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13 <td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 1999/09/23 12:48:32 $
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. How can I avoid sending my password en clair?</a><br>
36 <a href="#G9">G9. Is any special configuration needed to use a dynamic
38 <a href="#G10">G10. Is any special configuration needed to use firewalls?</a><br>
39 <a href="#G11">G11. Is any special configuration needed to <em>send</em> mail?</a><br>
40 <a href="#G12">G12. Is fetchmail Y2K-compliant?</a><br>
41 <a href="#G13">G13. Is there a way in fetchmail to support disconnected IMAP mode?<br>
43 <h1>Build-time problems:</h1>
45 <a href="#B1">B1. Lex bombs out while building the fetchmail lexer.</a><br>
46 <a href="#B2">B2. I get link failures when I try to build fetchmail.</a><br>
48 <h1>Fetchmail configuration file grammar questions:</h1>
50 <a href="#F1">F1. Why does my old .fetchmailrc no longer work?</a><br>
51 <a href="#F2">F2. The .fetchmailrc parser won't accept my all-numeric user name.</a><br>
52 <a href="#F3">F3. The .fetchmailrc parser won't accept my host or username beginning with `no'.</a><br>
53 <a href="#F4">F4. I'm migrating from popclient. How do I need to modify my .poprc?</a><br>
54 <a href="#F5">F5. I'm getting a `parse error' message I don't understand.</a><br>
56 <h1>Configuration questions:</h1>
58 <a href="#C1">C1. Why do I need a .fetchmailrc when running as root on my own machine?</a><br>
59 <a href="#C2">C2. How can I arrange for a fetchmail daemon to get killed when I log out?</a><br>
60 <a href="#C3">C3. How do I know what interface and address to use with --interface?</a><br>
61 <a href="#C4">C4. How can I set up support for sendmail's anti-spam features?</a><br>
63 <h1>How to make fetchmail play nice with various MTAs:</h1>
65 <a href="#T1">T1. How can I use fetchmail with sendmail?</a><br>
66 <a href="#T2">T2. How can I use fetchmail with qmail?</a><br>
67 <a href="#T3">T3. How can I use fetchmail with exim?</a><br>
68 <a href="#T4">T4. How can I use fetchmail with smail?</a><br>
69 <a href="#T5">T5. How can I use fetchmail with SCO's MMDF?</a><br>
70 <a href="#T6">T6. How can I use fetchmail with Lotus Notes?</a><br>
72 <h1>How to make fetchmail work with various servers:</h1>
74 <a href="#S1">S1. How can I use fetchmail with qpopper?</a><br>
75 <a href="#S2">S2. How can I use fetchmail with Microsoft Exchange?</a><br>
76 <a href="#S3">S3. How can I use fetchmail with Compuserve RPA?</a><br>
77 <a href="#S4">S4. How can I use fetchmail with Demon Internet's SDPS?</a><br>
78 <a href="#S5">S5. How can I use fetchmail with usa.net's servers?</a><br>
79 <a href="#S6">S6. How can I use fetchmail with HP OpenMail?</a><br>
80 <a href="#S7">S7. How can I use fetchmail with geocities POP3 servers?</a><br>
81 <a href="#S8">S8. How can I use fetchmail with Hotmail?</a><br>
82 <a href="#S9">S9. How can I use fetchmail with MSN?</a><br>
83 <a href="#S10">S10. How can I use fetchmail with SpryNet?</a><br>
85 <h1>How to set up well-known security and authentication methods:</h1>
87 <a href="#K1">K1. How can I use fetchmail with SOCKS?</a><br>
88 <a href="#K2">K2. How can I use fetchmail with IPv6 and IPsec?</a><br>
89 <a href="#K3">K3. How can I get fetchmail to work with ssh?</a><br>
90 <a href="#K4">K4. What do I have to do to use the IMAP-GSS protocol?</a><br>
91 <a href="#K5">K5. How can I use fetchmail with SSL?</a><br>
93 <h1>Runtime fatal errors:</h1>
95 <a href="#R1">R1. Fetchmail isn't working, and -v shows `SMTP connect failed' messages.</a><br>
96 <a href="#R2">R2. When I try to configure an MDA, fetchmail doesn't work.</a><br>
97 <a href="#R3">R3. Fetchmail dumps core when given an invalid rc file.</a><br>
98 <a href="#R4">R4. Fetchmail dumps core in -V mode, but operates normally otherwise.</a><br>
99 <a href="#R5">R5. Running fetchmail in daemon mode doesn't work.</a><br>
100 <a href="#R6">R6. Fetchmail hangs when used with pppd.</a><br>
101 <a href="#R7">R7. Fetchmail randomly dies with socket errors.</a><br>
102 <a href="#R8">R8. Fetchmail running as root stopped working after an OS upgrade</a><br>
103 <a href="#R9">R9. Fetchmail is timing out after fetching certain
104 messages but before deleting them</a><br>
106 <h1>Disappearing mail</h1>
108 <a href="#D1">D1. I think I've set up fetchmail correctly, but I'm not getting any mail.</a><br>
109 <a href="#D2">D2. All my mail seems to disappear after a dropped connection.</a><br>
110 <a href="#D3">D3. Mail that was being fetched when I interrupted my fetchmail seems to have been vanished.</a><br>
112 <h1>Multidrop-mode problems:</h1>
114 <a href="#M1">M1. I've declared local names, but all my multidrop mail is going to root anyway.</a><br>
115 <a href="#M2">M2. I can't seem to get fetchmail to route to a local domain properly.</a><br>
116 <a href="#M3">M3. I tried to run a mailing list using multidrop, and I have a mail loop!</a><br>
117 <a href="#M4">M4. My multidrop fetchmail seems to be having DNS problems.</a><br>
118 <a href="#M5">M5. I'm seeing long DNS delays before each message is processed.</a><br>
119 <a href="#M6">M6. How do I get multidrop mode to work with majordomo?</a><br>
120 <a href="#M7">M7. Multidrop mode isn't parsing envelope addresses from
121 my Received headers as it should.</a><br>
123 <h1>Mangled mail:</h1>
125 <a href="#X1">X1. Spurious blank lines are appearing in the headers of fetched mail.</a><br>
126 <a href="#X2">X2. My mail client can't see a Subject line.</a><br>
127 <a href="#X3">X3. Messages containing "From" at start of line are being split.</a><br>
128 <a href="#X4">X4. My mail is being mangled in a new and different way.</a><br>
129 <a href="#X5">X5. Using POP3, retrievals seems to be fetching too much!</a><br>
131 <h1>Other problems:</h1>
133 <a href="#O1">O1. The --logfile option doesn't work if the logfile doesn't exist.</a><br>
134 <a href="#O2">O2. Every time I get a POP or IMAP message the header is
135 dumped to all my terminal sessions.</a><br>
136 <a href="#O3">O3. Does fetchmail reread its rc file every poll cycle?</a><br>
137 <a href="#O4">O4. Why do deleted messages show up again when I take
138 a line hit while downloading?</a><br>
139 <a href="#O5">O5. Why is fetched mail being logged with my name, not the real From address?</a><br>
140 <a href="#O6">O6. I'm seeing long sendmail delays or hangs near the start of each poll cycle.</a><br>
141 <a href="#O7">O7. Why doesn't fetchmail deliver mail in date-sorted order?</a><br>
142 <a href="#O8">O8. I'm using pppd. Why isn't my monitor option working?</a><br>
146 <h2><a name="G1">G1. What is fetchmail and why should I bother?</a></h2>
148 Fetchmail is a one-stop solution to the remote mail retrieval problem
149 for Unix machines, quite useful to anyone with an intermittent PPP or
150 SLIP connection to a remote mailserver. It can collect mail using any
151 variant of POP or IMAP and forwards via port 25 to the local SMTP
152 listener, enabling all the normal forwarding/filtering/aliasing
153 mechanisms that would apply to local mail or mail arriving via a
154 full-time TCP/IP connection.<p>
156 Fetchmail is not a toy or a coder's learning exercise, but an
157 industrial-strength tool capable of transparently handling every
158 retrieval demand from those of a simple single-user ISP connection up
159 to mail retrieval and rerouting for an entire client domain.
160 Fetchmail is easy to configure, unobtrusive in operation, powerful,
161 feature-rich, and well documented. <P>
163 Fetchmail is <a href="http://www.opensource.org">Open Source</a>
164 software. The openness of the sources is the strongest assurance of
165 quality you can have. Extensive peer review by a large,
166 multi-platform user community has shown that fetchmail is as near
167 bulletproof as the underlying protocols permit.<p>
169 Fetchmail is licensed under the <a
170 href="http://gnu.org//copyleft/gpl.html">GNU General Public
173 If you found this FAQ in the distribution, see the README for fetchmail's
174 full feature list.<p>
177 <h2><a name="G2">G2. Where do I find the latest FAQ and fetchmail
180 The latest HTML FAQ is available alongside the latest fetchmail
181 sources at the fetchmail home page:
182 <a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail">
183 http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail</a>. You can also usually find
185 href="http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/mail/pop/!INDEX.html">POP
186 mail tools directory on Sunsite</a>.<p>
188 A text dump of this FAQ is included in the fetchmail
189 distribution. Because it freezes at distribution release time, it may
190 not be completely current.<p>
193 <h2><a name="G3">G3. I think I've found a bug. Will you fix it?</a></h2>
195 Yes I will, provided you include enough diagnostic information for me
196 to go on. Send bugs to <a
197 href="mailto:fetchmail-friends@ccil.org">fetchmail-friends</a>. When reporting
198 bugs, please include the following:
201 <li>Your operating system and compiler version.
202 <li>A copy of your POP or IMAP server's greeting line.
203 <li>The name and version of the SMTP listener or MDA you are forwarding to.
204 <li>Any command-line options you used.
205 <li>The output of fetchmail -V called with whatever other
206 command-line options you used.
209 Often, the first thing I will do when you report a bug is tell you to
210 upgrade to the newest version, and then see if the problem reproduces.
211 So you'll probably save us both time if you upgrade and test with
212 the latest version <em>before</em> sending in a bug report.<P>
214 It is helpful if you include your .fetchmailrc file, but not necessary
215 unless your symptom seems to involve an error in configuration
216 parsing. If you do send in your .fetchmailrc, mask the passwords
219 If fetchmail seems to run and fetch mail, but the headers look mangled
220 (that is, headers are missing or blank lines are inserted in the
221 headers) then read the FAQ items in section <a href="#X1">X</a>
222 before submitting a bug report. Pay special attention to the item on
223 <a href="#generic_mangling">diagnosing mail mangling</a>. There are
224 lots of ways for other programs in the mail chain to screw up that
225 look like fetchmail's fault, but you may be able to fix these by
226 tweaking your configuration.<P>
228 A transcript of the failed session with -v -v (yes, that's
229 <em>two</em> -v options, enabling debug mode) will almost always be useful.
230 It is very important that the transcript include your POP/IMAP server's
231 greeting line, so I can identify it in case of server problems. This
232 transcript will not reveal your passwords, which are specially masked
233 out precisely so the transcript can be passed around.<P>
235 If the bug involves a core dump or hang, a gdb stack trace is good to have.
236 (Bear in mind that you can attach gdb to a running but hung process by
237 giving the process ID as a second argument.) You will need to
241 CFLAGS=-g LDFLAGS=" " ./configure
244 and then rebuild in order to generate a version that can be gdb-traced.<p>
246 Best of all is a mail file which, when fetched, will reproduce the
247 bug under the latest (current) version.<p>
249 Any bug I can reproduce will usually get fixed very quickly, often
250 within 48 hours. Bugs I can't reproduce are a crapshoot. If the
251 solution isn't obvious when I first look, it may evade me for a long
252 time (or to put it another way, fetchmail is well enough tested that the
253 easy bugs have long since been found). So if you want your bug fixed
254 rapidly, it is not just sufficient but nearly <em>necessary</em> that
255 you give me a way to reproduce it.<p>
258 <h2><a name="G4">G4. I have this idea for a neat feature. Will you add it?</a></h2>
260 Probably not. Most of the feature suggestions I get are for ways to
261 set various kinds of administrative policy or add more spam filtering
262 (the most common one, which I used to get about four million times a week
263 and got <em>really</em> tired of, is for tin-like kill files).<p>
265 You can do spam filtering better with procmail or maildrop on the
266 server side and (if you're the server sysadmin) sendmail.cf domain
267 exclusions. You can do other policy things better with the
268 <CODE>mda</CODE> option and script wrappers around fetchmail. If
269 it's a prime-time-vs.-non-prime-time issue, ask yourself whether a
270 wrapper script called from crontab would do the job.<p>
272 I'm not going to do these; fetchmail's job is transport, not policy, and I
273 refuse to change it from doing one thing well to attempting many things badly.
274 One of my objectives is to keep fetchmail simple so it stays reliable.<p>
276 Furthermore, since about version 4.3.0 fetchmail has passed out of active
277 development and been essentially stable. It is no longer my top
278 project, and I am going to be quite reluctant to add features that
279 might either jeopardize its stability or involve me in large
280 amounts of coding.<p>
282 All that said, if you have a feature idea that really is about a transport
283 problem that can't be handled anywhere but fetchmail, lay it on me. I'm
284 very accommodating about good ideas.<p>
287 <h2><a name="G5">G5. Is there a mailing list for exchanging tips?</a></h2>
289 There is a fetchmail-friends list for people who want to discuss fixes
290 and improvements in fetchmail and help co-develop it. It's at <a
291 href="mailto:fetchmail-friends@thyrsus.com">fetchmail-friends@thyrsus.com</a>.
292 There is also an announcements-only list, <em>fetchmail-announce@thyrsus.com</em>.<P>
294 Both lists are SmartList reflectors; sign up in the usual way with a
295 message containing the word "subscribe" in the subject line sent to
296 <a href="mailto:fetchmail-friends-request@thyrsus.com?subject=subscribe">
297 fetchmail-friends-request@thyrsus.com</a> or
298 <a href="mailto:fetchmail-announce-request@thyrsus.com?subject=subscribe">
299 fetchmail-announce-request@thyrsus.com</a>. (Similarly, "unsubscribe"
300 in the Subject line unsubscribes you, and "help" returns general list help) <p>
303 <h2><a name="G6">G6. So, what's this I hear about a fetchmail paper?</a></h2>
305 The fetchmail development was also a sociological experiment, an
306 extended test to see if my theory about the critical features of the
307 Linux development model is correct.<p>
309 The experiment was a success. I wrote a paper about it titled <a
310 href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral.html">The
311 Cathedral and the Bazaar</a> which was first presented at Linux
312 Kongress '97 in Bavaria and very well received there. It was also
313 given at Atlanta Linux Expo, Linux Pro '97 in Warsaw, and the first
314 Perl Conference, at UniForum '98, and was the basis of an invited
315 presentation at Usenix '98. The folks at Netscape tell me it helped
317 href="http://www.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease558.html"> give
318 away the source for Netscape Communicator</a>.<p>
320 If you're reading a non-HTML dump of this FAQ, you can find the paper
321 on the Web with a search for that title.<p>
324 <h2><a name="G7">G7. What is the best server to use with fetchmail?</a></h2>
326 The short answer: IMAP4rev1 running over Unix.<P>
328 Here's a longer answer: <P>
330 Fetchmail will work with any POP, IMAP, or ESMTP/ETRN server that
331 conforms to the relevant RFCs (and even some outright broken ones like
332 <a href="#S2">Microsoft Exchange</a>). This doesn't mean it works
333 equally well with all, however. POP2 servers, and POP3 servers
334 without LAST, limit fetchmail's capabilities in various ways described
335 on the manual page.<P>
337 Most modern Unixes (and effectively all Linux/*BSD systems) come with
338 POP3 support preconfigured (but beware of the horribly broken POP3
339 server mentioned in <a href="#D2">D2</a>). An increasing minority
340 also feature IMAP (you can detect IMAP support by running fetchmail in
341 AUTO mode, or by using the `Probe for a server' function in the
342 fetchmailconf utility).<P>
344 If you have the option, we recommend using or installing an IMAP4rev1
345 server; it has the best facilities for tracking message `seen' states.
346 It also recovers from interrupted connections more gracefully than
347 POP3, and enables some significant performance optimizations.<P>
349 Don't be fooled by NT/Exchange propaganda. M$ Exchange is just plain
350 broken (see item <a href="#S2">S2</a>) and NT cannot handle the
351 sustained load of a high-volume remote mail server. Even Microsoft
352 itself knows better than to try this; their own Hotmail service runs
353 over Solaris! For extended discussion, see John Kirch's excellent <a
354 href="http://unix-vs-nt.org/kirch/">white paper</a> on Unix
355 vs. NT performance.<P>
357 You can find sources for IMAP software at <a
358 href="http://www.imap.org">The IMAP Connection</a>; we like the
359 open-source <a href="ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/imap/">UW IMAP</a>
360 server, which is the reference implementation of IMAP. UW IMAP's
361 support for GSSAPI gives you a good way to authenticate without
362 sending a password en clair.<P>
364 Source for a high-quality supported implementation of POP is available
365 from the <a href="ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com/eudora/servers/unix/popper/">Eudora
366 FTP site</a>. Don't use 2.5, which has a rather restrictive license.
367 The 2.5.2 version appears to restore the open-source license of
372 <h2><a name="G8">G8. How can I avoid sending my password en clair?</a></h2>
374 Depending on what your mail server you are talking to, this ranges
375 from trivial to impossible. It may even be next to useless.<P>
377 Most people use fetchmail over phone wires, which are hard to tap.
378 Anybody with the skill and resources to do this could get into your
379 server mailbox with much less effort by subverting the server host.
380 So if your provider setup is modem wires going straight into a service
381 box, you probably don't need to worry.<P>
383 In general there is little point in trying to secure your fetchmail
384 transaction unless you trust the security of the server host you are
385 retrieving mail from. Your vulnerability is more likely to be an
386 insecure local network on the server end (e.g. to somebody with a TCP/IP
387 packet sniffer intercepting Ethernet traffic between the modem
388 concentrator you dial in to and the mailserver host).<P>
390 Having realized this, you need to ask whether password encryption
391 alone will really address your security exposure. If you think you
392 might be snooped, it's better to use end-to-end encryption on your
393 whole mail stream so none of it can be read. One of the advantages of
394 fetchmail over conventional SMTP-push delivery is that you may be able
395 to arrange this by using ssh(1); see <a href="#K3">K3</a>.<P>
397 If ssh/sshd isn't available, or you find it too complicated for you to
398 set up, password encryption will at least keep a malicious cracker
399 from deleting your mail, and require him to either tap your connection
400 continuously or crack root on the server in order to read it.<P>
402 You can deduce what encryptions your mail server has available
403 by looking at the server greeting line (and, for IMAP, the
404 response to a CAPABILITY query). Do a <code>fetchmail -v</code>
405 to see these, or telnet direct to the server port (110 for POP3, 143 for
408 The facility you are most likely to have available is APOP. This is a
409 POP3 feature supported by many servers (fetchmailconf's autoprobe
410 facility will detect it and tell you if you have it). If you see
411 something in the greeting line that looks like an
412 angle-bracket-enclosed Internet address with a numeric left-hand part,
413 that's an APOP challenge (it will vary each time you log in). You can
414 register a secret on the host (using <code>popauth(8)</code> or some
415 program like it). Specify the secret as your password in your
416 .fetchmailrc; it will be used to encrypt the current challenge, and
417 the encrypted form will be sent back the the server for
420 Alternatively, you may have Kerberos available. This may require you
421 to set up some magic files in your home directory on your client
422 machine, but means you can omit specifying any password at all.<P>
424 Fetchmail supports two different Kerberos schemes. One is a
425 POP3 variant called KPOP; consult the documentation of your mail
426 server to see if you have it (one clue is the string "krb-IV" in the
427 greeting line on port 110). The other is an IMAP facility described
428 by RFC1731. You can tell if this one is present by looking for
429 AUTH=KERBEROS_V4 in the CAPABILITY response.<P>
431 If you are fetching mail from a CompuServe POP3 account, you can use
432 their RPA authentication (which works much like APOP). See <a
433 href="#S3">S3</a> for details.<P>
435 Your POP3 server may have the RFC1938 OTP capability to use one-time
436 passwords (if it doesn't, you can get OTP patches for the 2.2 version
437 of the Qualcomm popper from <a href="#cmetz">Craig Metz</a>). To check
438 this, look for the string "otp-" in the greeting line. If you see it,
439 and your fetchmail was built with OPIE support compiled in (see the
440 distribution INSTALL file), fetchmail will detect it also. When using
441 OTP, you will specify a password but it will not be sent en clair.<P>
443 Sadly, there is at present (July 1998) no OTP or APOP-like
444 facility generally available on IMAP servers. However, there do exist
445 patches which will OTP-enable the University of Washington IMAP
446 daemon, version 4.2-FINAL. And we have a report that the GSSAPI
447 support in fetchmail works with the GSSAPI support in the most recent
448 version of UW IMAP.<P>
450 You can get both POP3 and IMAP OTP patches from <a name="cmetz">Craig
451 Metz</A>, over FTP via either
452 <a href="ftp://ftp.inner.net/pub/opie/patches">
453 ftp://ftp.inner.net/pub/opie/patches</a> (IPv4) or
454 <a href="ftp://ftp.ipv6.inner.net/pub/opie/patches">
455 ftp://ftp.ipv6.inner.net/pub/opie/patches</a> (IPv6).<P>
457 These patches use a SASL authentication method named "X-OTP" because there is
458 not currently a standard way to do this; fetchmail also uses this method, so
459 the two will interoperate happily. They better, because this is how Craig gets
462 (One important win of OTP is that it's not subject to EAR restrictions.)<P>
465 <h2><a name="G9">G9. Is any special configuration needed to use a dynamic IP address?</a></h2>
467 Yes. In order to avoid giving indigestion to certain picky MTAs
468 (notably <a href="#T3">exim</a>), fetchmail always makes the RCPT TO
469 address it feeds the MTA a fully qualified one with a hostname part.
470 Normally it does this by appending @ and "localhost", but when you are
471 using Kerberos or ETRN mode it will append @ and your machine's
472 fully-qualified domain name (FQDN).<P>
474 Appending the FQDN can create problems when fetchmail is running in daemon
475 mode and outlasts the dynamic IP address assignment your client
476 machine had when it started up.<P>
478 Since the new IP address (looked up at RCPT TO interpretation time)
479 doesn't match the original, the most benign possible result is that
480 your MTA thinks it's seeing a relaying attempt and refuses. More
481 frequently, fetchmail will try to connect to a nonexistent host
482 address and time out. Worst case, you could up forwarding your mail
483 to the wrong machine!<P>
485 Use the <code>smtpaddress</code> option to force the appended hostname
486 to one with a (fixed) IP address of 127.0.0.1 in your
487 <code>/etc/hosts</code>. (The name `localhost' will usually work; or
488 you can use the IP address itself).<P>
490 Only one fetchmail option interacts directly with your IP address,
491 `<code>interface</code>'. This option can be used to set the gateway
492 device and restrict the IP address range fetchmail will use. Such a
493 restriction is sometimes useful for security reasons, especially on
494 multihomed sites. See <a href="#C3">C3</a>.<P>
496 I recommend against trying to set up the <code>interface</code> option
497 when initially developing your poll configuration -- it's never
498 necessary to do this just to get a link working. Get the link working
499 first, observe the actual address range you see on connections, and
500 add an <code>interface</code> option (if you need one) later.<P>
502 If you're using a dynamic-IP configuration, one other (non-fetchmail)
503 problem you may run into with outgoing mail is that some sites will
504 bounce your email because the hostname your giving them isn't real
505 (and doesn't match what they get doing a reverse DNS on your
506 dynamically-assigned IP address). If this happens, you need to hack
507 your sendmail so it masquerades as your host. Setting<P>
513 in your <code>sendmail.cf</code> will work, or you can set<P>
516 MASQUERADE_AS(smarthost.here)
519 in the m4 configuration and do a reconfigure. (In both cases, replace
520 <code>smarthost.here</code> with the actual name of your mailhost.)
521 See the <a href="http://www.lege.com/sendmail-FAQ.txt">sendmail
522 FAQ</a> for more details.<P>
525 <h2><a name="G10">G10. Is any special configuration needed to use firewalls?</a></h2>
527 No. You can use fetchmail with SOCKS, the standard tool for
528 indirecting TCP/IP through a firewall. You can find out about SOCKS,
529 and download the SOCKS software including server and client code, at
530 the <a href="http://www.socks.nec.com/">SOCKS distribution
533 The specific recipe for using fetchmail with a firewall is at <a
537 <h2><a name="B1">B1. Lex bombs out while building the fetchmail lexer.</a></h2>
539 In the immortal words of Alan Cox the last time this came up: ``Take
540 the Solaris lex and stick it up the backside of a passing Sun
541 salesman, then install <a
542 href="ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/ftp/pub/gnu">flex</a> and use that. All
543 will be happier.''<P>
545 I couldn't have put it better myself, and ain't going to try now.<P>
548 <h2><a name="G11">G11. Is any special configuration needed to <em>send</em> mail?</a></h2>
550 A user asks: but how do we send mail out to the POP3 server? Do I need
551 to implement another tool or will fetchmail do this too?<p>
553 Fetchmail only handles the receiving side. The sendmail or other
554 preinstalled MTA on your client machine will handle sending mail
555 automatically; it will ship mail that is submitted while the
556 connection is active, and put mail that is submitted while
557 the connection is inactive into the outgoing queue.<P>
559 Normally, sendmail is also run periodically (every 15 minutes on most
560 Linux systems) in a mode that tries to ship all the mail in the
561 outgoing queue. If you have set up something like pppd to
562 automatically dial out when your kernel is called to open a TCP/IP
563 connection, this will ensure that the mail gets out.<P>
566 <h2><a name="G12">G12. Is fetchmail Y2K-compliant?</a></h2>
568 Fetchmail is fully Y2K-compliant.<P>
570 Fetchmail could theoretically have problems when the 32-bit time_t's roll
571 over in 2038, but I doubt it. Timestamps aren't used for anything but
572 log entry generation.<P>
575 <h2><a name="G13">G13. Is there a way in fetchmail to support disconnected IMAP mode?</a></H2>
577 No. Fetchmail is a mail transport agent, best understood as a protocol
578 gateway between POP3/IMAP servers and SMTP. Disconnected operation
579 requires an elaborate interactive client. It's a very different problem.<p>
582 <h2><a name="B2">B2. I get link failures when I try to build fetchmail.</a></h2>
584 If you get errors resembling these<P>
587 mxget.o(.text+0x35): undefined referenceto `__res_search'
588 mxget.o(.text+0x99): undefined reference to`__dn_skipname'
589 mxget.o(.text+0x11c): undefined reference to`__dn_expand'
590 mxget.o(.text+0x187): undefined reference to`__dn_expand'
591 make: *** [fetchmail] Error 1
594 then you must add "-lresolv" to the LOADLIBS line in your Makefile
595 once you have installed the `bind' package.<P>
598 <h2><a name="F1">F1. Why does my old .fetchmailrc file no longer work?</a></h2>
600 <h3>If your file predates 5.1.0</h3>
602 In 5.1.0, the <tt>auth</tt> keyword and option were changed to
605 <h3>If your file predates 4.5.5</h3>
607 If the <code>dns</code> option is on (the default), you may need to
608 make sure that any hostname you specify (for mail hosts or for an SMTP
609 target) is a canonical fully-qualified hostname). In order to avoid
610 DNS overhead and complications, fetchmail no longer tries to derive
611 the fetchmail client machine's canonical DNS name at startup.<P>
613 <h3>If your file predates 4.0.6:</h3>
615 Just after the `<CODE>via</CODE>' option was introduced, I realized
616 that the interactions between the `<CODE>via</CODE>',
617 `<CODE>aka</CODE>', and `<CODE>localdomains</CODE>' options were out
618 of control. Their behavior had become complex and confusing, so much so
619 that I was no longer sure I understood it myself. Users were being
620 unpleasantly surprised.<P>
622 Rather than add more options or crock the code, I re-thought it. The
623 redesign simplified the code and made the options more orthogonal, but
624 may have broken some complex multidrop configurations.
626 Any multidrop configurations that depended on the name just after the
627 `<CODE>poll</CODE>' or `<CODE>skip</CODE>' keyword being still
628 interpreted as a DNS name for address-matching purposes, even in the
629 presence of a `<CODE>via</CODE>' option, will break.<P>
631 It is theoretically possible that other unusual configurations (such
632 as those using a non-FQDN poll name to generate Kerberos IV tickets) might
633 also break; the old behavior was sufficiently murky that we can't be
634 sure. If you think this has happened to you, contact the maintainer.<P>
636 <h3>If your file predates 3.9.5:</h3>
638 The `<code>remote</code>' keyword has been changed to `<code>folder</code>'.
639 If you try to use the old keyword, the parser will utter a warning.<P>
641 <h3>If your file predates 3.9:</h3>
643 It could be because you're using a .fetchmailrc that's written in the
644 old popclient syntax without an explicit `<CODE>username</CODE>'
645 keyword leading the first user entry attached to a server entry.
647 This error can be triggered by having a user option such as `<CODE>keep</CODE>'
648 or `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>' before the first explicit username. For
649 example, if you write<p>
652 poll openmail protocol pop3
653 keep user "Hal DeVore" there is hdevore here
656 the `<CODE>keep</CODE>' option will generate an entire user entry with
657 the default username (the name of fetchmail's invoking user).<p>
659 The popclient compatibility syntax was removed in 4.0. It complicated
660 the configuration file grammar and confused users.<p>
662 <h3>If your file predates 2.8:</h3>
664 The `<CODE>interface</CODE>', `<CODE>monitor</CODE>' and
665 `<CODE>batchlimit</CODE>' options changed after 2.8.<p>
667 They used to be global options with `<CODE>set</CODE>' syntax like the
668 batchlimit and logfile options. Now they're per-server options, like
669 `<CODE>protocol</CODE>'.<p>
671 If you had something like<p>
674 set interface = "sl0/10.0.2.15"
677 in your .fetchmailrc file, simply delete that line and insert
678 `interface sl0/10.0.2.15' in the server options part of your `defaults'
681 Do similarly for any `<CODE>monitor</CODE>' or `<CODE>batchlimit</CODE>' options.<p>
684 <h2><a name="F2">F2. The .fetchmailrc parser won't accept my all-numeric user name.</a></h2>
686 Either upgrade to a post-5.0.5 fetchmail or put string quotes around it. :-)<p>
688 The configuration file parser in older fetchmail versions treated any
689 all-numeric token as a number, which confused it when it was
690 expecting a name. String quoting forces the token's class.<p>
692 The lexical analyzer in 5.0.6 and beyond is smarter and assumes
693 any token following "username" or "password" is a string.
696 <h2><a name="F3">F3. The .fetchmailrc parser won't accept my host or username beginning with `no'.</a></h2>
698 See <a href="#F2">F2</a> You're caught in an unfortunate crack between
699 the newer-style syntax for negated options (`no keep', `no rewrite'
700 etc.) and the older style run-on syntax (`nokeep', `norewrite'
703 Upgrade to a 5.0.6 or later fetchmail, or put string quotes around your
707 <h2><a name="F4">F4. I'm migrating from popclient. How do I need to modify my .poprc?</a></h2>
709 If you have been using popclient (the ancestor of this program)
710 at version 3.0b6 or later, start with this<p>
713 (cd; mv .poprc .fetchmailrc)
716 and do <code>fetchmail -V</code> to see if fetchmail's parser understands
717 your configuration.<p>
719 Be aware that some of popclient's unnecessary options have been
720 removed (see the NOTES file in the distribution for explanation). You
721 can't deliver to a local mail file or to standard output any more, and
722 using an MDA for delivery is discouraged. If you throw those options
723 away, fetchmail will now forward your mail into your system's normal
724 Internet-mail delivery path.<p>
726 Actually, using an MDA is now almost always the wrong thing; the MDA
727 facility has been retained only for people who can't or won't run a
728 sendmail-like SMTP listener on port 25. The default, SMTP forwarding
729 to port 25, is better for at least three major reasons. One: it feeds
730 retrieved POP and IMAP mail into your system's normal delivery path
731 along with local mail and normal Internet mail, so all your normal
732 filtering/aliasing/forwarding setup for local mail works. Two:
733 because the port 25 listener returns a positive acknowledge, fetchmail
734 can be sure you're not going to lose mail to a disk-full or some other
735 resource-exhaustion problem. Three: it means fetchmail doesn't have
736 to know where the system mailboxes are, or futz with file locking
737 (which makes two fewer places for it to potentially mess up).<p>
739 If you used to use <CODE>-mda "procmail -d</CODE>
740 <em><you></em><CODE>"</CODE> or something similar, forward to port
741 25 and do "<CODE>| procmail -d</CODE> <em><you></em><CODE>"</CODE> in
742 your ~/.forward file.<p>
744 As long as your new .fetchmailrc file does not use the removed
745 `localfolder' option or `<CODE>limit</CODE>' (which now takes a
746 maximum byte size rather than a line count), a straight move or copy
747 of your .poprc will often work. (The new run control file syntax also
748 has to be a little stricter about the order of options than the old,
749 in order to support multiple user descriptions per server; thus you
750 may have to rearrange things a bit.)<p>
752 Run control files in the minimal .poprc format (without the `username'
753 token) will trigger a warning. To eliminate this warning, add the
754 `<CODE>username</CODE>' keyword before your first user entry per server (it is
755 already required before second and subsequent user entries per server.<p>
757 In some future version the `<CODE>username</CODE>' keyword will be required.<p>
760 <h2><a name="F5">F5. I'm getting a `parse error' message I don't understand.</a></h2>
762 The most common cause of mysterious parse errors is putting a server
763 option after a user option. Check the manual page; you'll probably
764 find that by moving one or more options closer to the `poll' keyword
765 you can eliminate the problem.<p>
767 Yes, I know these ordering restrictions are hard to understand.
768 Unfortunately, they're necessary in order to allow the `defaults'
772 <h2><a name="C1">C1. Why do I need a .fetchmailrc when running as root on my own machine?</a></h2>
774 Ian T. Zimmerman <itz@rahul.net> asked:<p>
776 On the machine where I'm the only real user, I run fetchmail as root
777 from a cron job, like this:<p>
780 fetchmail -u "itz" -p POP3 -s bolero.rahul.net
783 This used to work as is (with no .fetchmailrc file in root's home
784 directory) with the last version I had (1.7 or 1.8, I don't
785 remember). But with 2.0, it RECPs all mail to the local root user,
786 unless I create a .fetchmailrc in root's home directory containing:<p>
789 skip bolero.rahul.net proto POP3
793 It won't work if the second line is just "<CODE>user itz</CODE>". This is silly.<p>
795 It seems fetchmail decides to RECP the `default local user' (i.e. the
796 uid running fetchmail) unless there are local aliases, and the
797 `default' aliases (itz->itz) don't count. They should.<p>
801 No they shouldn't. I thought about this for a while, and I don't much
802 like the conclusion I reached, but it's unavoidable. The problem is
803 that fetchmail has no way to know, in general, that a local user `itz'
806 "Ah!" you say, "Why doesn't it check the password file to see if the remote
807 name matches a local one?" Well, there are two reasons.<p>
809 One: it's not always possible. Suppose you have an SMTP host declared
810 that's not the machine fetchmail is running on? You lose.<p>
812 Two: How do you know server itz and SMTP-host itz are the same person?
813 They might not be, and fetchmail shouldn't assume they are unless
814 local-itz can explicitly produce credentials to prove it (that is, the
815 server-itz password in local-itz's .fetchmailrc file.).<p>
817 Once you start running down possible failure modes and thinking about
818 ways to tinker with the mapping rules, you'll quickly find that all the
819 alternatives to the present default are worse or unacceptably
820 more complicated or both.<p>
823 <h2><a name="C2">C2. How can I arrange for a fetchmail daemon to get killed when I log out?</a></h2>
825 The easiest way to dispatch fetchmail on logout (which will work
826 reliably only if you have just one login going at any time) is to
827 arrange for the command `fetchmail -q' to be called on logout. Under
828 bash, you can arrange this by putting `fetchmail -q' in the file
829 `~/.bash_logout'. Most csh variants execute `~/.logout' on logout.
830 For other shells, consult your shell manual page.<p>
832 Automatic startup/shutdown of fetchmail is a little harder to arrange
833 if you may have multiple login sessions going. In the contrib
834 subdirectory of the fetchmail distribution there is some shell code
835 you can add to your .bash_login and .bash_logout profiles that will
836 accomplish this. Thank James Laferriere <babydr@nwrain.net> for
839 Some people start up and shut down fetchmail using the ppp-up and
840 ppp-down scripts of pppd.<p>
843 <h2><a name="C3">C3. How do I know what interface and address to use with --interface?</a></h2>
845 This depends a lot on your local networking configuration (and right
846 now you can't use it at all except under Linux). However, here are
847 some important rules of thumb that can help. If they don't work, ask
848 your local sysop or your Internet provider.<p>
850 First, you may not need to use --interface at all. If your machine
851 only ever does SLIP or PPP to one provider, it's almost certainly by a
852 point to point modem connection to your provider's local subnet that's
853 pretty secure against snooping (unless someone can tap your phone or
854 the provider's local subnet!). Under these circumstances, specifying
855 an interface address is fairly pointless.<p>
857 What the option is really for is sites that use more than one
858 provider. Under these circumstances, typically one of your provider
859 IP addresses is your mailserver (reachable fairly securely via the
860 modem and provider's subnet) but the others might ship your packets
861 (including your password) over unknown portions of the general
862 Internet that could be vulnerable to snooping. What you'll use
863 --interface for is to make sure your password only goes over the
866 To determine the device:<p>
869 <li> If you're using a SLIP link, the correct device is probably sl0.
870 <li> If you're using a PPP link, the correct device is probably ppp0.
871 <li> If you're using a direct connection over a local network such as
872 an ethernet, use the command `netstat -r' to look at your routing table.
873 Try to match your mailserver name to a destination entry; if you don't
874 see it in the first column, use the `default' entry. The device name
875 will be in the rightmost column.
878 To determine the address and netmask:<p>
881 <li> If you're talking to slirp, the correct address is probably 10.0.2.15,
882 with no netmask specified. (It's possible to configure slirp to present
883 other addresses, but that's the default.)
885 <li> If you have a static IP address, run `ifconfig <device>', where <device>
886 is whichever one you've determined. Use the IP address given after
887 "inet addr:". That is the IP address for your end of the link, and is
888 what you need. You won't need to specify a netmask.
890 <li> If you have a dynamic IP address, your connection IP will vary randomly
891 over some given range (that is, some number of the least significant bits
892 change from connection to connection). You need to declare an address
893 with the variable bits zero and a complementary netmask that sets
897 To illustrate the rule for dynamic IP addresses, let's suppose you're
898 hooked up via SLIP and your IP provider tells you that the dynamic
899 address pool is 255 addresses ranging from 205.164.136.1 to
900 205.164.136.255. Then<p>
903 interface "sl0/205.164.136.0/255.255.255.0"
906 would work. To range over any value of the last two octets
907 (65536 addresses) you would use<p>
910 interface "sl0/205.164.0.0/255.255.0.0"
914 <h2><a name="C4">C4. How can I set up support for sendmail's anti-spam features?</a></h2>
916 This answer covers versions of sendmail from 8.8.7 (the version
917 installed in Red Hat 5.1) upwards. If you have an older version,
918 upgrade to sendmail 8.9.<P>
920 Stock sendmails can now do anti-spam exclusions based on a database of
921 filter rules. The human-readable form of the database is at
922 <tt>/etc/mail/deny</tt>. The database itself is at
923 <tt>/etc/mail/deny.db</tt>.<P>
925 The table itself uses email addresses, domain names, and network
926 numbers as keys. For example,</P>
928 spammer@aol.com REJECT
929 cyberspammer.com REJECT
932 <P>would refuse mail from spammer@aol.com, any user from
933 cyberspammer.com (or any host within the cyberspammer.com domain), and
934 any host on the 192.168.212.* network. (This feature can be used to
935 do other things as well; see the <a
936 href="http://www.sendmail.org/m4/anti-spam.html">sendmail
937 documentation</a> for details)</P>
939 To actually set up the database, run
942 makemap hash deny <deny
946 To test, send a message to your mailing address from that host and
947 then pop off the message with fetchmail, using the -v argument. You
948 can monitor the SMTP transaction, and when the FROM address is parsed,
949 if sendmail sees that it is an address in spamlist, fetchmail will
950 flush and delete it.<p>
952 Under no circumstances put your <strong>mailhost</strong> or <strong>any host
953 you accept mail from</strong> using fetchmail into your reject file. You
954 <strong>will</strong> lose mail if you do this!!!<p>
957 <h2><a name="T1">T1. How can I use fetchmail with sendmail?</a></h2>
959 For most sendmails, no special configuration is required. Eric Allman
960 tells me that if <code>FEATURE(always_add_domain)</code> is included
961 in sendmail's configuration, you can leave the <code>rewrite</code>
964 If your sendmail complains ``sendmail does not relay'', make sure
965 your sendmail,cf file says
971 so that sendmail recognizes `localhost' as a name of its host.<p>
973 If you're mailing from another machine on your local network, also
974 ensure that its IP address is listed in ip_allow or name in name_allow
975 (usually in /etc/mail/)<p>
977 If you find that your sendmail doesn't like the address
978 `FETCHMAIL-DAEMON@localhost' (which is used in the bouncemail
979 that fetchmail generates), you may have to set
980 <code>FEATURE(accept_unqualified_senders)</code>.<P>
982 Günther Leber reports that Digital Unix sendmails won't work with
983 fetchmail. The symptom is an error message "<code>553 Local configuration
984 error, hostname not recognized as local</code>". The problem is that
985 fetchmail normally feeds sendmail with the client machine's host
986 address in the MAIL FROM line. These sendmails think this means
987 they're seeing the result of a mail loop and suppress the mail. You
988 may be able to work around this by running in <code>--invisible</code> mode.<P>
990 If you want to support multidrop mode, and you can get access to your
991 mailserver's sendmail.cf file, it's a good idea to add this rule:<P>
997 and declare `<CODE>envelope "Delivered-To:"</CODE>'. This will cause the
998 mailserver's sendmail to reliably write the appropriate envelope
999 address into each message before fetchmail sees it, and tell fetchmail
1000 which header it is. With this change, multidrop mode should work
1001 reliably even when the Received header omits the envelope address
1002 (which will typically be the case when the message has multiple
1006 <h2><a name="T2">T2. How can I use fetchmail with qmail?</a></h2>
1008 Turn on the <CODE>forcecr</CODE> option; qmail's listener mode doesn't like
1009 header or message lines terminated with bare linefeeds.<p>
1011 (This information is thanks to Robert de Bath
1012 <robert@mayday.cix.co.uk>.)<p>
1014 If a mailhost is using the qmail package (see <a
1015 href="http://pobox.com/~djb/qmail.html">http://pobox.com/~djb/qmail.html</a>)
1016 then, providing the local hosts are also using qmail, it is possible
1017 to set up one fetchmail link to be reliably collect the mail for an
1020 One of the basic features of qmail is the `Delivered-To:' message
1021 header. Whenever qmail delivers a message to a local mailbox it puts
1022 the username and hostname of the envelope recipient on this line. The
1023 major reason for this is to prevent mail loops. <p>
1025 To set up qmail to batch mail for a disconnected site the ISP-mailhost
1026 will have normally put that site in its `virtualhosts' control file so
1027 it will add a prefix to all mail addresses for this site. This results
1028 in mail sent to 'username@userhost.userdom.dom.com' having a
1029 'Delivered-To:' line of the form:<p>
1032 Delivered-To: mbox-userstr-username@userhost.userdom.dom.com
1035 A single host maildrop will be slightly simpler:
1038 Delivered-To: mbox-userstr-username@userhost.dom.com
1041 The ISP can make the 'mbox-userstr-' prefix anything they choose
1042 but a string matching the user host name is likely.<p>
1044 To use this line you must:<p>
1047 <li>Ensure the option `envelope Delivered-To:' is in the fetchmail
1050 <li>Ensure you have a localdomains containing 'userdom.dom.com' or
1051 `userhost.dom.com' respectively.
1054 So far this reliably delivers messages to the correct machine of the
1055 local network, to deliver to the correct user the 'mbox-userstr-'
1056 prefix must be stripped off of the user name. This can be done by
1057 setting up an alias within the qmail MTA on each local machine.
1058 Simply create a dot-qmail file called '.qmail-mbox-userstr-default'
1059 in the alias directory (normally /var/qmail/alias) with the contents:<p>
1062 | ../bin/qmail-inject -a -f"$SENDER" "${LOCAL#mbox-userstr-}@$HOST"
1065 Note this <em>does</em> require a modern /bin/sh.<p>
1067 Peter Wilson adds: <P>
1069 ``My ISP uses "alias-unzzippedcom-" as the prefix, which means that I
1070 need to name my file ".qmail-unzzippedcom-default". This is due to
1071 qmail's assumption that a message sent to user-xyz is handled by the
1072 file ~user/.qmail-xyz (or ~user/.qmail-default).''<p>
1074 Luca Olivetti adds:<P>
1076 If you aren't using qmail locally, or you don't want to set up the
1077 alias mechanism described above, you can use the option `<code>qvirtual
1078 "mbox-userstr-"</code>' in your fetchmail config file to strip the prefix
1079 from the local user name.<p>
1082 <h2><a name="T3">T3. How can I use fetchmail with exim?</a></h2><p>
1084 If you have <CODE>rewrite</CODE> on: <P>
1086 There is an RFC1123 requirement that MAIL FROM and RCPT TO addresses
1087 you pass to it have to be canonical (e.g. with a fully qualified
1088 hostname part). Therefore fetchmail tries to pass fully qualified
1089 RCPT TO addresses. But exim does not by default accept `localhost' as
1090 a fully qualified domain. This can be fixed.<P>
1092 In exim.conf, add `localhost' to your local_domains declaration if it's not
1093 already present. For example, the author's site at thyrsus.com would
1094 have a line reading:<P>
1097 local_domains = thyrsus.com:localhost
1100 If you have <CODE>rewrite</CODE> off:<P>
1102 MAIL FROM is a potential problem if the MTAs upstream from your fetchmail
1103 don't necessarily pass canonicalized From and Return-Path addresses,
1104 and fetchmail's <CODE>rewrite</CODE> option is off. The specific case
1105 where this has come up involves bounce messages generated by sendmail
1106 on your mailer host, which have the (un-canonicalized) origin address
1109 The right way to fix this is to enable the <CODE>rewrite</CODE> option and
1110 have fetchmail canonicalize From and Return-Path addresses with the
1111 mailserver hostname before exim sees them. This option is enabled by
1112 default, so it won't be off unless you turned it off.<p>
1114 If you must run with <CODE>rewrite</CODE> off, there is a switch in exim's
1115 configuration files that allows it to accept domainless MAIL FROM
1116 addresses; you will have to flip it by putting the line <p>
1119 sender_unqualified_hosts = localhost
1122 in the main section of the exim configuration file. Note that this
1123 will result in such messages having an incorrect domain name attached
1124 to their return address (your SMTP listener's hostname rather than
1125 that of the remote mail server). <p>
1128 <h2><a name="T4">T4. How can I use fetchmail with smail?</a></h2><p>
1130 Smail 3.2 is very nearly plug-compatible with sendmail, and may work
1131 fine out of the box.<P>
1133 We have one report that when processing multiple messages from a
1134 single fetchmail session, smail sometimes delivers them in an
1135 order other than received-date order. This can be annoying because it
1136 scrambles conversational threads. This is not fetchmail's problem,
1137 it is an smail `feature' and has been reported to the maintainers
1140 Very recent smail versions require an <code>-smtp_hello_verify</code>
1141 option in the smail config file. This overrides smail's check to see
1142 that the HELO address is actually that of the client machine, which
1143 is never going to be the case when fetchmail is in the picture.
1144 According to RFC1123 an SMTP listener <em>must</em> allow this
1145 mismatch, so smail's new behavior (introduced sometime between
1146 3.2.0.90 and 3.2.0.95) is a bug.<P>
1149 <h2><a name="T5">T5. How can I use fetchmail with SCO's MMDF?</a></h2><p>
1151 MMDF itself is difficult to configure, but it turns out that
1152 connecting fetchmail to MMDF's SMTP channel isn't that hard.
1154 href="http://www.aplawrence.com/Unixart/uucptofetch.html">
1155 MMDF recipe</a> that describes replacing a UUCP link with
1156 fetchmail feeding MMDF.<P>
1159 <h2><a name="T6">T6. How can I use fetchmail with Lotus Notes?</a></h2><p>
1161 The Lotus Notes SMTP gateway tries to deduce when it should convert \n
1162 to \r\n, but its rules are not the intuitive and correct-for-RFC822
1163 ones. Use `forcecr'.<P>
1166 <h2><a name="S1">S1. How can I use fetchmail with qpopper?</a></h2>
1168 Qualcomm's qpopper is probably the best-of-breed among POP3 servers, and
1169 is very widely deployed. Nevertheless, it has some problems which
1170 fetchmail exposes. We recommend using <a href="#G7">IMAP</a> instead if at
1171 all possible. If you must talk to qpopper, here are some problems to
1174 <h3>Problems with retrieving large messages from qpopper 2.53</h3>
1176 Tony Tang <a href="mailto:tony@atn.com.hk"><tony@atn.com.hk></a>
1177 reports that there is a bad intercation between fetchmail and qpopper
1178 2.5.3 under Red Hat Linux versions 5.0 to 5.2, kernels 2.0.34 to
1179 2.0.35. When fetching very large messages (over 700K) from 2.5.3,
1180 fetchmail will hang with a socket error.<p>
1182 This is probably not a fetchmail bug, but rather a symptom of some
1183 problem in the networking stack that qpopper's transmission pattern is
1184 tickling, as fetchpop (another Linux POP client) also displays the hang
1185 but Netscape running under Win95 does not. The problem can also be
1187 href="http://www.eudora.com/freeware/qpop.html">upgrading to qpopper
1190 <h3>Bad interaction with fetchmail 4.4.2 to 4,4.7</h3>
1192 Versions of fetchmail from 4.4.2 through 4.4.7 had a bad interaction
1193 with Eudora qpopper versions 2.3 and later. See <a href="#X5">X5</a>
1194 for details. The solution is to upgrade your fetchmail.<p>
1197 <h2><a name="S2">S2. How can I use fetchmail with Microsoft Exchange?</a></h2>
1199 Fetchmail now supports the proprietary NTLM mode used with M$ Exchange
1200 servers. To enable this, configure fetchmail with the --enable-NTLM
1201 option and recompile it.<P>
1203 M$ Exchange violates the POP3 RFCs. Its LIST command does not reveal
1204 the real sizes of mail in the pop mailbox, but the sizes of the
1205 compressed versions in the exchange mail database (thanks to Arjan De
1206 Vet and Guido Van Rooij for alerting us to this problem).<P>
1208 Fetchmail works with M$ Exchange, despite this brain damage. Two
1209 features are compromised. One is that the --limit option will not
1210 work right (it will check against compressed and not actual sizes).
1211 The other is that a too-small SIZE argument may be passed to your
1212 ESMTP listener, assuming you're using one (this should not be a
1213 problem unless the actual size of the message is above the listener's
1214 configured length limit).<P>
1216 Somewhat belatedly, I've learned that there's supposed to be a
1217 registry bit that can fix this breakage:<P>
1220 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MsExchangeIs\Parameters
1221 System\Pop3 Compatibility
1224 This is a bitmask that controls the variations from the standard protocol.
1225 The bits defined are:<P>
1229 <DD>Report exact message sizes for the LIST command
1231 <DD>Allow arbitrary linear whitespace between commands and arguments
1233 <DD>Enable the LAST command
1235 <DD>Allow an empty PASS command (needed for users with blank
1236 passwords, but illegal in the protocol)
1238 <DD>Relax the length restrictions for arguments to commands (protocol
1239 requires 40, but some user names may be longer than that).
1241 <DD>Allow spaces in the argument to the USER command.
1244 There's another one that may be useful to know about:<P>
1247 KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MsExchangeIs\Parameters
1248 System\Pop3 Performance
1253 <DD>Render messages to a temporary stream instead of sending directly
1254 from the database (should always be on)
1256 Flag unrenderable messages (instead of just failing commands)
1257 (should only be on if you are seeing the problems reported
1260 <DD>Return from the QUIT command before all messages have been deleted.
1263 The Microsoft pod-person who revealed this information to me admitted
1264 that he couldn't find it anywhere in their public knowledge base.<P>
1266 You can mess with these bits. Or, better yet, you can lose that
1267 brain-dead Microsoft crap and install a real operating system on your
1271 <h2><a name="S3">S3. How can I use fetchmail with CompuServe RPA?</a></h2>
1273 First, make sure your fetchmail has the RPA support compiled in.
1274 Stock fetchmail binaries (such as you might get from an RPM) don't.
1275 You can check this by looking at the output of <code>fetchmail -V</code>;
1276 if you see the string "+RPA" after the version ID you're good to go,
1277 otherwise you'll have to build your own from sources (see the INSTALL
1278 file in the source distribution for directions).<P>
1280 Give your CompuServe pass-phrase in lower case as your password. Add
1281 `@compuserve.com' to your user ID so that it looks like `user
1282 <UserID>@compuserve.com', where <UserID> can be either
1283 your numerical userID or your E-mail nickname. An RPA-enabled
1284 fetchmail will automatically check for csi.com in the POP server's
1285 greeting line. If that's found, and your user ID ends with
1286 `@compuserve.com', it will query the server to see if it
1287 is RPA-capable, and if so do an RPA transaction rather than a
1288 plain-text password handshake.<P>
1290 <strong>Warning:</strong> the debug (-v -v) output of fetchmail will show
1291 your pass-phrase in Unicode!<P>
1293 These two .fetchmailrc entries show the difference between an RPA and
1294 non-RPA configuration:
1297 # This version will use RPA
1298 poll csi.com via "pop.site1.csi.com" with proto POP3 and options no dns
1299 user "CSERVE_USER@compuserve.com" there with password "CSERVE_PASSWORD"
1300 is LOCAL_USER here options fetchall stripcr
1302 # This version will not use RPA
1303 poll non-rpa.csi.com via "pop.site1.csi.com" with proto POP3 and options no dns
1304 user "CSERVE_USER" there with password "CSERVE_POP3_PASSWORD"
1305 is LOCAL_USER here options fetchall stripcr
1309 <h2><a name="S4">S4. How can I use fetchmail with Demon Internet's SDPS?</a></h2>
1311 <h3>Single-drop mode</h3>
1313 You can get fetchmail to download the email for just one user from
1314 Demon Internet's POP3 server by giving it a username consisting of your
1315 Demon user name followed by your account name, with an at-sign between
1318 For example, to download email for the user <philh@vision25.demon.co.uk>,
1319 you could use the following .fetchmailrc file:<P>
1322 set postmaster "philh"
1323 poll pop3.demon.co.uk with protocol POP3:
1324 user "philh@vision25" is philh
1327 <h3>Multi-drop mode</h3>
1329 Demon Internet's SDPS service is an implementation of POP3. All messages
1330 have a Received: header added when they enter the maildrop, like this:
1333 Received: from punt-1.mail.demon.net by mailstore for fred@xyz.demon.co.uk
1334 id 899963657:10:27896:0; Thu, 09 Jul 98 05:54:17 GMT
1337 To enable multi-drop mode you need to tell fetchmail that 'mailstore' is
1338 the name of the host which accepted the mail, and let it know the
1339 hostname part(s) of your E-mail address. The following example assumes
1340 that your hostname is xyz.demon.co.uk, and that you have also bought
1341 "mail forwarding" for the domain my-company.co.uk (in which case your
1342 MTA must also be configured to accept mail sent to user@my-company.co.uk)
1345 poll pop3.demon.co.uk proto pop3 aka mailstore no dns:
1346 localdomains xyz.demon.co.uk my-company.co.uk
1347 user xyz is * fetchall
1350 The `fetchall' command ensures that all mail is downloaded. If you
1351 want to leave mail on the server use `uidl' and `keep'; Demon does not
1352 implement the obsolete `top' command, because SDPS combines messages
1353 residing on two separate punt clusters into a single POP3 maildrop.
1354 If you do use UIDL, be aware that the "user@host" form for fetching
1355 mail from a particular Demon host will confuse fetchmail's UIDL code;
1358 Note that Demon may delete mail on the server which is more than 30
1359 days old; see their <a
1360 href="http://www.demon.net/services/mail/pop3.html">POP3 page</a> for
1363 <h3>The SDPS extension</h3>
1365 There's a different way to do multidrop. It's not necessary on Demon
1366 Internet, since fetchmail can parse Received addresses, but the person
1367 who implemented this didn't know that. It may be useful if Demon
1368 Internet ever changes mail transports.<P>
1370 SDPS includes a non-standard extension for retrieving the envelope of a
1371 message (*ENV), which fetchmail optionally supports if compiled with the
1372 --enable-SDPS option. If you have it, the first line of the fetchmail -V
1373 response will include the string "+SDPS".<P>
1375 Once you have SDPS compiled in, fetchmail in POP3 mode will
1376 automatically detect when it's talking to a Demon Internet host in
1377 multidrop mode, and use the *ENV extension to get an envelope To address.<P>
1379 The autodetection works by looking at the hostname in the POP3
1380 greeting line; if you're accessing Demon Internet through a proxy it
1381 may fail. To force SDPS mode, pick "sdps" as your protocol.<P>
1384 <h2><a name="S5">S5. How can I use fetchmail with usa.net's servers?</a></h2>
1386 Enable `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>'. A user reports that the 2.2 version
1387 of USA.NET's POP server reports that you must use the
1388 `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>' option to make sure that all of the mail is
1389 retrieved, otherwise some may be left on the server. This is almost
1390 certainly a server bug.<P>
1392 The usa.net servers (at least in their 2.2 version, June 1998) don't
1393 handle the TOP command properly, either. Regardless of the argument
1394 you give it, they retrieve only about 10 lines of the message.
1395 Fetchmail normally uses TOP for message retrieval in order to avoid
1396 marking messages seen, but `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>' forces it to use
1399 (Note: Other failure modes have been reported on usa.net's servers.
1400 They seem to be chronically flaky. We recommend finding another
1404 <h2><a name="S6">S6. How can I use fetchmail with HP OpenMail?</a></h2>
1406 No special configuration is required, but OpenMail versions prior to
1407 6.0 have an annoying bug similar to the big one in <a
1408 href="#S2">Microsoft Exchange</a>. The message sizes it gives in the
1409 LIST are rounded to the nearest 1024 bytes. It also has a nasty habit
1410 of discarding headers it doesn't recognize, such as X- and Resent-
1413 As with M$ Exchange, the only real fix for these problems is to get a
1414 POP (or preferably IMAP) server that isn't brain-dead. OpenMail's
1415 project manager claims these bugs have been fixed in 6.0<P>
1418 <h2><a name="S8">S8. How can I use fetchmail with Hotmail?</a></h2>
1420 You can't, yet. But Hugo Rabson has written a script called `hotmole'
1421 that can retrieve Hotmail mail via the web using Lynx. The script
1423 href="http://www.jin-sei-kai.demon.co.uk/hugo/linux.html">
1424 Hugo Rabson's Linux page</a>.<P>
1427 <h2><a name="S9">S9. How can I use fetchmail with MSN?</a></h2>
1429 You can't. MSN uses something that looks like POP3, except the
1430 authentication part is nonstandard. And of course they don't
1431 document it, so nobody but their Windows clients can speak it.<p>
1433 This is a customer lock-in tactic; we recommend boycotting MSN as the
1434 only appropriate response.<p>
1436 As of 5.0.8, we have support for the client side of NTLM
1437 authentication. It's possible this may enable fetchmail to talk to
1438 MSN; if so, somebody should report it so this FAQ can be corrected.<p>
1441 <h2><a name="S10">S10. How can I use fetchmail with SpryNet?</a></h2>
1443 The SpryNet POP3 servers mark a message queried with TOP as seen.
1444 This means that if your connection drops in mid-message, it may end
1445 up invisibly stuck on your mail spool. Use the <code>fetchall</code>
1446 flag to ensure that it's recovered on the next cycle.<p>
1449 <h2><a name="S10">S10. How can I use fetchmail with Novell GroupWise?</a></h2>
1451 The Novell GroupWise IMAP server would be better named GroupFoolish;
1452 it is (according to the designer of IMAP) unusably broken. Among
1453 other things, it doesn't include a required content length in its
1454 BODY[TEXT] response.<p>
1456 Fetchmail works around this problem, but we strongly recommend voting
1457 with your dollars for a server that isn't brain-dead. If you stick
1458 with code as shoddy as GroupWise seems to be, you will probably pay
1459 for it with other problems.<p>
1462 <h2><a name="K1">K1. How can I use fetchmail with SOCKS?</a></h2>
1464 Daniel Sobral <<a href="mailto:dcs@gns.com.br">dcs@gns.com.br</a>
1465 gave us the following recipe:<P>
1468 <LI> Install socks5. You don't need to have a socks server, you just
1469 want the "runsocks" program.
1470 <LI> Set the environment variable SOCKS_SERVER to the server you'll be
1471 using. Alternatively, you may set SOCKS4_SERVER and/or
1472 SOCKS5_SERVER. E.g.:
1474 export SOCKS5_SERVER=socks.my.domain.com
1476 <LI> Set SOCKS5_USER and SOCKS5_PASSWD if needed.
1477 <LI> Run fetchmail through runsocks. Just like this:
1479 runsocks fetchmail [parameters to fetchmail]
1483 It wasn't that hard, was it? :-)<P>
1485 Giuseppe Guerini added a --with-socks option that supports linking
1486 with socks library. If you specify the value of this option as
1487 ``yes'', the configure script will try to find the Rconnect library
1488 and set the makefile up to link it. You can also specify a directory
1489 containing the Rconnect library.<p>
1492 <h2><a name="S7">S7. How can I use fetchmail with geocities POP3 servers?</a></h2>
1494 Nathan Cutler reports that the the mail.geocities.com POP3 servers
1495 fail to include the first Received line of the message in the send to
1496 fetchmail. This can solve problems if your MUA interprets Received
1497 continuations as body lines and doesn't parse any of the following
1500 Workaround is to use "mda" keyword or "-mda" switch:
1502 mda "sed -e '1s/^\t/Received: /' | formail | /usr/bin/procmail -d <user>"
1504 Replace \t with exactly one tabulation character.
1506 You should also consider using "fetchall" option because Geocities' servers
1507 sometimes think that the first 45 messages have already been read.<P>
1509 Fix: Get an email provider that doesn't suck. Geocities' pop-up adds
1510 are lame, you should boycott them anyway.<P>
1513 <h2><a name="K2">K2. How can I use fetchmail with IPv6 and IPsec?</a></h2>
1515 To use fetchmail with IPv6, you need a system that supports IPv6, the "Basic
1516 Socket Interface Extensions for IPv6" (RFC 2133), and the inet6-apps kit.
1517 This currently means that you need to have a BSD/OS or NetBSD system with
1518 the NRL IPv6+IPsec software distribution or a Linux system with the latest
1519 experimental kernel and net-tools. It should not be hard to build fetchmail on
1520 other IPv6 implementations if you can port the inet6-apps kit.<P>
1522 To use fetchmail with networking security (read: IPsec), you need a system that
1523 supports IPsec, the API described in the "Network Security API for Sockets"
1524 (draft-metz-net-security-api-01.txt), and the inet6-apps kit. This currently
1525 means that you need to have a BSD/OS or NetBSD system with the NRL IPv6+IPsec
1526 software distribution. A Linux IPsec implementation supporting this API will
1527 probably appear in the coming months.<P>
1529 The NRL IPv6+IPsec software distribution can be obtained from: <a
1530 href="http://web.mit.edu/network/isakmp">http://web.mit.edu/network/isakmp</a>
1533 The inet6-apps kit can be obtained from <a
1534 href="ftp://ftp.ipv6.inner.net/pub/ipv6">ftp://ftp.ipv6.inner.net/pub/ipv6</a>
1535 (via IPv6) or <a href="ftp://ftp.inner.net/pub/ipv6">
1536 ftp://ftp.inner.net/pub/ipv6</a> (via IPv4).<P>
1538 More information on using IPv6 with Linux can be obtained from:
1541 <a href="http://www.bieringer.de/linux/IPv6/IPv6-HOWTO/IPv6-HOWTO.html">
1542 http://www.bieringer.de/linux/IPv6/IPv6-HOWTO/IPv6-HOWTO.html</a>
1544 <a href="http://www.ipv6.inner.net/ipv6">http://www.ipv6.inner.net/ipv6</a>
1547 <a href="http://www.inner.net/ipv6">http://www.inner.net/ipv6</a> (via IPv4)
1551 <h2><a name="K3">K3. How can I get fetchmail to work with ssh?</a></h2>
1553 We have three recipes for this. The first is easy to set up,
1554 but only supports one user at a time.<P>
1556 First, a lightly edited version of a recipe from Masafumi NAKANE:<p>
1558 1. You must have ssh (the ssh client) on the local host and sshd (ssh
1559 server) on the remote mail server. And you have to configure ssh so
1560 you can login to the sshd server host without a password. (Refer to ssh
1561 man page for several authentication methods.)<p>
1563 2. Add something like following to your .fetchmailrc file: <p>
1566 poll mailhost port 1234 via localhost with proto pop3:
1567 preconnect "ssh -f -L 1234:mailhost:110 mailhost sleep 20 </dev/null >/dev/null";
1570 (Note that 1234 can be an arbitrary port number. Privileged ports can
1571 be specified only by root.) The effect of this ssh command is to
1572 forward connections made to localhost port 1234 (in above example) to
1575 This configuration will enable secure mail transfer. All the
1576 conversation between fetchmail and remote pop server will be
1579 If sshd is not running on the remote mail server, you can specify
1580 intermediate host running it. If you do this, however, communication
1581 between the machine running sshd and the POP server will not be encrypted.
1582 And the preconnect line would be like this:<p>
1585 preconnect "ssh -f -L 1234:mailhost:110 sshdhost sleep 20 </dev/null >/dev/null"
1588 You can work this trick with IMAP too, but the port number 110 in the
1589 above would need to become 143.<p>
1591 Second, a recipe from Charlie Brady <cbrady@ind.tansu.com.au>:<p>
1593 Charlie says: "The [previous] recipe certainly works, but
1594 the solution I post here is better in a few respects":
1597 <LI>this method will not fail if two or more users attempt to use fetchmail
1599 <LI>you are able to use the full facilities of tcpd to control access
1600 <LI>this method does not depend on the preconnect feature of fetchmail, so
1601 can be used for tunneling of other services as well.
1608 Make sure that the "socket" program is installed on the server
1609 machine. Presently it lives at <a
1610 href="ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/linux/system/network/misc/socket-1.1.tar.gz">
1611 ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/linux/system/network/misc/socket-1.1.tar.gz</a>,
1612 but watch out for a change in version number.<P>
1614 Set up an unprivileged account on your system with a .ssh directory
1615 containing an SSH identity file "identity" with no pass phrase,
1616 "identity.pub" and "known_hosts" containing the host key of your
1617 mailhost. Let's call this account "noddy".
1619 On mailhost, set up no-password access for noddy@yourhost. Add to your
1620 SSH authorized_keys file:
1623 command="socket localhost 110",no-port-forwarding 1024 ......
1626 where "<code>1024</code> ......" is the content of noddy's identity.pub file.
1628 Create a script /usr/local/bin/ssh.fm and make it executable:
1632 exec ssh -q -C -l your.login.id -e none mailhost socket localhost 110
1635 Add an entry in inetd.conf for whatever port you choose to use - say:
1638 1234 stream tcp nowait noddy /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/local/bin/ssh.fm
1641 Send a HUP signal to your inetd.
1644 Now just use localhost:1234 to access your POP server.<P>
1646 For yet a third recipe, see <a href="http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/mini/Secure-POP+SSH.html">Secure POP via SSH mini-HOWTO</a>.<P>
1649 <h2><a name="K4">K4. What do I have to do to use the IMAP-GSS protocol?</a></h2>
1651 Fetchmail can use RFC1731 GSSAPI authorization to safely identify you
1652 to your IMAP server, as long as you can share Kerberos V credentials
1653 with your mail host and you have a GSSAPI-capable IMAP server.
1654 UW-IMAP (available via FTP at <a
1655 href="ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/mail/">ftp.cac.washington.edu</a>)
1656 is the only one I'm aware of and the one I recommend anyway for other
1657 reasons. You'll need version 4.1-FINAL or greater though, and it has
1658 to have GSS support compiled in.<p>
1660 Neither UW-IMAP nor fetchmail compile in support for GSS by default, since
1661 it requires libraries from the Kerberos V distribution (available via FTP at
1662 <a href="ftp://athena-dist.mit.edu/pub/ATHENA/kerberos">athena-dist.mit.edu</a>
1663 but mind the export restrictions). If you have these, compiling in GSS support
1664 is simple: add a <pre>--with-gssapi=[/path/to/krb5/root]</pre> option to
1665 configure. For instance, I have all of my Kerberos V libraries installed under
1666 /usr/krb5 so I run <pre>configure --with-gssapi=/usr/krb5</pre><p>
1668 Setting up Kerberos V authentication is beyond the scope of this FAQ
1669 (you may find Jim Rome's paper <a
1670 href="http://www.ornl.gov/~jar/HowToKerb.html"> How to Kerberize your
1671 site</a> helpful), but you'll at least need to add a credential for
1672 imap/[mailhost] to the keytab of the mail server (IMAP doesn't just
1673 use the host key). Then you'll need to have your credentials ready on
1674 your machine (cf. kinit).<p>
1676 After that things are very simple. Set your protocol to imap-gss in your
1677 .fetchmailrc, and omit the password, since imap-gss doesn't need one. You
1678 can specify a username if you want, but this is only useful if your mailbox
1679 belongs to a username different from your Kerberos principal. <p>
1681 Now you don't have to worry about your password appearing in cleartext in
1682 your .fetchmailrc, or across the network.<p>
1685 <h2><a name="K5">K5. How can I use fetchmail with SSL?</a></h2>
1687 The U.S. government's never-to-be-sufficiently-damned EAR regulations
1688 prevent me from including SSL library hooks in the distribution.
1689 However, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution hasn't been
1690 eviscerated (not yet, anyway -- our would-be totalitarians are
1691 working on trashing the Second Amendment first).<P>
1695 I can therefore safely <em>tell</em> you, in documentation, that there
1696 appears to be a way to set up an SSL command chain using the `plugin'
1697 option (originally designed for handling proxy connections across
1700 Get your hands on the <a
1701 href="http://www.psy.uq.edu.au:8080/~ftp/Crypto/">SSLeay</a> code.
1702 Now make yourself a script called `ssl_connect' that calls the SSLeay
1703 utility `s_client' as follows:<P>
1706 /usr/local/ssl/bin/s_client -quiet -ssl2 -connect $1:$2
1709 Now add `plugin ssl_connect' to the server options for your connection.<P>
1713 For those in the U.S., there is a set of SSL patches for fetchmail
1714 available from the <a href="http://www.cryptography.org">North
1715 American Cryptographic Archives</a>, in the SSL directory. You have
1716 to answer three questions about your qualification to access the
1717 archive, before you are allowed in. You can enter through the main
1718 page for the server and browse the archive, or you can go <a
1719 href="http://www.cryptography.org/cgi-bin/crypto.cgi/SSL">straight to
1720 the SSL directory</a>. There you will find patch files against the
1721 fetchmail release sources as well as patched source tarballs.<P>
1723 While we cannot make the SSL sources available to anyone outside of the
1724 U.S. at this time, if the patches do leak out of the U.S. through no
1725 fault of our own, and someone informs us of their location, we can
1726 provide the URL pointing to archive sites outside of the U.S.<P>
1728 Newer versions of the SSL patches make appear in the `new' directory
1729 and stay there a while until they can be processed and moved to the SSL
1730 directory. Check for patches in `new' if you do not find patches
1731 for the latest fetchmail release.<P>
1734 <h2><a name="R1">R1. Fetchmail isn't working, and -v shows `SMTP connect failed' messages.</a></h2>
1736 Fetchmail itself is probably working, but your SMTP port 25 listener
1737 is down or inaccessible.<p>
1739 The first thing to check is if you can telnet to port 25 on your smtp
1740 host (which is normally `localhost' unless you've specified an smtp
1741 option in your .fetchmailrc or on the command line) and get a greeting
1742 line from the listener. If the SMTP host is inaccessible or the listener
1743 is down, fix that first.<p>
1745 If the listener seems to be up when you test with telnet, the most
1746 benign and typical problem is that the listener had a momentary seizure
1747 due to resource exhaustion while fetchmail was polling it -- process
1748 table full or some other problem that stopped the listener process
1749 from forking. If your SMTP host is not `localhost' or something else
1750 in /etc/hosts, the fetchmail glitch could also have been caused by
1751 transient nameserver failure. <p>
1753 Try running fetchmail -v again; if it succeeds, you had one of these
1754 kinds of transient glitch. You can ignore these hiccups, because a
1755 future fetchmail run will get the mail through. <p>
1757 If the listener tests up, but you have chronic failures trying to
1758 connect to it anyway, your problem is more serious. One way to work
1759 around chronic SMTP connect problems is to use --mda. But this only
1760 attacks the symptom; you may have a DNS or TCP routing problem. You
1761 should really try to figure out what's going on underneath before it
1762 bites you some other way. <p>
1764 We have one report (from toby@eskimo.com) that you can sometimes solve
1765 such problems by doing an <CODE>smtp</CODE> declaration with an IP
1766 address that your routing table maps to something other than the
1767 loopback device (he used ppp0).<p>
1769 We also have a report that this error can be caused by having an
1770 /etc/hosts file that associates your client host name with more than
1773 It's also possible that your DNS configuration isn't
1774 looking at <code>/etc/hosts</code> at all. If you're using libc5,
1775 look at <code>/etc/resolv.conf</code>; it should say something like
1781 so your <code>/etc/hosts</code> file is checked first. If you're
1782 running GNU libc6, check your <code>/etc/nsswitch.conf</code> file. Make
1783 sure it says something like
1789 again, in order to make sure <code>/etc/hosts</code> is seen first.<P>
1791 If you have a hostname set for your machine, and this hostname does
1792 not appear in /etc/hosts, you will be able to telnet to port 25 and
1793 even send a mail with rcpt to: user@host-not-in-/etc/hosts, but
1794 fetchmail can't seem to get in touch with sendmail, no matter what you
1795 set smtpaddress to.<p>
1797 We had another report from a Linux user of fetchmail 2.1 who solved his SMTP
1798 connection problem by removing the reference to -lresolv from his link
1799 line and relinking. Apparently in some older Linux distributions the
1800 libc bind library version works better.<p>
1802 As of 2.2, the configure script has been hacked so the bind library is
1803 linked only if it is actually needed. So under Linux it won't be, and
1804 this particular cause should go away.<p>
1807 <h2><a name="R2">R2. When I try to configure an MDA, fetchmail doesn't work.</a></h2>
1809 (I hear this one from people who have run into the blank-line problem in <a href="#X1">X1</a>.)<p>
1811 Try sending yourself test mail and retrieving it using the
1812 command-line options `<CODE>-k -m cat</CODE>'. This will dump exactly what
1813 fetchmail retrieves to standard output (plus the Received line
1814 fetchmail itself adds to the headers). <p>
1816 If the dump doesn't match what shows up in your mailbox when you
1817 configure an MDA, your MDA is mangling the message. If it doesn't
1818 match what you sent, then fetchmail or something on the server is
1822 <h2><a name="R3">R3. Fetchmail dumps core when given an invalid rc file.</a></h2>
1824 This is usually reported from AIX or Ultrix, but has even been known
1825 to happen on Linuxes without a recent version of <code>flex</code>
1826 installed. The problem appears to be a result of building with an
1827 archaic version of lex.<P>
1829 Workaround: fix the syntax of your .fetchmailrc file.<P>
1831 Fix: build and install the latest version of <a
1832 href="ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/~ftp/pub/gnu">flex</a> from the Free
1833 Software Foundation. An FSF <a
1834 href="http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/order/ftp.html">mirror site</a>
1835 will help you get it faster.<P>
1838 <h2><a name="R4">R4. Fetchmail dumps core in -V mode, but operates normally otherwise.</a></h2>
1840 We've had this reported to us under Linux using libc-5.4.17 and gcc-2.7.2.
1841 It does not occur with libc-5.3.12 or earlier versions.<p>
1843 Workaround: link with GNU malloc rather than the stock C library malloc.<p>
1845 We're told there is some problem with the malloc() code in that
1846 version which makes it fragile in the presence of multiple free()
1847 calls on the same pointer (the malloc arena gets corrupted).
1848 Unfortunately it appears from doing gdb traces that whatever free()
1849 calls producing the problem are being made by the C library itself, not the
1850 fetchmail code (they're all from within fclose, and not an fclose called
1851 directly by fetchmail, either).<p>
1854 <h2><a name="R5">R5. Running fetchmail in daemon mode doesn't work.</a><br></h2>
1856 We have one report from a SunOS 4.1.4 user that trying to run
1857 fetchmail in detached daemon mode doesn't work, but that using the
1858 same options with -N (nodetach) is OK.<P>
1860 If this happens, you have a specific portability problem with the code
1861 in daemon.c that detaches and backgrounds the daemon fetchmail. Tell
1862 me about it so I can try to fix it. As a workaround, you can start
1863 fetchmail with -N and an ampersand to background it.<P>
1865 This should not happen under Linux or any truly POSIX-conformant Unix.<P>
1868 <h2><a name="R6">R6. Fetchmail hangs when used with pppd.</a></h2>
1870 Your problem may be with pppd's `demand' option. We have a report that
1871 fetchmail doesn't play well with it, but works with pppd if `demand'
1872 is turned off. We have no idea why this is.<p>
1875 <h2><a name="R7">R7. Fetchmail randomly dies with socket errors.</a></h2>
1877 Check the MTU value in your PPP interface reported by
1878 <code>/sbin/ifconfig</code>. If it's over 600, change it in your PPP
1879 options file. (<code>/etc/ppp/options</code> on my box). Here are
1880 option values that work:<P>
1888 <a name="R8">R8. Fetchmail running as root stopped working after an OS upgrade</a></h2>
1890 In RH 6.0, the HOME value in the boot-time root environment changed
1891 from /root to / as the result of a change in init. Move your
1892 .fetchmailrc or use a -f option to explicitly point at the file.
1893 (Oddly, a similar problem has been reported from Debian systems.)<P>
1896 <h2><a name="#R9">R9. Fetchmail is timing out after fetching certain
1897 messages but before deleting them</a></h2>
1899 There's a TCP/IP stalling problem under Redhat 6.0 (and possibly other
1900 recent Linuxes) that can cause this symptom. Brian Boutel writes:<p>
1903 TCP timestamps are turned on on my Linux boxes (I assume it's now the
1904 default). This uses 12 extra bytes per segment.
1905 When the tcp connection starts, the other end agrees a MSS of 1460,
1906 and then fragments 1460 byte chunks into 1448 and 12, because
1907 is is not allowing for the timestamp.<p>
1909 Then, for reasons I can't explain, it waits a long time (typically 2
1910 minutes) after the ack is sent before sending the next (fragmented)
1911 packet. Turning off tcp timestamps avoids the fragmentation and
1912 restores normal behaviour. To do this, [execute]<p>
1914 echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_timestamps<p>
1916 I'm still unclear about the details of why this is happening. At least
1917 [now] I am now getting good performance and no queue blocking.
1921 <h2><a name="D1">D1. I think I've set up fetchmail correctly, but I'm not getting any mail.</a></h2>
1923 Maybe you have a .forward or alias set up that you've forgotten about. You
1924 should probably remove it.<p>
1926 Or maybe you're trying to run fetchmail in multidrop mode as root
1927 without a .fetchmailrc file. This doesn't do what you think it
1928 should; see question <a href="#C1">C1</a>.<p>
1930 Or you may not be connecting to the SMTP listener. Run fetchmail -v
1931 and see <a href="#R1">R1</a>.<p>
1934 <h2><a name="D2">D2. All my mail seems to disappear after a dropped connection.</a></h2>
1936 One POP3 daemon used in the Berkeley Unix world that reports itself as
1937 POP3 version 1.004 actually throws the queue away. 1.005 fixed that.
1938 If you're running this one, upgrade immediately. (It also truncates
1939 long lines at column 1024)<P>
1941 Many POP servers, if an interruption occurs, will restore the whole
1942 mail queue after about 10 minutes. Others will restore it right
1943 away. If you have an interruption and don't see it right away, cross
1944 your fingers and wait ten minutes before retrying.<P>
1946 Some servers (such as Microsoft's NTMail) are mis-designed to restore
1947 the entire queue, including messages you have deleted. If you have
1948 one of these and it flakes out on you a lot, try setting a small
1949 <code>--fetchlimit</code> value. This will result in more IP connects
1950 to the server, but will mean it actually executes changes to the queue
1953 Qualcomm's qpopper, used at many BSD Unix sites, is better behaved.
1954 If its connection is dropped, it will first execute all DELE commands as
1955 though you had issued a QUIT (this is a technical violation of
1956 the POP3 RFCs, but a good idea in a world of flaky phone lines). Then it
1957 will re-queue any message that was being downloaded at hangup time.
1958 Still, qpopper may require a noticeable amount of time to do deletions
1959 and clean up its queue. (Fetchmail waits a bit before retrying in
1960 order to avoid a `lock busy' error.)<P>
1963 <h2><a name="D3">D3. Mail that was being fetched when I interrupted my fetchmail seems to have been vanished.</a></h2>
1965 Fetchmail only sends a delete mail request to the server when either
1966 (a) it gets a positive delivery acknowledgment from the SMTP
1967 listener, or (b) it gets an error 571 (the spam-filter error) from the
1968 listener. No interrupt can cause it to lose mail.<p>
1970 However, IMAP2bis has a design problem in that its normal fetch
1971 command marks a message `seen' as soon as the fetch command to get it
1972 is sent down. If for some reason the message isn't actually delivered
1973 (you take a line hit during the download, or your port 25 listener
1974 can't find enough free disk space, or you interrupt the delivery in
1975 mid-message) that `seen' message can lurk invisibly in your server
1978 Workaround: add the `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>' keyword to your fetch options.<p>
1980 Solution: switch to an <a href="http://www.imap.org">IMAP4</a> server.<p>
1983 <h2><a name="M1">M1. I've declared local names, but all my multidrop
1984 mail is going to root anyway.</a></h2>
1986 Somehow your fetchmail is never recognizing the hostname part of
1987 recipient names it parses out of To/Cc/envelope-header lines as
1988 matching the name of the mailserver machine. To check this, run
1989 fetchmail in foreground with -v -v on. You will probably see a lot of
1990 messages with the format ``line rejected, %s is not an alias of the
1991 mailserver'' or ``no address matches; forwarding to %s.'' <p>
1993 These errors usually indicate some kind of DNS configuration problem
1994 either on the server or your client machine. <p>
1996 The easiest workaround is to add a `<CODE>via</CODE>' option (if
1997 necessary) and add enough aka declarations to cover all of your
1998 mailserver's aliases, then say `<CODE>no dns</CODE>'. This will take
1999 DNS out of the picture (though it means mail may be uncollected if
2000 it's sent to an alias of the mailserver that you don't have
2003 It would be better to fix your DNS, however. DNS problems can hurt
2004 you in lots of ways, for example by making your machines
2005 intermittently or permanently unreachable to the rest of the net.<P>
2007 Occasionally these errors indicate the sort of header-parsing problem
2008 described in <a href="#M7">M7</a>.<P>
2011 <h2><a name="M2">M2. I can't seem to get fetchmail to route to a local domain properly.</a></h2>
2013 A lot of people want to use fetchmail as a poor man's internetwork
2014 mail gateway, picking up mail accumulated for a whole domain in a single
2015 server mailbox and then routing based on what's in the To/Cc/Bcc lines.<p>
2017 In general, this is not really a good idea. It would be smarter to
2018 just let the mail sit in the mailserver's queue and use fetchmail's
2019 ETRN mode to trigger SMTP sends periodically (of course, this means
2020 you have to poll more frequently than the mailserver's expiration period).
2021 If you can't arrange this, try setting up a UUCP feed.<P>
2023 If neither of these alternatives is available, multidrop mode may do
2024 (though you <em>are</em> going to get hurt by some mailing list
2025 software; see the caveats under THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP
2026 MAILBOXES on the man page). If you want to try it, the way to do it
2027 is with the `<CODE>localdomains</CODE>' option.<p>
2029 In general, if you use localdomains you need to make sure of two other
2032 <strong>1. You've actually set up your .fetchmailrc entry to invoke multidrop mode.</strong><p>
2034 Many people set a `<CODE>localdomains</CODE>' list and then forget
2035 that fetchmail wants to see more than one name (or the wildcard `*')
2036 in a `<CODE>here</CODE>' list before it will do multidrop routing.<p>
2038 <strong>2. You may have to set `no envelope'.</strong><p>
2040 Normally, multidrop mode tries to deduce an envelope address from a message
2041 before parsing the To/Cc/Bcc lines (this enables it to avoid losing to mailing
2042 list software that doesn't put a recipient address in the To lines).<p>
2044 Some ways of accumulating a whole domain's messages in a single server
2045 mailbox mean it all ends up with a single envelope address that is
2046 useless for rerouting purposes. You may have to set `<CODE>no
2047 envelope</CODE>' to prevent fetchmail from being bamboozled by this.<p>
2049 Check also answer <a href="#T1">T1</a> on a reliable way to do multidrop
2050 delivery if your ISP (or your mail redirection provider) is using qmail.<p>
2053 <h2><a name="M3">M3. I tried to run a mailing list using multidrop, and I have a mail loop!</a></h2>
2055 This isn't fetchmail's fault. Check your mailing list. If the list
2056 expansion includes yourself or anybody else at your mailserver (that is, not on
2057 the client side) you've created a mail loop. Just chop the host part off any
2058 local addresses in the list.<p>
2060 If you use sendmail, you can check the list expansion with
2061 <CODE>sendmail -bv</CODE>.<p>
2064 <h2><a name="M4">M4. My multidrop fetchmail seems to be having DNS problems.</a></h2>
2066 We have one report from a Linux user (not the same one as in <a
2067 href="#R1">R1</a>!) who solved this problem by removing the reference
2068 to -lresolv from his link line and relinking. Apparently in some
2069 older Linux distributions the libc5 bind library version works
2072 As of 2.2, the configure script has been hacked so the bind library is linked
2073 only if it is actually needed. So under Linux it won't be, and this problem
2077 <h2><a name="M5">M5. I'm seeing long DNS delays before each message is processed.</a></h2>
2079 Use the `<CODE>aka</CODE>' option to pre-declare as many of your
2080 mailserver's DNS names as you can. When an address's host part
2081 matches an aka name, no DNS lookup needs to be done to check it.<p>
2083 If you're sure you've pre-declared all of your mailserver's DNS names,
2084 you can use the `<CODE>no dns</CODE>' option to prevent other hostname
2085 parts from being looked up at all.<p>
2087 Sometimes delays are unavoidable. Some SMTP listeners try to call DNS
2088 on the From-address hostname as a way of checking that the address is valid.<p>
2091 <h2><a name="M6">M6. How do I get multidrop mode to work with majordomo?</a></h2>
2093 In order for sendmail to execute the command strings in the majordomo
2094 alias file, it is necessary for sendmail to think that the mail it
2095 receives via SMTP really is destined for a local user name. A normal
2096 virtual-domain setup results in delivery to the default mailbox,
2097 rather than expansion through majordomo.<P>
2099 Michael <michael@bizsystems.com> gave us a recipe for dealing
2100 with this case that pairs a run control file like this:<P>
2103 poll your.pop3.server proto pop3:
2105 localdomains virtual.localdomain1.com virtual.localdomain2.com ...
2106 user yourISPusername is root * here,
2107 password yourISPpassword fetchall
2110 with a hack on your local sendmail.cf like this:<P>
2113 #############################################
2114 # virtual info, local hack for ruleset 98 #
2115 #############################################
2117 # domains to treat as direct mapped local domain
2119 CVvirtual.localdomain1.com virtual.localdomain2.com ...
2120 ---------------------------
2122 -------------------------
2123 # handle virtual users
2125 R$+ <@ $=V . > $: $1 < @ $j . >
2126 R< @ > $+ < @ $=V . > $: $1 < @ $j . >
2127 R< @ > $+ $: $1
2128 R< error : $- $+ > $* $#error $@ $1 $: $2
2129 R< $+ > $+ < @ $+ > $: $>97 $1
2132 This ruleset just strips virtual domain names off the addresses of incoming
2133 mail. Your sendmail must be 8.8 or newer for this to work. Michael
2137 I use this scheme with 2 virtual domains and the default ISP
2138 user+domain and service about 30 mail accounts + majordomo on my
2139 inside pop3 server with fetchmail and sendmail 8.83
2143 <h2><a name="M7">M7. Multidrop mode isn't parsing envelope addresses from
2144 my Received headers as it should.</a></h2>
2146 It may happen that you're getting what appear to be well-formed
2147 sendmail Received headers, but fetchmail can't seem to extract an
2148 envelope address from them. There can be a couple of reasons for
2151 <h3>Spurious Received lines need to be skipped:</h3>
2153 First, fetchmail might be looking at the wrong Received header.
2154 Normally it looks only on the first one it sees, on the theory that
2155 that one was last added and is going to be the one containing your
2156 mailserver's theory of who the message was addressed to.<P>
2158 Some (unusual) mailserver configurations will generate extra Received
2159 lines which you need to skip. To arrange this, use the optional
2160 skip prefix argument of the `envelope' option; you may need to say
2161 something like `<code>envelope 1 Received</code>' or `<code>envelope 2
2164 <h3>The `by' clause doesn't contain a mailserver alias:</h3>
2166 When fetchmail parses a Received line that looks like
2169 Received: from send103.yahoomail.com (send103.yahoomail.com [205.180.60.92])
2170 by iserv.ttns.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id RAA10088
2171 for <ksturgeon@fbceg.org>; Wed, 9 Sep 1998 17:01:59 -0700
2174 it checks to see if `iserv.ttns.net' is a DNS alias of your mailserver
2175 before accepting `ksturgeon@fbceg.org' as an envelope address. This
2176 check might fail if your DNS were misconfigured, or if you were using `no dns'
2177 and had failed to declare iserv.ttns.net as an alias of your server.<P>
2180 <h2><a name="X1">X1. Spurious blank lines are appearing in the headers of fetched mail.</a></h2>
2182 What's probably happening is that the POP/IMAP daemon on your
2183 mailserver is inserting a non-RFC822 header (like X-POP3-Rcpt:) and
2184 something in your delivery path (most likely an old version of the
2185 <em>deliver</em> program, which sendmail often calls to do local delivery) is
2186 failing to recognize it as a header.<p>
2188 This is not fetchmail's problem. The first thing to try is installing
2189 a current version of <em>deliver</em>. If this doesn't work, try to
2190 figure out which other program in your mail path is inserting the
2191 blank line and replace that. If you can't do either of these things,
2192 pick a different MDA (such as procmail) and declare it with the
2193 `<CODE>mda</CODE>' option.<p>
2196 <h2><a name="X2">X2. My mail client can't see a Subject line.</a></h2>
2198 First, see <a href="#X1">X1</a>. This is quite probably the same
2199 problem (X-POP3-Rcpt header or something similar being inserted by
2200 the server and choked on by an old version of <em>deliver</em>).<p>
2202 The O'Reilly sendmail book does warn that IDA sendmail doesn't process
2203 X- headers correctly. If this is your problem, all I can suggest is
2204 replacing IDA sendmail, because it's broken and not RFC822 conformant.<p>
2207 <h2><a name="X3">X3. Messages containing "From" at start of line are being split.</a></h2>
2209 If you know the messages aren't split in your server mailbox, then this
2210 is a problem with your POP/IMAP server, your client-side SMTP listener or
2211 your local delivery agent. Fetchmail cannot split messages.<p>
2213 Some POP server daemons ignore Content-Length headers and split messages on
2214 From lines. We have one report that the 2.1 version of the BSD popper
2215 program (as distributed on Solaris 2.5 and elsewhere) is broken this way.<p>
2217 You can test this. Declare an mda of `cat' and send yourself one
2218 piece of mail containing "From" at start of a line. If you see a
2219 split message, your POP/IMAP server is at fault. Upgrade to a more
2222 Sendmail and other SMTP listeners don't split RFC822 messages either.
2223 What's probably happening is either sendmail's local delivery agent or
2224 your mail reader are not quite RFC822-conformant and are breaking
2225 messages on what it thinks are Unix-style From headers. You can
2226 figure out which by looking at your client-side mailbox with vi or
2227 more. If the message is already split in your mailbox, your local
2228 delivery agent is the problem. If it's not, your mailreader is the
2231 If you can't replace the offending program, take a look at your
2232 sendmail.cf file. There will likely be a line something like<p>
2235 Mlocal, P=/usr/bin/procmail, F=lsDFMShP, S=10, R=20/40, A=procmail -Y -d $u
2238 describing your local delivery agent. Try inserting the `E' option in the
2239 flags part (the F= string). This will make sendmail turn each dangerous
2240 start-of-line From into a >From, preventing programs further downstream
2244 <h2><a name="generic_mangling"><a name="X4">X4. My mail is being mangled in a new and different way</a></a></h2>
2246 The first thing you need to do is pin down what program is doing the
2247 mangling. We don't like getting bug reports about fetchmail that are
2248 actually due to some other program's malfeasance, so please go through
2249 this diagnostic sequence before sending us a complaint.<P>
2251 There are five possible culprits to consider, listed here in the order
2252 they pass your mail:<P>
2255 <li> Programs upstream of your server mailbox.
2256 <li> The POP or IMAP server on your mailserver host.
2257 <li> The fetchmail program itself.
2258 <li> Your local sendmail.
2259 <li> Your LDA (local delivery agent), as called by sendmail or
2260 specified by <code>mda</CODE>.
2263 Often it happens that fetchmail itself is OK, but using it exposes
2264 pre-existing bugs in your downstream software, or your downstream
2265 software has a bad interaction with POP/IMAP. You need to pin down
2266 exactly where the message is being garbled in order to deduce what is
2267 actually going on.<P>
2269 The first thing to do is send yourself a test message, and retrieve it
2270 with a .fetchmailrc entry containing the following (or by running with
2271 the equivalent command-line options):<P>
2274 mda "cat >MBOX" keep fetchall
2277 This will capture what fetchmail gets from the server, except for (a)
2278 the extra Received header line fetchmail prepends, (b) header address
2279 changes due to <code>rewrite</code>, and (c) any end-of-line changes
2280 due to the <code>forcecr</code> and <code>stripcr</code> options.
2281 MBOX will in fact contain what programs downstream of fetchmail
2284 The most common causes of mangling are bugs and misconfigurations in
2285 those downstream programs. If MBOX looks unmangled, you will know
2286 that is what is going on and that it is not fetchmail's problem. Take
2287 a look at the other FAQ items in this section for possible clues about
2288 how to fix your problem.<P>
2290 If MBOX looks mangled, the next thing to do is compare it with your
2291 actual server mailbox (if possible). That's why you specified
2292 <code>keep</code>, so the server copy would not be deleted. If your
2293 server mailbox looks mangled, programs upstream of your server mailbox
2294 are at fault. Unfortunately there is probably little you can do about
2295 this aside from complaining to your site postmaster, and nothing at
2296 all fetchmail can do about it!<P>
2298 More likely you'll find that the server copy looks OK. In that case
2299 either the POP/IMAP server or fetchmail is doing the mangling. To
2300 determine which, you'll need to telnet to the server port and simulate
2301 a fetchmail session yourself. This is not actually hard (both POP3
2302 and IMAP are simple, text-only, line-oriented protocols) but requires
2303 some attention to detail. You should be able to use a fetchmail -v
2304 log as a model for a session, but remember that the "*" in your LOGIN
2305 or PASS command dump has to be replaced with your actual password.<P>
2307 The objective of manually simulating fetchmail is so you can see
2308 exactly what fetchmail sees. If you see a mangled message, then your
2309 server is at fault, and you probably need to complain to your
2310 mailserver administrators. However, we like to know what the broken
2311 servers are so we can warn people away from them. So please send
2312 us a transcript of the session including the mangling <em>and the
2313 server's initial greeting line</em>. Please tell us anything else
2314 you think might be useful about the server, like the server host's
2315 operating system.<P>
2317 If your manual fetchmail simulation shows an unmangled message,
2318 congratulations. You've found an actual fetchmail bug, which is a
2319 pretty rare thing these days. Complain to us and we'll fix it.
2320 Please include the session transcript of your manual fetchmail
2321 simulation along with the other things described in the FAQ entry on
2322 <a href="#G3">reporting bugs</a>.
2325 <h2><a name="X5">X5. Using POP3, retrievals seems to be fetching too much!</a></h2>
2327 This may happen in versions of fetchmail after 4.4.1 and before 4.4.8.
2328 Versions after 4.4.1 use POP3's TOP command rather than RETR, in order
2329 to avoid marking the message seen (leaving it unseen is helpful for
2330 later recovery if you lose your connection in the middle of a
2333 Versions of fetchmail from 4.4.2 through 4.4.7 had a bad interaction
2334 with Eudora qpopper versions 2.3 and later. The TOP bounds check was
2335 fooled by an overflow condition in the TOP argument. Decrementing the
2336 TOP argument in 4.4.7 fixed this.<P>
2338 Fix: Upgrade to a later version of fetchmail.<P>
2340 Workaround: set the <code>fetchall</code> option. Under POP3 in these
2341 fetchmail version only, this had the side effect of forcing RETR
2345 <h2><a name="O1">O1. The --logfile option doesn't work if the logfile doesn't exist.</a></h2>
2347 This is a feature, not a bug. It's in line with normal practice for
2348 system daemons and allows you to suppress logging by removing the log,
2349 without hacking potentially fragile startup scripts. To get around
2350 it, just touch(1) the logfile before you run fetchmail (this will have
2351 no effect on the contents of the logfile if it already exists).<P>
2354 <h2><a name="O2">O2. Every time I get a POP or IMAP message the header
2355 is dumped to all my terminal sessions.</a></h2>
2357 Fetchmail uses the local sendmail to perform final delivery, which
2358 Netscape and other clients doesn't do; the announcement of new messages
2359 is done by a daemon that sendmail pokes. There should be a ``biff''
2360 command to control this. Type
2366 to turn it off. If this doesn't work, try the command
2372 which is essentially what <code>biff -n</code> will do. If this
2373 doesn't work, comment out any reference to ``comsat'' in your
2374 /etc/inetd.conf file and restart inetd.<P>
2376 In Slackware Linux distributions, the last line in /etc/profile is
2388 to solve the problem system-wide.<P>
2391 <h2><a name="O3">O3. Does fetchmail reread its rc file every poll cycle?</a></h2>
2393 No. Fetchmail only reads the rc file once, when it starts up. To
2394 force an rc file reread, do <code>fetchmail -q; fetchmail</code>.<P>
2397 <h2><a name="O4">O4. Why do deleted messages show up again when I take
2398 a line hit while downloading?</a></h2>
2400 Because you're using a POP3 other than Qualcomm qpopper, or an IMAP
2401 with a long expunge interval.<P>
2403 According to the POP3 RFCs, deletes aren't actually performed until
2404 you issue the end-of-session QUIT command. Fetchmail cannot fix this,
2405 because doing it right takes cooperation from the server. There are
2406 two possible remedies:<P>
2408 One is to switch to qpopper (the free POP3 server from Qualcomm,
2409 the Eudora people). The qpopper software violates the POP3 RFCs by
2410 doing an expunge (removing deleted messages) on a line hangup, as well
2411 as on processing a QUIT command.<P>
2413 The other (which we recommend) is to switch to <a
2414 href="http://www.imap.org">IMAP</a>. IMAP has an explicit expunge
2415 command and fetchmail normally uses it to delete messages immediately
2416 after they are downloaded.<P>
2418 If you get very unlucky, you might take a line hit in the window
2419 between the delete and the expunge. If you've set a longer expunge
2420 interval, the window gets wider. This problem should correct itself
2421 the next time you complete a successful query.<P>
2424 <h2><a name="O5">O5. Why is fetched mail being logged with my name, not the real From address?</a></h2>
2426 Because logging is done based on the address indicated by the sending
2427 SMTP's MAIL FROM, and some listeners are picky about that address.<p>
2429 Some SMTP listeners get upset if you try to hand them a MAIL FROM
2430 address naming a different host than the originating site for your
2431 connection. This is a feature, not a bug -- it's supposed to help
2432 prevent people from forging mail with a bogus origin site. (RFC 1123
2433 says you shouldn't do this exclusion...)<p>
2435 Since the originating site of a fetchmail delivery connection is
2436 localhost, this effectively means these picky listeners will barf on
2437 any MAIL FROM address fetchmail hands them with an @ in it!<p>
2439 Versions 2.1 and up try the header From address first and fall back to
2440 the calling-user ID. So if your SMTP listener isn't picky, the log
2444 <h2><a name="O6">O6. I'm seeing long sendmail delays or hangs near the start of each poll cycle.</a></h2>
2446 Sendmail does a hostname lookup when it first starts up, and also each
2447 time it gets a HELO in listener mode.<p>
2449 Your resolver configuration may be causing one of these lookups to
2450 fail and time out. Check <code>/etc/resolv.conf</code> and
2451 <code>/etc/hosts</code> file. Make sure your hostname and
2452 fully-qualified domain name are both in <code>/etc/hosts</code>, and
2453 that hosts is looked at before DNS is queried. You probably also want
2454 your remote mail server(s) to be in the hosts file.<p>
2456 You can suppress the startup-time lookup if need to by reconfiguring
2457 with <code>FEATURE(nodns)</code>.<p>
2459 Configuring your bind library to cache DNS lookups locally may help,
2460 and is a good idea for speeding up other services as well. Switching to
2461 a faster MTA like qmail or exim might help. <p>
2464 <h2><a name="O7">O7. Why doesn't fetchmail deliver mail in date-sorted order?</a></h2>
2466 Because that's not the order the server hands it to fetchmail in.<P>
2468 Fetchmail getting mail from a POP server delivers mail in the order
2469 that your server delivers mail. Fetchmail can't do anything about
2470 this; it's a limitation of the underlying POP protocol.<P>
2472 In theory it might be possible for fetchmail in IMAP mode to sort
2473 messages by date, but this would be in violation of two basics of
2474 fetchmail's design philosophy: (a) to be as simple and transparent a
2475 pipe as possible, and (b) to <em>hide</em>, rather than emphasize, the
2476 differences between the remote-fetch protocols it uses.<P>
2478 Re-ordering messages is a user-agent function, anyway.<P>
2481 <h2><a name="O8">O8. I'm using pppd. Why isn't my monitor option working?</a></h2>
2483 There is a combination of circumstances that can confuse fetchmail.
2484 If you have set up demand dialing with pppd, and pppd has an idle
2485 timeout, and you have lcp-echo-interval set, then the
2486 lcp-echo-interval time must be longer than the pppd idle timeout.
2487 Otherwise it is going keep increasing the packet counters that fetchmail
2488 relies upon, triggering fetchmail into polling after its own delay
2489 interval and thus preventing the pppd link from ever reaching its
2490 inactivity timeout.<p>
2493 <table width="100%" cellpadding=0><tr>
2494 <td width="30%">Back to <a href="index.html">Fetchmail Home Page</a>
2495 <td width="30%" align=center>To <a href="/~esr/sitemap.html">Site Map</a>
2496 <td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 1999/09/23 12:48:32 $
2499 <P><ADDRESS>Eric S. Raymond <A HREF="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com"><esr@snark.thyrsus.com></A></ADDRESS>