameserver failure. <p>
1969 Try running fetchmail -v again; if it succeeds, you had one of these
1970 kinds of transient glitch. You can ignore these hiccups, because a
1971 future fetchmail run will get the mail through. <p>
1973 If the listener tests up, but you have chronic failures trying to
1974 connect to it anyway, your problem is more serious. One way to work
1975 around chronic SMTP connect problems is to use --mda. But this only
1976 attacks the symptom; you may have a DNS or TCP routing problem. You
1977 should really try to figure out what's going on underneath before it
1978 bites you some other way. <p>
1980 We have one report (from toby@eskimo.com) that you can sometimes solve
1981 such problems by doing an <CODE>smtp</CODE> declaration with an IP
1982 address that your routing table maps to something other than the
1983 loopback device (he used ppp0).<p>
1985 We also have a report that this error can be caused by having an
1986 /etc/hosts file that associates your client host name with more than
1989 It's also possible that your DNS configuration isn't
1990 looking at <code>/etc/hosts</code> at all. If you're using libc5,
1991 look at <code>/etc/resolv.conf</code>; it should say something like
1997 so your <code>/etc/hosts</code> file is checked first. If you're
1998 running GNU libc6, check your <code>/etc/nsswitch.conf</code> file. Make
1999 sure it says something like
2005 again, in order to make sure <code>/etc/hosts</code> is seen first.<P>
2007 If you have a hostname set for your machine, and this hostname does
2008 not appear in /etc/hosts, you will be able to telnet to port 25 and
2009 even send a mail with rcpt to: user@host-not-in-/etc/hosts, but
2010 fetchmail can't seem to get in touch with sendmail, no matter what you
2011 set smtpaddress to.<p>
2013 We had another report from a Linux user of fetchmail 2.1 who solved his SMTP
2014 connection problem by removing the reference to -lresolv from his link
2015 line and relinking. Apparently in some older Linux distributions the
2016 libc bind library version works better.<p>
2018 As of 2.2, the configure script has been hacked so the bind library is
2019 linked only if it is actually needed. So under Linux it won't be, and
2020 this particular cause should go away.<p>
2023 <h2><a name="R2">R2. When I try to configure an MDA, fetchmail doesn't work.</a></h2>
2025 (I hear this one from people who have run into the blank-line problem in <a href="#X1">X1</a>.)<p>
2027 Try sending yourself test mail and retrieving it using the
2028 command-line options `<CODE>-k -m cat</CODE>'. This will dump exactly what
2029 fetchmail retrieves to standard output (plus the Received line
2030 fetchmail itself adds to the headers). <p>
2032 If the dump doesn't match what shows up in your mailbox when you
2033 configure an MDA, your MDA is mangling the message. If it doesn't
2034 match what you sent, then fetchmail or something on the server is
2038 <h2><a name="R3">R3. Fetchmail dumps core when given an invalid rc file.</a></h2>
2040 This is usually reported from AIX or Ultrix, but has even been known
2041 to happen on Linuxes without a recent version of <code>flex</code>
2042 installed. The problem appears to be a result of building with an
2043 archaic version of lex.<P>
2045 Workaround: fix the syntax of your .fetchmailrc file.<P>
2047 Fix: build and install the latest version of <a
2048 href="ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/~ftp/pub/gnu">flex</a> from the Free
2049 Software Foundation. An FSF <a
2050 href="http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/order/ftp.html">mirror site</a>
2051 will help you get it faster.<P>
2054 <h2><a name="R4">R4. Fetchmail dumps core in -V mode, but operates normally otherwise.</a></h2>
2056 We've had this reported to us under Linux using libc-5.4.17 and gcc-2.7.2.
2057 It does not occur with libc-5.3.12 or earlier versions.<p>
2059 Workaround: link with GNU malloc rather than the stock C library malloc.<p>
2061 We're told there is some problem with the malloc() code in that
2062 version which makes it fragile in the presence of multiple free()
2063 calls on the same pointer (the malloc arena gets corrupted).
2064 Unfortunately it appears from doing gdb traces that whatever free()
2065 calls producing the problem are being made by the C library itself, not the
2066 fetchmail code (they're all from within fclose, and not an fclose called
2067 directly by fetchmail, either).<p>
2070 <h2><a name="R5">R5. Running fetchmail in daemon mode doesn't work.</a><br></h2>
2072 We have one report from a SunOS 4.1.4 user that trying to run
2073 fetchmail in detached daemon mode doesn't work, but that using the
2074 same options with -N (nodetach) is OK.<P>
2076 If this happens, you have a specific portability problem with the code
2077 in daemon.c that detaches and backgrounds the daemon fetchmail. Tell
2078 me about it so I can try to fix it. As a workaround, you can start
2079 fetchmail with -N and an ampersand to background it. A Sun user
2084 (fetchmail --nodetach <other params> &)
2087 The extra pair of parens is significant --- it makes sure that the process
2088 detaches from the initial shell (one more shell is started and dies
2089 immediately, detaching fetchmail and making it child of PID 1). This is
2090 important when you start fetchmail interactively and than quit
2091 interactive shell. The line above makes sure fetchmail lives after
2094 This should not happen under Linux or any truly POSIX-conformant Unix.<P>
2097 <h2><a name="R6">R6. Fetchmail hangs when used with pppd.</a></h2>
2099 Your problem may be with pppd's `demand' option. We have a report that
2100 fetchmail doesn't play well with it, but works with pppd if `demand'
2101 is turned off. We have no idea why this is.<p>
2104 <h2><a name="R7">R7. Fetchmail randomly dies with socket errors.</a></h2>
2106 Check the MTU value in your PPP interface reported by
2107 <code>/sbin/ifconfig</code>. If it's over 600, change it in your PPP
2108 options file. (<code>/etc/ppp/options</code> on my box). Here are
2109 option values that work:<P>
2117 <a name="R8">R8. Fetchmail running as root stopped working after an OS upgrade</a></h2>
2119 In RH 6.0, the HOME value in the boot-time root environment changed
2120 from /root to / as the result of a change in init. Move your
2121 .fetchmailrc or use a -f option to explicitly point at the file.
2122 (Oddly, a similar problem has been reported from Debian systems.)<P>
2125 <h2><a name="R9">R9. Fetchmail is timing out after fetching certain
2126 messages but before deleting them</a></h2>
2128 There's a TCP/IP stalling problem under Redhat 6.0 (and possibly other
2129 recent Linuxes) that can cause this symptom. Brian Boutel writes:<p>
2132 TCP timestamps are turned on on my Linux boxes (I assume it's now the
2133 default). This uses 12 extra bytes per segment.
2134 When the tcp connection starts, the other end agrees a MSS of 1460,
2135 and then fragments 1460 byte chunks into 1448 and 12, because
2136 is is not allowing for the timestamp.<p>
2138 Then, for reasons I can't explain, it waits a long time (typically 2
2139 minutes) after the ack is sent before sending the next (fragmented)
2140 packet. Turning off tcp timestamps avoids the fragmentation and
2141 restores normal behaviour. To do this, [execute]<p>
2143 echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_timestamps<p>
2145 I'm still unclear about the details of why this is happening. At least
2146 [now] I am now getting good performance and no queue blocking.
2150 <h2><a name="R10">R10. Fetchmail is timing out during message fetches</a></h2>
2152 This is probably a general networking issue. Sending a "RETR" command will
2153 cause the server to start sending large amounts of data, which means
2154 large packets. If your networking layer has a packet-fragmentation
2155 problem, that's where you'll see it.<p>
2158 <h2><a name="D1">D1. I think I've set up fetchmail correctly, but I'm not getting any mail.</a></h2>
2160 Maybe you have a .forward or alias set up that you've forgotten about. You
2161 should probably remove it.<p>
2163 Or maybe you're trying to run fetchmail in multidrop mode as root
2164 without a .fetchmailrc file. This doesn't do what you think it
2165 should; see question <a href="#C1">C1</a>.<p>
2167 Or you may not be connecting to the SMTP listener. Run fetchmail -v
2168 and see <a href="#R1">R1</a>.<p>
2171 <h2><a name="D2">D2. All my mail seems to disappear after a dropped connection.</a></h2>
2173 One POP3 daemon used in the Berkeley Unix world that reports itself as
2174 POP3 version 1.004 actually throws the queue away. 1.005 fixed that.
2175 If you're running this one, upgrade immediately. (It also truncates
2176 long lines at column 1024)<P>
2178 Many POP servers, if an interruption occurs, will restore the whole
2179 mail queue after about 10 minutes. Others will restore it right
2180 away. If you have an interruption and don't see it right away, cross
2181 your fingers and wait ten minutes before retrying.<P>
2183 Some servers (such as Microsoft's NTMail) are mis-designed to restore
2184 the entire queue, including messages you have deleted. If you have
2185 one of these and it flakes out on you a lot, try setting a small
2186 <code>--fetchlimit</code> value. This will result in more IP connects
2187 to the server, but will mean it actually executes changes to the queue
2190 Qualcomm's qpopper, used at many BSD Unix sites, is better behaved.
2191 If its connection is dropped, it will first execute all DELE commands as
2192 though you had issued a QUIT (this is a technical violation of
2193 the POP3 RFCs, but a good idea in a world of flaky phone lines). Then it
2194 will re-queue any message that was being downloaded at hangup time.
2195 Still, qpopper may require a noticeable amount of time to do deletions
2196 and clean up its queue. (Fetchmail waits a bit before retrying in
2197 order to avoid a `lock busy' error.)<P>
2200 <h2><a name="D3">D3. Mail that was being fetched when I interrupted my fetchmail seems to have been vanished.</a></h2>
2202 Fetchmail only sends a delete mail request to the server when either
2203 (a) it gets a positive delivery acknowledgment from the SMTP
2204 listener, or (b) it gets an error 571 (the spam-filter error) from the
2205 listener. No interrupt can cause it to lose mail.<p>
2207 However, IMAP2bis has a design problem in that its normal fetch
2208 command marks a message `seen' as soon as the fetch command to get it
2209 is sent down. If for some reason the message isn't actually delivered
2210 (you take a line hit during the download, or your port 25 listener
2211 can't find enough free disk space, or you interrupt the delivery in
2212 mid-message) that `seen' message can lurk invisibly in your server
2215 Workaround: add the `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>' keyword to your fetch options.<p>
2217 Solution: switch to an <a href="http://www.imap.org">IMAP4</a> server.<p>
2220 <h2><a name="M1">M1. I've declared local names, but all my multidrop
2221 mail is going to root anyway.</a></h2>
2223 Somehow your fetchmail is never recognizing the hostname part of
2224 recipient names it parses out of To/Cc/envelope-header lines as
2225 matching the name of the mailserver machine. To check this, run
2226 fetchmail in foreground with -v -v on. You will probably see a lot of
2227 messages with the format ``line rejected, %s is not an alias of the
2228 mailserver'' or ``no address matches; forwarding to %s.'' <p>
2230 These errors usually indicate some kind of DNS configuration problem
2231 either on the server or your client machine. <p>
2233 The easiest workaround is to add a `<CODE>via</CODE>' option (if
2234 necessary) and add enough aka declarations to cover all of your
2235 mailserver's aliases, then say `<CODE>no dns</CODE>'. This will take
2236 DNS out of the picture (though it means mail may be uncollected if
2237 it's sent to an alias of the mailserver that you don't have
2240 It would be better to fix your DNS, however. DNS problems can hurt
2241 you in lots of ways, for example by making your machines
2242 intermittently or permanently unreachable to the rest of the net.<P>
2244 Occasionally these errors indicate the sort of header-parsing problem
2245 described in <a href="#M7">M7</a>.<P>
2248 <h2><a name="M2">M2. I can't seem to get fetchmail to route to a local domain properly.</a></h2>
2250 A lot of people want to use fetchmail as a poor man's internetwork
2251 mail gateway, picking up mail accumulated for a whole domain in a single
2252 server mailbox and then routing based on what's in the To/Cc/Bcc lines.<p>
2254 In general, this is not really a good idea. It would be smarter to
2255 just let the mail sit in the mailserver's queue and use fetchmail's
2256 ETRN mode to trigger SMTP sends periodically (of course, this means
2257 you have to poll more frequently than the mailserver's expiration period).
2258 If you can't arrange this, try setting up a UUCP feed.<P>
2260 If neither of these alternatives is available, multidrop mode may do
2261 (though you <em>are</em> going to get hurt by some mailing list
2262 software; see the caveats under THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP
2263 MAILBOXES on the man page). If you want to try it, the way to do it
2264 is with the `<CODE>localdomains</CODE>' option.<p>
2266 In general, if you use localdomains you need to make sure of two other
2269 <strong>1. You've actually set up your .fetchmailrc entry to invoke multidrop mode.</strong><p>
2271 Many people set a `<CODE>localdomains</CODE>' list and then forget
2272 that fetchmail wants to see more than one name (or the wildcard `*')
2273 in a `<CODE>here</CODE>' list before it will do multidrop routing.<p>
2275 <strong>2. You may have to set `no envelope'.</strong><p>
2277 Normally, multidrop mode tries to deduce an envelope address from a message
2278 before parsing the To/Cc/Bcc lines (this enables it to avoid losing to mailing
2279 list software that doesn't put a recipient address in the To lines).<p>
2281 Some ways of accumulating a whole domain's messages in a single server
2282 mailbox mean it all ends up with a single envelope address that is
2283 useless for rerouting purposes. You may have to set `<CODE>no
2284 envelope</CODE>' to prevent fetchmail from being bamboozled by this.<p>
2286 Check also answer <a href="#T1">T1</a> on a reliable way to do multidrop
2287 delivery if your ISP (or your mail redirection provider) is using qmail.<p>
2290 <h2><a name="M3">M3. I tried to run a mailing list using multidrop, and I have a mail loop!</a></h2>
2292 This isn't fetchmail's fault. Check your mailing list. If the list
2293 expansion includes yourself or anybody else at your mailserver (that is, not on
2294 the client side) you've created a mail loop. Just chop the host part off any
2295 local addresses in the list.<p>
2297 If you use sendmail, you can check the list expansion with
2298 <CODE>sendmail -bv</CODE>.<p>
2301 <h2><a name="M4">M4. My multidrop fetchmail seems to be having DNS problems.</a></h2>
2303 We have one report from a Linux user (not the same one as in <a
2304 href="#R1">R1</a>!) who solved this problem by removing the reference
2305 to -lresolv from his link line and relinking. Apparently in some
2306 older Linux distributions the libc5 bind library version works
2309 As of 2.2, the configure script has been hacked so the bind library is linked
2310 only if it is actually needed. So under Linux it won't be, and this problem
2314 <h2><a name="M5">M5. I'm seeing long DNS delays before each message is processed.</a></h2>
2316 Use the `<CODE>aka</CODE>' option to pre-declare as many of your
2317 mailserver's DNS names as you can. When an address's host part
2318 matches an aka name, no DNS lookup needs to be done to check it.<p>
2320 If you're sure you've pre-declared all of your mailserver's DNS names,
2321 you can use the `<CODE>no dns</CODE>' option to prevent other hostname
2322 parts from being looked up at all.<p>
2324 Sometimes delays are unavoidable. Some SMTP listeners try to call DNS
2325 on the From-address hostname as a way of checking that the address is valid.<p>
2328 <h2><a name="M6">M6. How do I get multidrop mode to work with majordomo?</a></h2>
2330 In order for sendmail to execute the command strings in the majordomo
2331 alias file, it is necessary for sendmail to think that the mail it
2332 receives via SMTP really is destined for a local user name. A normal
2333 virtual-domain setup results in delivery to the default mailbox,
2334 rather than expansion through majordomo.<P>
2336 Michael <michael@bizsystems.com> gave us a recipe for dealing
2337 with this case that pairs a run control file like this:<P>
2340 poll your.pop3.server proto pop3:
2342 localdomains virtual.localdomain1.com virtual.localdomain2.com ...
2343 user yourISPusername is root * here,
2344 password yourISPpassword fetchall
2347 with a hack on your local sendmail.cf like this:<P>
2350 #############################################
2351 # virtual info, local hack for ruleset 98 #
2352 #############################################
2354 # domains to treat as direct mapped local domain
2356 CVvirtual.localdomain1.com virtual.localdomain2.com ...
2357 ---------------------------
2359 -------------------------
2360 # handle virtual users
2362 R$+ <@ $=V . > $: $1 < @ $j . >
2363 R< @ > $+ < @ $=V . > $: $1 < @ $j . >
2364 R< @ > $+ $: $1
2365 R< error : $- $+ > $* $#error $@ $1 $: $2
2366 R< $+ > $+ < @ $+ > $: $>97 $1
2369 This ruleset just strips virtual domain names off the addresses of incoming
2370 mail. Your sendmail must be 8.8 or newer for this to work. Michael
2374 I use this scheme with 2 virtual domains and the default ISP
2375 user+domain and service about 30 mail accounts + majordomo on my
2376 inside pop3 server with fetchmail and sendmail 8.83
2380 <h2><a name="M7">M7. Multidrop mode isn't parsing envelope addresses from
2381 my Received headers as it should.</a></h2>
2383 It may happen that you're getting what appear to be well-formed
2384 sendmail Received headers, but fetchmail can't seem to extract an
2385 envelope address from them. There can be a couple of reasons for
2388 <h3>Spurious Received lines need to be skipped:</h3>
2390 First, fetchmail might be looking at the wrong Received header.
2391 Normally it looks only on the first one it sees, on the theory that
2392 that one was last added and is going to be the one containing your
2393 mailserver's theory of who the message was addressed to.<P>
2395 Some (unusual) mailserver configurations will generate extra Received
2396 lines which you need to skip. To arrange this, use the optional
2397 skip prefix argument of the `envelope' option; you may need to say
2398 something like `<code>envelope 1 Received</code>' or `<code>envelope 2
2401 <h3>The `by' clause doesn't contain a mailserver alias:</h3>
2403 When fetchmail parses a Received line that looks like
2406 Received: from send103.yahoomail.com (send103.yahoomail.com [205.180.60.92])
2407 by iserv.ttns.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id RAA10088
2408 for <ksturgeon@fbceg.org>; Wed, 9 Sep 1998 17:01:59 -0700
2411 it checks to see if `iserv.ttns.net' is a DNS alias of your mailserver
2412 before accepting `ksturgeon@fbceg.org' as an envelope address. This
2413 check might fail if your DNS were misconfigured, or if you were using `no dns'
2414 and had failed to declare iserv.ttns.net as an alias of your server.<P>
2417 <h2><a name="M8">M8. Users are getting multiple copies of messages.</a></h2>
2419 It's a consequence of multidrop. What's happening is that you have
2420 N users subscribed to the same list. The list software sends N
2421 copies, not knowing they will end up in the same multidrop box. Since
2422 they are both locally addressed to all N users, fetchmail delivers N
2423 copies to each user.<P>
2425 Fetchmail tries to eliminate adjacent duplicate messages in a
2426 multidrop mailbox. However, this logic depends on the message-ID
2427 being identical in both copies. It also depends on the two copies
2428 being adjacent in the server mailbox. The former is usually the case,
2429 but the latter condition sometimes fails in a timing-dependent way if
2430 the server was processing multiple incoming mail streams.
2432 I could eliminate this problem by keeping a list of all message-IDs
2433 received during a poll so far and dropping any message that matches a
2434 seen mail ID. The touble is that this is an O(N**2) operation that
2435 might significantly slow down the retriweval of large mail batches.<P>
2438 <h2><a name="X1">X1. Spurious blank lines are appearing in the headers of fetched mail.</a></h2>
2440 What's probably happening is that the POP/IMAP daemon on your
2441 mailserver is inserting a non-RFC822 header (like X-POP3-Rcpt:) and
2442 something in your delivery path (most likely an old version of the
2443 <em>deliver</em> program, which sendmail often calls to do local delivery) is
2444 failing to recognize it as a header.<p>
2446 This is not fetchmail's problem. The first thing to try is installing
2447 a current version of <em>deliver</em>. If this doesn't work, try to
2448 figure out which other program in your mail path is inserting the
2449 blank line and replace that. If you can't do either of these things,
2450 pick a different MDA (such as procmail) and declare it with the
2451 `<CODE>mda</CODE>' option.<p>
2454 <h2><a name="X2">X2. My mail client can't see a Subject line.</a></h2>
2456 First, see <a href="#X1">X1</a>. This is quite probably the same
2457 problem (X-POP3-Rcpt header or something similar being inserted by
2458 the server and choked on by an old version of <em>deliver</em>).<p>
2460 The O'Reilly sendmail book does warn that IDA sendmail doesn't process
2461 X- headers correctly. If this is your problem, all I can suggest is
2462 replacing IDA sendmail, because it's broken and not RFC822 conformant.<p>
2465 <h2><a name="X3">X3. Messages containing "From" at start of line are being split.</a></h2>
2467 If you know the messages aren't split in your server mailbox, then this
2468 is a problem with your POP/IMAP server, your client-side SMTP listener or
2469 your local delivery agent. Fetchmail cannot split messages.<p>
2471 Some POP server daemons ignore Content-Length headers and split messages on
2472 From lines. We have one report that the 2.1 version of the BSD popper
2473 program (as distributed on Solaris 2.5 and elsewhere) is broken this way.<p>
2475 You can test this. Declare an mda of `cat' and send yourself one
2476 piece of mail containing "From" at start of a line. If you see a
2477 split message, your POP/IMAP server is at fault. Upgrade to a more
2480 Sendmail and other SMTP listeners don't split RFC822 messages either.
2481 What's probably happening is either sendmail's local delivery agent or
2482 your mail reader are not quite RFC822-conformant and are breaking
2483 messages on what it thinks are Unix-style From headers. You can
2484 figure out which by looking at your client-side mailbox with vi or
2485 more. If the message is already split in your mailbox, your local
2486 delivery agent is the problem. If it's not, your mailreader is the
2489 If you can't replace the offending program, take a look at your
2490 sendmail.cf file. There will likely be a line something like<p>
2493 Mlocal, P=/usr/bin/procmail, F=lsDFMShP, S=10, R=20/40, A=procmail -Y -d $u
2496 describing your local delivery agent. Try inserting the `E' option in the
2497 flags part (the F= string). This will make sendmail turn each dangerous
2498 start-of-line From into a >From, preventing programs further downstream
2502 <h2><a name="generic_mangling"><a name="X4">X4. My mail is being mangled in a new and different way</a></a></h2>
2504 The first thing you need to do is pin down what program is doing the
2505 mangling. We don't like getting bug reports about fetchmail that are
2506 actually due to some other program's malfeasance, so please go through
2507 this diagnostic sequence before sending us a complaint.<P>
2509 There are five possible culprits to consider, listed here in the order
2510 they pass your mail:<P>
2513 <li> Programs upstream of your server mailbox.
2514 <li> The POP or IMAP server on your mailserver host.
2515 <li> The fetchmail program itself.
2516 <li> Your local sendmail.
2517 <li> Your LDA (local delivery agent), as called by sendmail or
2518 specified by <code>mda</CODE>.
2521 Often it happens that fetchmail itself is OK, but using it exposes
2522 pre-existing bugs in your downstream software, or your downstream
2523 software has a bad interaction with POP/IMAP. You need to pin down
2524 exactly where the message is being garbled in order to deduce what is
2525 actually going on.<P>
2527 The first thing to do is send yourself a test message, and retrieve it
2528 with a .fetchmailrc entry containing the following (or by running with
2529 the equivalent command-line options):<P>
2532 mda "cat >MBOX" keep fetchall
2535 This will capture what fetchmail gets from the server, except for (a)
2536 the extra Received header line fetchmail prepends, (b) header address
2537 changes due to <code>rewrite</code>, and (c) any end-of-line changes
2538 due to the <code>forcecr</code> and <code>stripcr</code> options.
2539 MBOX will in fact contain what programs downstream of fetchmail
2542 The most common causes of mangling are bugs and misconfigurations in
2543 those downstream programs. If MBOX looks unmangled, you will know
2544 that is what is going on and that it is not fetchmail's problem. Take
2545 a look at the other FAQ items in this section for possible clues about
2546 how to fix your problem.<P>
2548 If MBOX looks mangled, the next thing to do is compare it with your
2549 actual server mailbox (if possible). That's why you specified
2550 <code>keep</code>, so the server copy would not be deleted. If your
2551 server mailbox looks mangled, programs upstream of your server mailbox
2552 are at fault. Unfortunately there is probably little you can do about
2553 this aside from complaining to your site postmaster, and nothing at
2554 all fetchmail can do about it!<P>
2556 More likely you'll find that the server copy looks OK. In that case
2557 either the POP/IMAP server or fetchmail is doing the mangling. To
2558 determine which, you'll need to telnet to the server port and simulate
2559 a fetchmail session yourself. This is not actually hard (both POP3
2560 and IMAP are simple, text-only, line-oriented protocols) but requires
2561 some attention to detail. You should be able to use a fetchmail -v
2562 log as a model for a session, but remember that the "*" in your LOGIN
2563 or PASS command dump has to be replaced with your actual password.<P>
2565 The objective of manually simulating fetchmail is so you can see
2566 exactly what fetchmail sees. If you see a mangled message, then your
2567 server is at fault, and you probably need to complain to your
2568 mailserver administrators. However, we like to know what the broken
2569 servers are so we can warn people away from them. So please send
2570 us a transcript of the session including the mangling <em>and the
2571 server's initial greeting line</em>. Please tell us anything else
2572 you think might be useful about the server, like the server host's
2573 operating system.<P>
2575 If your manual fetchmail simulation shows an unmangled message,
2576 congratulations. You've found an actual fetchmail bug, which is a
2577 pretty rare thing these days. Complain to us and we'll fix it.
2578 Please include the session transcript of your manual fetchmail
2579 simulation along with the other things described in the FAQ entry on
2580 <a href="#G3">reporting bugs</a>.
2583 <h2><a name="X5">X5. Using POP3, retrievals seems to be fetching too much!</a></h2>
2585 This may happen in versions of fetchmail after 4.4.1 and before 4.4.8.
2586 Versions after 4.4.1 use POP3's TOP command rather than RETR, in order
2587 to avoid marking the message seen (leaving it unseen is helpful for
2588 later recovery if you lose your connection in the middle of a
2591 Versions of fetchmail from 4.4.2 through 4.4.7 had a bad interaction
2592 with Eudora qpopper versions 2.3 and later. The TOP bounds check was
2593 fooled by an overflow condition in the TOP argument. Decrementing the
2594 TOP argument in 4.4.7 fixed this.<P>
2596 Fix: Upgrade to a later version of fetchmail.<P>
2598 Workaround: set the <code>fetchall</code> option. Under POP3
2599 this has the side effect of forcing RETR use.<P>
2602 <h2><a name="X6">X6. My mail attachments are being dropped or mangled.</a></h2>
2604 This isn't fetchmail's doing -- fetchmail never drops lines in message
2605 bodies or attachments. It may be your POP server, or it may be the
2606 sender's mail user agent (or a bad combination of both).<p>
2608 The Mail Max POP3 server and the InterChange and Imail IMAP servers
2609 are known to simply drop MIME attachments when uploading messages.
2610 We've had sporadic reports of problems with Microsoft Exchange and
2611 Outlook servers. Windows- and NT-based POP servers seem especially
2612 prone to mangle attachments. If you are running one of these,
2613 replacing your server with a Unix machine is probably the only
2614 effective solution.<p>
2616 We've also had a report that Lotus Notes sometimes trashes the
2617 MIME type of messages. In particular, it seems to modify MIME
2618 headers introducing type application/pdf, mangling the type
2619 to application/octet-stream. It may corrupt other MIME types
2622 The IMAP service of Lotus Domino has a known bug in the way it
2623 generates MIME Content-type headers (observed on Lotus Domino 5.0.2b).
2624 It's a subtle one that doesn't show up when Netscape Messenger and
2625 other clients use a FETCH BODY[] to grab the whole message. When
2626 fetchmail uses FETCH RFC822.HEADER and FETCH RFC822.TEXT to get first
2627 the header and then the body, Domino generates different Boundary tags
2628 for each part, .e.g. one tag is declared in the Content-type header and
2629 another is used to separate the MIME parts in the body. This doesn't
2630 work. (I have heard a rumor that this bug is scheduled to be fixed
2631 in Domino release 6; you can find a workaround at contrib/domino.)<p>
2633 Another rich source of attachment problems is Microsoft Exchange and
2634 Microsoft Outlook. If you see unreadable attachments with a
2635 ContentType of "application/x-tnef", you're having this problem. The
2636 <a href="http://world.std.com/~damned/software.html">TNEF</a> utility
2639 Rob Funk explains: Unfortunately there also remain many mail user
2640 agents that don't write correct MIME messages. One big offender is Sun
2641 MailTool attachments, which are formatted enough like MIME that some
2642 programs could get confused; these are generated by the mailtool and
2643 dtmail programs (the mail programs in Sun's OpenWindows and CDE
2646 One solution to problems related to misformatted MIME attachments is
2647 the <a href="ftp://ftp.uu.se/pub/unix/networking/mail/emil/">emil</a>
2649 href="ftp://ftp.uu.se/pub/unix/networking/mail/emil/TUTORIAL.html">tutorial</a>
2650 file at that site for details on emil. It is useful for
2651 converting character sets, attachment encodings, and attachment
2652 formats. At this writing, emil does not appear to have been
2653 maintained since a patch to version 2.1.0beta9 in late 1997, but it is
2656 One good way of using emil is from within procmail. You can have
2657 procmail look for signs of problematic message formatting, and pipe
2658 those messages through emil to be fixed. emil will not always be able
2659 to fix the problem, in which case the message is unchanged.<p>
2661 A possible rule to be inserted into a .procmailrc file for using emil
2666 * 1^1 ^Content-Type: \/X-sun[^;]*
2667 * 1^1 ^Content-Type: \/application/mac-binhex[^;]*
2668 * 1^1 ^Content-Transfer-Encoding: \/x-binhex[^;]*
2669 * 1^1 ^Content-Transfer-Encoding: \/x-uuencode[^;]*
2671 LOG="Converting $MATCH
2674 | emil -A B -T Q -B BA -C iso-8859-1 -H Q -F MIME \
2675 | gawk '{gsub(/\r\n?/,"\n");print $0}'
2679 The "1^1" in the conditions is a way of specifying to procmail that if
2680 any one of the four listed expressions is found in the message, the
2681 total condition is considered true, and the message gets passed into
2682 emil. These four subconditions check whether the message has a Sun
2683 attachment, a binhex attachment, or a uuencoded attachment; there are
2684 others that could be added to check these things better and to check
2685 other relevant conditions. The "LOG=" line writes a line into the
2686 procmail log; the lone double-quote beginning the following line makes
2687 sure the log entry gets an end-of-line character. The call to gawk
2688 (GNU awk) is for fixing end-of-line conventions, since emil sometimes
2689 leaves those in the format of the originating machine; it could
2690 probably be replaced with a sed subsitution.<p>
2692 The emil call itself tries to ensure that the message uses:
2694 <li> BinHex encoding for any Apple Macintosh-only attachments
2695 <li> Quoted-Printable encoding for text (when necessary)
2696 <li> Base64 Encoding for binary attachments
2697 <li> iso-8859-1 character set for text (unfortunately emil can't yet
2698 convert from windows-1252 to iso-8859-1)
2699 <li> Quoted-Printable encoding for headers
2700 <li> MIME attachment format
2703 Most of these (the primary exceptions being the character set and the
2704 Apple binary format) are as they should be for good internet
2705 interoperability.<p>
2707 Some mail servers (Lotus Domino is a suspect here) mangle
2708 Sun-formatted messages, so the conversion to MIME needs to happen
2709 before such programs see the message. The ideal is to rid the world
2710 of Sun-formatted messages: don't use mailtool for sending attachments
2711 (it doesn't understand MIME anyway, and most of the world doesn't
2712 understand its attachments, so it really shouldn't be used at all),
2713 and make sure dtmail is set to use MIME rather than mailtool's format.<p>
2716 <h2><a name="O1">O1. The --logfile option doesn't work if the logfile doesn't exist.</a></h2>
2718 This is a feature, not a bug. It's in line with normal practice for
2719 system daemons and allows you to suppress logging by removing the log,
2720 without hacking potentially fragile startup scripts. To get around
2721 it, just touch(1) the logfile before you run fetchmail (this will have
2722 no effect on the contents of the logfile if it already exists).<P>
2725 <h2><a name="O2">O2. Every time I get a POP or IMAP message the header
2726 is dumped to all my terminal sessions.</a></h2>
2728 Fetchmail uses the local sendmail to perform final delivery, which
2729 Netscape and other clients doesn't do; the announcement of new messages
2730 is done by a daemon that sendmail pokes. There should be a ``biff''
2731 command to control this. Type
2737 to turn it off. If this doesn't work, try the command
2743 which is essentially what <code>biff -n</code> will do. If this
2744 doesn't work, comment out any reference to ``comsat'' in your
2745 /etc/inetd.conf file and restart inetd.<P>
2747 In Slackware Linux distributions, the last line in /etc/profile is
2759 to solve the problem system-wide.<P>
2762 <h2><a name="O3">O3. Does fetchmail reread its rc file every poll cycle?</a></h2>
2764 No, but versions 5.2.2 and later will notice when you modify your rc
2765 file and restart, reading it.
2768 <h2><a name="O4">O4. Why do deleted messages show up again when I take
2769 a line hit while downloading?</a></h2>
2771 Because you're using a POP3 other than Qualcomm qpopper, or an IMAP
2772 with a long expunge interval.<P>
2774 According to the POP3 RFCs, deletes aren't actually performed until
2775 you issue the end-of-session QUIT command. Fetchmail cannot fix this,
2776 because doing it right takes cooperation from the server. There are
2777 two possible remedies:<P>
2779 One is to switch to qpopper (the free POP3 server from Qualcomm,
2780 the Eudora people). The qpopper software violates the POP3 RFCs by
2781 doing an expunge (removing deleted messages) on a line hangup, as well
2782 as on processing a QUIT command.<P>
2784 The other (which we recommend) is to switch to <a
2785 href="http://www.imap.org">IMAP</a>. IMAP has an explicit expunge
2786 command and fetchmail normally uses it to delete messages immediately
2787 after they are downloaded.<P>
2789 If you get very unlucky, you might take a line hit in the window
2790 between the delete and the expunge. If you've set a longer expunge
2791 interval, the window gets wider. This problem should correct itself
2792 the next time you complete a successful query.<P>
2795 <h2><a name="O5">O5. Why is fetched mail being logged with my name, not the real From address?</a></h2>
2797 Because logging is done based on the address indicated by the sending
2798 SMTP's MAIL FROM, and some listeners are picky about that address.<p>
2800 Some SMTP listeners get upset if you try to hand them a MAIL FROM
2801 address naming a different host than the originating site for your
2802 connection. This is a feature, not a bug -- it's supposed to help
2803 prevent people from forging mail with a bogus origin site. (RFC 1123
2804 says you shouldn't do this exclusion...)<p>
2806 Since the originating site of a fetchmail delivery connection is
2807 localhost, this effectively means these picky listeners will barf on
2808 any MAIL FROM address fetchmail hands them with an @ in it!<p>
2810 Versions 2.1 and up try the header From address first and fall back to
2811 the calling-user ID. So if your SMTP listener isn't picky, the log
2815 <h2><a name="O6">O6. I'm seeing long sendmail delays or hangs near the start of each poll cycle.</a></h2>
2817 Sendmail does a hostname lookup when it first starts up, and also each
2818 time it gets a HELO in listener mode.<p>
2820 Your resolver configuration may be causing one of these lookups to
2821 fail and time out. Check <code>/etc/resolv.conf</code> and
2822 <code>/etc/hosts</code> file. Make sure your hostname and
2823 fully-qualified domain name are both in <code>/etc/hosts</code>, and
2824 that hosts is looked at before DNS is queried. You probably also want
2825 your remote mail server(s) to be in the hosts file.<p>
2827 You can suppress the startup-time lookup if need to by reconfiguring
2828 with <code>FEATURE(nodns)</code>.<p>
2830 Configuring your bind library to cache DNS lookups locally may help,
2831 and is a good idea for speeding up other services as well. Switching to
2832 a faster MTA like qmail or exim might help. <p>
2835 <h2><a name="O7">O7. Why doesn't fetchmail deliver mail in date-sorted order?</a></h2>
2837 Because that's not the order the server hands it to fetchmail in.<P>
2839 Fetchmail getting mail from a POP server delivers mail in the order
2840 that your server delivers mail. Fetchmail can't do anything about
2841 this; it's a limitation of the underlying POP protocol.<P>
2843 In theory it might be possible for fetchmail in IMAP mode to sort
2844 messages by date, but this would be in violation of two basics of
2845 fetchmail's design philosophy: (a) to be as simple and transparent a
2846 pipe as possible, and (b) to <em>hide</em>, rather than emphasize, the
2847 differences between the remote-fetch protocols it uses.<P>
2849 Re-ordering messages is a user-agent function, anyway.<P>
2852 <h2><a name="O8">O8. I'm using pppd. Why isn't my monitor option working?</a></h2>
2854 There is a combination of circumstances that can confuse fetchmail.
2855 If you have set up demand dialing with pppd, and pppd has an idle
2856 timeout, and you have lcp-echo-interval set, then the
2857 lcp-echo-interval time must be longer than the pppd idle timeout.
2858 Otherwise it is going keep increasing the packet counters that fetchmail
2859 relies upon, triggering fetchmail into polling after its own delay
2860 interval and thus preventing the pppd link from ever reaching its
2861 inactivity timeout.<p>
2864 <h2><a name="O9">O9. Why does fetchmail keep retrieving the same messages
2867 First, check to see that you haven't enabled the <cite>keep</cite>
2868 and <cite>fetchall</cite> option. If you have, turn <cite>keep</cite> off.<p>
2870 There are various forms of lossage involving the POP3 UIDL feature
2871 that can lead to all your old messages being seen again after a line
2872 drop. I have given up trying to fix these, as the UIDL code breaks
2873 worse every time I touch it. The problem is fundamental; maintaining
2874 and garbage-collecting the right kind of client-side state is just
2875 hard. Whoever put UIDLs in RFC1725 and removed LAST should be hung
2876 up by his thumbs and whipped with scorpions. The right answers are
2877 either (a) live with the occasional breakage, (b) switch to IMAP4,
2878 or (c) fix the code yourself and send me a patch. Unless you choose
2879 (c), I don't want to hear about it.<p>
2881 This can also happen when some other mail client is logged in to your
2882 mail server, if it uses a simple exclusive-locking scheme (and many,
2883 especially most POP3 servers, do exactly that). Your fetchmail is
2884 able to retrieve the messages, but because the mailbox is write-locked
2885 by the other instance yours can neither mark messages seen or delete them.
2886 The solution is to either (a) wait for the other client to finish, or (b)
2889 James Stevens <James.Stevens@kyzo.com> writes:<p>
2892 We had a Linux box dialing the Net and collecting mail from an NT POP3
2893 server. Fetchmail was correctly collecting and deleting each e-mail
2894 one by one. However,the dial-up connection was very unreliable and
2895 would often just drop out in the middle of a session.<p>
2897 Interestingly, unless the TCP POP3 connection was terminated normally
2898 (I guess with a POP3 "QUIT" command) NT would then roll back all the
2901 This meant if the first e-mail was very large it might just end up
2902 continuously collecting it, basically jamming the queue. Or, if the
2903 queue became very full itmight never get a long enough phone
2904 connection to retrieve the entire mailbox, and NT would roll back any
2905 deletes, so it would end up collecting (and delivering) the first few
2906 e-mails again and again. As the POP3 mailbox became fuller and fuller
2907 the chances of getting a connection long enough to collect theentire
2908 mailbox became smaller and smaller.<p>
2910 Our solution was to make fetchmail only collect a few (say 5 or 10)
2911 e-mails at atime, thus trying to ensure that the POP3 connection is
2912 terminated correctly.
2915 That's one solution. Perhaps a better one would be to FORMAT C: and
2916 install Linux on your server...<p>
2919 <table width="100%" cellpadding=0><tr>
2920 <td width="30%">Back to <a href="index.html">Fetchmail Home Page</a>
2921 <td width="30%" align=center>To <a href="/~esr/sitemap.html">Site Map</a>
2922 <td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 2000/10/08 14:34:19 $
2925 <P><ADDRESS>Eric S. Raymond <A HREF="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com"><esr@snark.thyrsus.com></A></ADDRESS>
2930 compile-command: "(cd ~/WWW; upload fetchmail/fetchmail-FAQ.html)"
projects / ~andy / fetchmail / blob