1 <!doctype HTML public "-//W3O//DTD W3 HTML 3.2//EN">
4 <TITLE>The Fetchmail FAQ</TITLE>
5 <link rev=made href="mailto:esr@snark.thyrsus.com">
6 <meta name="description" content="Frequently asked questions about fetchmail.">
7 <meta name="keywords" content="fetchmail, POP, POP2, POP3, IMAP, remote mail">
10 <table width="100%" cellpadding=0><tr>
11 <td width="30%">Back to <a href="index.html">Fetchmail Home Page</a>
12 <td width="30%" align=center>To <a href="/~esr/sitemap.html">Site Map</a>
13 <td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 2000/02/15 02:24:27 $
16 <H1>Frequently Asked Questions About Fetchmail</H1>
18 Before reporting any bug, please read <a href="#G3">G3</a> for advice
19 on how to include diagnostic information that will get your bug fixed
20 as quickly as possible. <p>
22 If you have a question or answer you think ought to be added to this FAQ list,
23 mail it to fetchmail's maintainer, Eric S. Raymond, at
24 <A HREF="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com">esr@snark.thyrsus.com</A>.<p>
26 <h1>General questions:</h1>
28 <a href="#G1">G1. What is fetchmail and why should I bother?</a><br>
29 <a href="#G2">G2. Where do I find the latest FAQ and fetchmail sources?</a><br>
30 <a href="#G3">G3. I think I've found a bug. Will you fix it?</a><br>
31 <a href="#G4">G4. I have this idea for a neat feature. Will you add it?</a><br>
32 <a href="#G5">G5. Is there a mailing list for exchanging tips?</a><br>
33 <a href="#G6">G6. So, what's this I hear about a fetchmail paper?</a><br>
34 <a href="#G7">G7. What is the best server to use with fetchmail?</a><br>
35 <a href="#G8">G8. What is the best mail program to use with fetchmail?</a><br>
36 <a href="#G9">G9. How can I avoid sending my password en clair?</a><br>
37 <a href="#G10">G10. Is any special configuration needed to use a dynamic
39 <a href="#G11">G11. Is any special configuration needed to use firewalls?</a><br>
40 <a href="#G12">G12. Is any special configuration needed to <em>send</em> mail?</a><br>
41 <a href="#G13">G13. Is fetchmail Y2K-compliant?</a><br>
42 <a href="#G14">G14. Is there a way in fetchmail to support disconnected IMAP mode?</a><br>
44 <h1>Build-time problems:</h1>
46 <a href="#B1">B1. Lex bombs out while building the fetchmail lexer.</a><br>
47 <a href="#B2">B2. I get link failures when I try to build fetchmail.</a><br>
49 <h1>Fetchmail configuration file grammar questions:</h1>
51 <a href="#F1">F1. Why does my old .fetchmailrc no longer work?</a><br>
52 <a href="#F2">F2. The .fetchmailrc parser won't accept my all-numeric user name.</a><br>
53 <a href="#F3">F3. The .fetchmailrc parser won't accept my host or username beginning with `no'.</a><br>
54 <a href="#F4">F4. I'm migrating from popclient. How do I need to modify my .poprc?</a><br>
55 <a href="#F5">F5. I'm getting a `parse error' message I don't understand.</a><br>
57 <h1>Configuration questions:</h1>
59 <a href="#C1">C1. Why do I need a .fetchmailrc when running as root on my own machine?</a><br>
60 <a href="#C2">C2. How can I arrange for a fetchmail daemon to get killed when I log out?</a><br>
61 <a href="#C3">C3. How do I know what interface and address to use with --interface?</a><br>
62 <a href="#C4">C4. How can I set up support for sendmail's anti-spam features?</a><br>
63 <a href="#C5">C5. How can I poll some of my mailboxes more/less often than others?</a><br>
64 <a href="#C6">C6. Fetchmail works OK started up manually, but not from an init script.</a><br>
66 <h1>How to make fetchmail play nice with various MTAs:</h1>
68 <a href="#T1">T1. How can I use fetchmail with sendmail?</a><br>
69 <a href="#T2">T2. How can I use fetchmail with qmail?</a><br>
70 <a href="#T3">T3. How can I use fetchmail with exim?</a><br>
71 <a href="#T4">T4. How can I use fetchmail with smail?</a><br>
72 <a href="#T5">T5. How can I use fetchmail with SCO's MMDF?</a><br>
73 <a href="#T6">T6. How can I use fetchmail with Lotus Notes?</a><br>
75 <h1>How to make fetchmail work with various servers:</h1>
77 <a href="#S1">S1. How can I use fetchmail with qpopper?</a><br>
78 <a href="#S2">S2. How can I use fetchmail with Microsoft Exchange?</a><br>
79 <a href="#S3">S3. How can I use fetchmail with Compuserve RPA?</a><br>
80 <a href="#S4">S4. How can I use fetchmail with Demon Internet's SDPS?</a><br>
81 <a href="#S5">S5. How can I use fetchmail with usa.net's servers?</a><br>
82 <a href="#S6">S6. How can I use fetchmail with HP OpenMail?</a><br>
83 <a href="#S7">S7. How can I use fetchmail with geocities POP3 servers?</a><br>
84 <a href="#S8">S8. How can I use fetchmail with Hotmail?</a><br>
85 <a href="#S9">S9. How can I use fetchmail with MSN?</a><br>
86 <a href="#S10">S10. How can I use fetchmail with SpryNet?</a><br>
87 <a href="#S11">S11. How can I use fetchmail with FTGate?</a><br>
88 <a href="#S12">S12. How can I use fetchmail with MailMax?</a><br>
89 <a href="#S13">S13. How can I use fetchmail with Novell GroupWise?</a><br>
91 <h1>How to set up well-known security and authentication methods:</h1>
93 <a href="#K1">K1. How can I use fetchmail with SOCKS?</a><br>
94 <a href="#K2">K2. How can I use fetchmail with IPv6 and IPsec?</a><br>
95 <a href="#K3">K3. How can I get fetchmail to work with ssh?</a><br>
96 <a href="#K4">K4. What do I have to do to use the IMAP-GSS protocol?</a><br>
97 <a href="#K5">K5. How can I use fetchmail with SSL?</a><br>
99 <h1>Runtime fatal errors:</h1>
101 <a href="#R1">R1. Fetchmail isn't working, and -v shows `SMTP connect failed' messages.</a><br>
102 <a href="#R2">R2. When I try to configure an MDA, fetchmail doesn't work.</a><br>
103 <a href="#R3">R3. Fetchmail dumps core when given an invalid rc file.</a><br>
104 <a href="#R4">R4. Fetchmail dumps core in -V mode, but operates normally otherwise.</a><br>
105 <a href="#R5">R5. Running fetchmail in daemon mode doesn't work.</a><br>
106 <a href="#R6">R6. Fetchmail hangs when used with pppd.</a><br>
107 <a href="#R7">R7. Fetchmail randomly dies with socket errors.</a><br>
108 <a href="#R8">R8. Fetchmail running as root stopped working after an OS upgrade</a><br>
109 <a href="#R9">R9. Fetchmail is timing out after fetching certain
110 messages but before deleting them</a><br>
111 <a href="#R10">R10. Fetchmail is timing out during message fetches</a></br>
113 <h1>Disappearing mail</h1>
115 <a href="#D1">D1. I think I've set up fetchmail correctly, but I'm not getting any mail.</a><br>
116 <a href="#D2">D2. All my mail seems to disappear after a dropped connection.</a><br>
117 <a href="#D3">D3. Mail that was being fetched when I interrupted my fetchmail seems to have been vanished.</a><br>
119 <h1>Multidrop-mode problems:</h1>
121 <a href="#M1">M1. I've declared local names, but all my multidrop mail is going to root anyway.</a><br>
122 <a href="#M2">M2. I can't seem to get fetchmail to route to a local domain properly.</a><br>
123 <a href="#M3">M3. I tried to run a mailing list using multidrop, and I have a mail loop!</a><br>
124 <a href="#M4">M4. My multidrop fetchmail seems to be having DNS problems.</a><br>
125 <a href="#M5">M5. I'm seeing long DNS delays before each message is processed.</a><br>
126 <a href="#M6">M6. How do I get multidrop mode to work with majordomo?</a><br>
127 <a href="#M7">M7. Multidrop mode isn't parsing envelope addresses from
128 my Received headers as it should.</a><br>
129 <a href="#M8">M8. Users are getting multiple copies of messages.</a><br>
131 <h1>Mangled mail:</h1>
133 <a href="#X1">X1. Spurious blank lines are appearing in the headers of fetched mail.</a><br>
134 <a href="#X2">X2. My mail client can't see a Subject line.</a><br>
135 <a href="#X3">X3. Messages containing "From" at start of line are being split.</a><br>
136 <a href="#X4">X4. My mail is being mangled in a new and different way.</a><br>
137 <a href="#X5">X5. Using POP3, retrievals seems to be fetching too much!</a><br>
139 <h1>Other problems:</h1>
141 <a href="#O1">O1. The --logfile option doesn't work if the logfile doesn't exist.</a><br>
142 <a href="#O2">O2. Every time I get a POP or IMAP message the header is
143 dumped to all my terminal sessions.</a><br>
144 <a href="#O3">O3. Does fetchmail reread its rc file every poll cycle?</a><br>
145 <a href="#O4">O4. Why do deleted messages show up again when I take
146 a line hit while downloading?</a><br>
147 <a href="#O5">O5. Why is fetched mail being logged with my name, not the real From address?</a><br>
148 <a href="#O6">O6. I'm seeing long sendmail delays or hangs near the start of each poll cycle.</a><br>
149 <a href="#O7">O7. Why doesn't fetchmail deliver mail in date-sorted order?</a><br>
150 <a href="#O8">O8. I'm using pppd. Why isn't my monitor option working?</a><br>
151 <a href="#O9">O9. Why does fetchmail keep retrieving the same messages
152 over and over?</a><br>
156 <h2><a name="G1">G1. What is fetchmail and why should I bother?</a></h2>
158 Fetchmail is a one-stop solution to the remote mail retrieval problem
159 for Unix machines, quite useful to anyone with an intermittent PPP or
160 SLIP connection to a remote mailserver. It can collect mail using any
161 variant of POP or IMAP and forwards via port 25 to the local SMTP
162 listener, enabling all the normal forwarding/filtering/aliasing
163 mechanisms that would apply to local mail or mail arriving via a
164 full-time TCP/IP connection.<p>
166 Fetchmail is not a toy or a coder's learning exercise, but an
167 industrial-strength tool capable of transparently handling every
168 retrieval demand from those of a simple single-user ISP connection up
169 to mail retrieval and rerouting for an entire client domain.
170 Fetchmail is easy to configure, unobtrusive in operation, powerful,
171 feature-rich, and well documented. <P>
173 Fetchmail is <a href="http://www.opensource.org">Open Source</a>
174 software. The openness of the sources is the strongest assurance of
175 quality you can have. Extensive peer review by a large,
176 multi-platform user community has shown that fetchmail is as near
177 bulletproof as the underlying protocols permit.<p>
179 Fetchmail is licensed under the <a
180 href="http://gnu.org//copyleft/gpl.html">GNU General Public
183 If you found this FAQ in the distribution, see the README for fetchmail's
184 full feature list.<p>
187 <h2><a name="G2">G2. Where do I find the latest FAQ and fetchmail
190 The latest HTML FAQ is available alongside the latest fetchmail
191 sources at the fetchmail home page:
192 <a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail">
193 http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail</a>. You can also usually find
195 href="http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/mail/pop/!INDEX.html">POP
196 mail tools directory on Sunsite</a>.<p>
198 A text dump of this FAQ is included in the fetchmail
199 distribution. Because it freezes at distribution release time, it may
200 not be completely current.<p>
203 <h2><a name="G3">G3. I think I've found a bug. Will you fix it?</a></h2>
205 Yes I will, provided you include enough diagnostic information for me
206 to go on. Send bugs to <a
207 href="mailto:fetchmail-friends@ccil.org">fetchmail-friends</a>. When reporting
208 bugs, please include the following:
211 <li>Your operating system and compiler version.
212 <li>A copy of your POP or IMAP server's greeting line.
213 <li>The name and version of the SMTP listener or MDA you are forwarding to.
214 <li>Any command-line options you used.
215 <li>The output of fetchmail -V called with whatever other
216 command-line options you used.
219 If you have FTP access to your remote mail account, and you have any
220 suspicion that the bug was triggered by a particular message, please
221 include a copy of the message that triggered the bug.<p>
223 Often, the first thing I will do when you report a bug is tell you to
224 upgrade to the newest version of fetchmail, and then see if the
225 problem reproduces. So you'll probably save us both time if you
226 upgrade and test with the latest version <em>before</em> sending in a
229 It is helpful if you include your .fetchmailrc file, but not necessary
230 unless your symptom seems to involve an error in configuration
231 parsing. If you do send in your .fetchmailrc, mask the passwords
234 If fetchmail seems to run and fetch mail, but the headers look mangled
235 (that is, headers are missing or blank lines are inserted in the
236 headers) then read the FAQ items in section <a href="#X1">X</a>
237 before submitting a bug report. Pay special attention to the item on
238 <a href="#generic_mangling">diagnosing mail mangling</a>. There are
239 lots of ways for other programs in the mail chain to screw up that
240 look like fetchmail's fault, but you may be able to fix these by
241 tweaking your configuration.<P>
243 A transcript of the failed session with -v -v (yes, that's
244 <em>two</em> -v options, enabling debug mode) will almost always be useful.
245 It is very important that the transcript include your POP/IMAP server's
246 greeting line, so I can identify it in case of server problems. This
247 transcript will not reveal your passwords, which are specially masked
248 out precisely so the transcript can be passed around.<P>
250 If the bug involves a core dump or hang, a gdb stack trace is good to have.
251 (Bear in mind that you can attach gdb to a running but hung process by
252 giving the process ID as a second argument.) You will need to
256 CFLAGS=-g LDFLAGS=" " ./configure
259 and then rebuild in order to generate a version that can be gdb-traced.<p>
261 Best of all is a mail file which, when fetched, will reproduce the
262 bug under the latest (current) version.<p>
264 Any bug I can reproduce will usually get fixed very quickly, often
265 within 48 hours. Bugs I can't reproduce are a crapshoot. If the
266 solution isn't obvious when I first look, it may evade me for a long
267 time (or to put it another way, fetchmail is well enough tested that the
268 easy bugs have long since been found). So if you want your bug fixed
269 rapidly, it is not just sufficient but nearly <em>necessary</em> that
270 you give me a way to reproduce it.<p>
273 <h2><a name="G4">G4. I have this idea for a neat feature. Will you add it?</a></h2>
275 Probably not. Most of the feature suggestions I get are for ways to
276 set various kinds of administrative policy or add more spam filtering
277 (the most common one, which I used to get about four million times a week
278 and got <em>really</em> tired of, is for tin-like kill files).<p>
280 You can do spam filtering better with procmail or maildrop on the
281 server side and (if you're the server sysadmin) sendmail.cf domain
282 exclusions. You can do other policy things better with the
283 <CODE>mda</CODE> option and script wrappers around fetchmail. If
284 it's a prime-time-vs.-non-prime-time issue, ask yourself whether a
285 wrapper script called from crontab would do the job.<p>
287 I'm not going to do these; fetchmail's job is transport, not policy, and I
288 refuse to change it from doing one thing well to attempting many things badly.
289 One of my objectives is to keep fetchmail simple so it stays reliable.<p>
291 For reasons fetchmail doesn't have other commonly-requested features
292 (such as password encryption, or multiple concurrent polls from the
293 same instance of fetchmail) see the <a
294 href="http://www.tuxedo.org/fetchmail/design.notes.html">design notes</a>.<p>
296 Fetchmail is a mature project, no longer in constant active
297 development. It is no longer my top project, and I am going to be
298 quite reluctant to add features that might either jeopardize its
299 stability or involve me in large amounts of coding.<p>
301 All that said, if you have a feature idea that really is about a transport
302 problem that can't be handled anywhere but fetchmail, lay it on me. I'm
303 very accommodating about good ideas.<p>
306 <h2><a name="G5">G5. Is there a mailing list for exchanging tips?</a></h2>
308 There is a fetchmail-friends list for people who want to discuss fixes
309 and improvements in fetchmail and help co-develop it. It's at <a
310 href="mailto:fetchmail-friends@thyrsus.com">fetchmail-friends@thyrsus.com</a>.
311 There is also an announcements-only list, <em>fetchmail-announce@thyrsus.com</em>.<P>
313 Both lists are SmartList reflectors; sign up in the usual way with a
314 message containing the word "subscribe" in the subject line sent to
315 <a href="mailto:fetchmail-friends-request@thyrsus.com?subject=subscribe">
316 fetchmail-friends-request@thyrsus.com</a> or
317 <a href="mailto:fetchmail-announce-request@thyrsus.com?subject=subscribe">
318 fetchmail-announce-request@thyrsus.com</a>. (Similarly, "unsubscribe"
319 in the Subject line unsubscribes you, and "help" returns general list help) <p>
322 <h2><a name="G6">G6. So, what's this I hear about a fetchmail paper?</a></h2>
324 The fetchmail development was also a sociological experiment, an
325 extended test to see if my theory about the critical features of the
326 Linux development model is correct.<p>
328 The experiment was a success. I wrote a paper about it titled <a
329 href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral.html">The
330 Cathedral and the Bazaar</a> which was first presented at Linux
331 Kongress '97 in Bavaria and very well received there. It was also
332 given at Atlanta Linux Expo, Linux Pro '97 in Warsaw, and the first
333 Perl Conference, at UniForum '98, and was the basis of an invited
334 presentation at Usenix '98. The folks at Netscape tell me it helped
336 href="http://www.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease558.html"> give
337 away the source for Netscape Communicator</a>.<p>
339 If you're reading a non-HTML dump of this FAQ, you can find the paper
340 on the Web with a search for that title.<p>
343 <h2><a name="G7">G7. What is the best server to use with fetchmail?</a></h2>
345 The short answer: IMAP4rev1 running over Unix.<P>
347 Here's a longer answer: <P>
349 Fetchmail will work with any POP, IMAP, or ESMTP/ETRN server that
350 conforms to the relevant RFCs (and even some outright broken ones like
351 <a href="#S2">Microsoft Exchange</a> and <a href="#S12">Novell
352 GroupWise</a>). This doesn't mean it works equally well with all,
353 however. POP2 servers, and POP3 servers without LAST, limit
354 fetchmail's capabilities in various ways described on the manual
357 Most modern Unixes (and effectively all Linux/*BSD systems) come with
358 POP3 support preconfigured (but beware of the horribly broken POP3
359 server mentioned in <a href="#D2">D2</a>). An increasing minority
360 also feature IMAP (you can detect IMAP support by running fetchmail in
361 AUTO mode, or by using the `Probe for supported protocols' function in
362 the fetchmailconf utility).<P>
364 If you have the option, we recommend using or installing an IMAP4rev1
365 server; it has the best facilities for tracking message `seen' states.
366 It also recovers from interrupted connections more gracefully than
367 POP3, and enables some significant performance optimizations.<P>
369 Don't be fooled by NT/Exchange propaganda. M$ Exchange is just plain
370 broken (see item <a href="#S2">S2</a>) and NT cannot handle the
371 sustained load of a high-volume remote mail server. Even Microsoft
372 itself knows better than to try this; their own Hotmail service runs
373 over Solaris! For extended discussion, see John Kirch's excellent <a
374 href="http://unix-vs-nt.org/kirch/">white paper</a> on Unix
375 vs. NT performance.<P>
377 You can find sources for IMAP software at <a
378 href="http://www.imap.org">The IMAP Connection</a>; we like the
379 open-source <a href="ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/imap/">UW IMAP</a>
380 server, which is the reference implementation of IMAP. UW IMAP's
381 support for GSSAPI gives you a good way to authenticate without
382 sending a password en clair.<P>
384 Source for a high-quality supported implementation of POP is available
385 from the <a href="ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com/eudora/servers/unix/popper/">Eudora
386 FTP site</a>. Don't use 2.5, which has a rather restrictive license.
387 The 2.5.2 version appears to restore the open-source license of
388 previous versions.<P>
391 <h2><a name="G8">G8. What is the best mail program to use with fetchmail?</a></h2>
393 Fetchmail will work with all popular <a href="#T1">mail transport programs</a>.
394 It also doesn't care which user agent you use, and user agents are as a
395 rule almost equally indifferent to how mail is delivered into your system
396 mailbox. So any of the popular Unix mail agents --
397 <a href="http://www.myxa.com/old/elm.html">elm</a>,
398 <a href="http://www.washington.edu/pine/">pine</a>
399 <a href="http://www.cs.indiana.edu/docproject/mail/mh.html">mh</a>,
400 or <a href="http://www.mutt.org">mutt</a>
401 -- will work fine with fetchmail.<p>
403 All this having been said, I can't resist putting in a discreet plug
404 for <a href="http://www.mutt.org">mutt</a>. My own personal mail
405 setup is sendmail plus fetchmail plus mutt. Mutt's interface is only
406 a little different from that of its now-moribund ancestor elm, but its
407 excellent handling of MIME and PGP put it in a class by itself. You
408 won't need its built-in POP3 support, though; most of the mutt
409 developers will cheerfully admit that fetchmail's is better :-).<p>
412 <h2><a name="G9">G9. How can I avoid sending my password en clair?</a></h2>
414 Depending on what your mail server you are talking to, this ranges
415 from trivial to impossible. It may even be next to useless.<P>
417 Most people use fetchmail over phone wires, which are hard to tap.
418 Anybody with the skill and resources to do this could get into your
419 server mailbox with much less effort by subverting the server host.
420 So if your provider setup is modem wires going straight into a service
421 box, you probably don't need to worry.<P>
423 In general there is little point in trying to secure your fetchmail
424 transaction unless you trust the security of the server host you are
425 retrieving mail from. Your vulnerability is more likely to be an
426 insecure local network on the server end (e.g. to somebody with a TCP/IP
427 packet sniffer intercepting Ethernet traffic between the modem
428 concentrator you dial in to and the mailserver host).<P>
430 Having realized this, you need to ask whether password encryption
431 alone will really address your security exposure. If you think you
432 might be snooped, it's better to use end-to-end encryption on your
433 whole mail stream so none of it can be read. One of the advantages of
434 fetchmail over conventional SMTP-push delivery is that you may be able
435 to arrange this by using ssh(1); see <a href="#K3">K3</a>.<P>
437 If ssh/sshd isn't available, or you find it too complicated for you to
438 set up, password encryption will at least keep a malicious cracker
439 from deleting your mail, and require him to either tap your connection
440 continuously or crack root on the server in order to read it.<P>
442 You can deduce what encryptions your mail server has available
443 by looking at the server greeting line (and, for IMAP, the
444 response to a CAPABILITY query). Do a <code>fetchmail -v</code>
445 to see these, or telnet direct to the server port (110 for POP3, 143 for
448 The facility you are most likely to have available is APOP. This is a
449 POP3 feature supported by many servers (fetchmailconf's autoprobe
450 facility will detect it and tell you if you have it). If you see
451 something in the greeting line that looks like an
452 angle-bracket-enclosed Internet address with a numeric left-hand part,
453 that's an APOP challenge (it will vary each time you log in). You can
454 register a secret on the host (using <code>popauth(8)</code> or some
455 program like it). Specify the secret as your password in your
456 .fetchmailrc; it will be used to encrypt the current challenge, and
457 the encrypted form will be sent back the the server for
460 Alternatively, you may have Kerberos available. This may require you
461 to set up some magic files in your home directory on your client
462 machine, but means you can omit specifying any password at all.<P>
464 Fetchmail supports two different Kerberos schemes. One is a
465 POP3 variant called KPOP; consult the documentation of your mail
466 server to see if you have it (one clue is the string "krb-IV" in the
467 greeting line on port 110). The other is an IMAP facility described
468 by RFC1731. You can tell if this one is present by looking for
469 AUTH=KERBEROS_V4 in the CAPABILITY response.<P>
471 If you are fetching mail from a CompuServe POP3 account, you can use
472 their RPA authentication (which works much like APOP). See <a
473 href="#S3">S3</a> for details. If you are fetching mail from
474 Microsoft Exchange, you will be able to use NTLM.<P>
476 Your POP3 server may have the RFC1938 OTP capability to use one-time
477 passwords (if it doesn't, you can get OTP patches for the 2.2 version
478 of the Qualcomm popper from <a href="#cmetz">Craig Metz</a>). To check
479 this, look for the string "otp-" in the greeting line. If you see it,
480 and your fetchmail was built with OPIE support compiled in (see the
481 distribution INSTALL file), fetchmail will detect it also. When using
482 OTP, you will specify a password but it will not be sent en clair.<P>
484 Sadly, there is at present (September 1999) no OTP or APOP-like
485 facility generally available on IMAP servers. However, there do exist
486 patches which will OTP-enable the University of Washington IMAP
487 daemon, version 4.2-FINAL. We have a report that the GSSAPI support
488 in fetchmail works with the GSSAPI support in the most recent version
489 of UW IMAP. Or you can use <a href="#K5">SSL</a> for complete
490 end-to-end encryption if you have an SSL-enabled mailserver.<P>
492 You can get both POP3 and IMAP OTP patches from <a name="cmetz">Craig
494 href="http://www.inner.net/pub/">http://www.inner.net/pub/</a>.<P>
495 These patches use a SASL authentication method named "X-OTP" because
496 there is not currently a standard way to do this; fetchmail also uses
497 this method, so the two will interoperate happily. They better,
498 because this is how Craig gets his mail ;-)<P>
500 (One important win of OTP is that it's not subject to U.S. export
504 <h2><a name="G10">G10. Is any special configuration needed to use a dynamic IP address?</a></h2>
506 Yes. In order to avoid giving indigestion to certain picky MTAs
507 (notably <a href="#T3">exim</a>), fetchmail always makes the RCPT TO
508 address it feeds the MTA a fully qualified one with a hostname part.
509 Normally it does this by appending @ and "localhost", but when you are
510 using Kerberos or ETRN mode it will append @ and your machine's
511 fully-qualified domain name (FQDN).<P>
513 Appending the FQDN can create problems when fetchmail is running in daemon
514 mode and outlasts the dynamic IP address assignment your client
515 machine had when it started up.<P>
517 Since the new IP address (looked up at RCPT TO interpretation time)
518 doesn't match the original, the most benign possible result is that
519 your MTA thinks it's seeing a relaying attempt and refuses. More
520 frequently, fetchmail will try to connect to a nonexistent host
521 address and time out. Worst case, you could up forwarding your mail
522 to the wrong machine!<P>
524 Use the <code>smtpaddress</code> option to force the appended hostname
525 to one with a (fixed) IP address of 127.0.0.1 in your
526 <code>/etc/hosts</code>. (The name `localhost' will usually work; or
527 you can use the IP address itself).<P>
529 Only one fetchmail option interacts directly with your IP address,
530 `<code>interface</code>'. This option can be used to set the gateway
531 device and restrict the IP address range fetchmail will use. Such a
532 restriction is sometimes useful for security reasons, especially on
533 multihomed sites. See <a href="#C3">C3</a>.<P>
535 I recommend against trying to set up the <code>interface</code> option
536 when initially developing your poll configuration -- it's never
537 necessary to do this just to get a link working. Get the link working
538 first, observe the actual address range you see on connections, and
539 add an <code>interface</code> option (if you need one) later.<P>
541 If you're using a dynamic-IP configuration, one other (non-fetchmail)
542 problem you may run into with outgoing mail is that some sites will
543 bounce your email because the hostname your giving them isn't real
544 (and doesn't match what they get doing a reverse DNS on your
545 dynamically-assigned IP address). If this happens, you need to hack
546 your sendmail so it masquerades as your host. Setting<P>
552 in your <code>sendmail.cf</code> will work, or you can set<P>
555 MASQUERADE_AS(smarthost.here)
558 in the m4 configuration and do a reconfigure. (In both cases, replace
559 <code>smarthost.here</code> with the actual name of your mailhost.)
560 See the <a href="http://www.lege.com/sendmail-FAQ.txt">sendmail
561 FAQ</a> for more details.<P>
564 <h2><a name="G11">G11. Is any special configuration needed to use firewalls?</a></h2>
566 No. You can use fetchmail with SOCKS, the standard tool for
567 indirecting TCP/IP through a firewall. You can find out about SOCKS,
568 and download the SOCKS software including server and client code, at
569 the <a href="http://www.socks.nec.com/">SOCKS distribution
572 The specific recipe for using fetchmail with a firewall is at <a
576 <h2><a name="B1">B1. Lex bombs out while building the fetchmail lexer.</a></h2>
578 In the immortal words of Alan Cox the last time this came up: ``Take
579 the Solaris lex and stick it up the backside of a passing Sun
580 salesman, then install <a
581 href="ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/ftp/pub/gnu">flex</a> and use that. All
582 will be happier.''<P>
584 I couldn't have put it better myself, and ain't going to try now.<P>
587 <h2><a name="G12">G12. Is any special configuration needed to <em>send</em> mail?</a></h2>
589 A user asks: but how do we send mail out to the POP3 server? Do I need
590 to implement another tool or will fetchmail do this too?<p>
592 Fetchmail only handles the receiving side. The sendmail or other
593 preinstalled MTA on your client machine will handle sending mail
594 automatically; it will ship mail that is submitted while the
595 connection is active, and put mail that is submitted while
596 the connection is inactive into the outgoing queue.<P>
598 Normally, sendmail is also run periodically (every 15 minutes on most
599 Linux systems) in a mode that tries to ship all the mail in the
600 outgoing queue. If you have set up something like pppd to
601 automatically dial out when your kernel is called to open a TCP/IP
602 connection, this will ensure that the mail gets out.<P>
605 <h2><a name="G13">G13. Is fetchmail Y2K-compliant?</a></h2>
607 Fetchmail is fully Y2K-compliant.<P>
609 Fetchmail could theoretically have problems when the 32-bit time_t
610 counters roll over in 2038, but I doubt it. Timestamps aren't used
611 for anything but log entry generation. Anyway, if you aren't running
612 on a 64-bit machine by then, you deserve to lose.<P>
615 <h2><a name="G14">G14. Is there a way in fetchmail to support disconnected IMAP mode?</a></H2>
617 No. Fetchmail is a mail transport agent, best understood as a protocol
618 gateway between POP3/IMAP servers and SMTP. Disconnected operation
619 requires an elaborate interactive client. It's a very different problem.<p>
622 <h2><a name="B2">B2. I get link failures when I try to build fetchmail.</a></h2>
624 If you get errors resembling these<P>
627 mxget.o(.text+0x35): undefined referenceto `__res_search'
628 mxget.o(.text+0x99): undefined reference to`__dn_skipname'
629 mxget.o(.text+0x11c): undefined reference to`__dn_expand'
630 mxget.o(.text+0x187): undefined reference to`__dn_expand'
631 make: *** [fetchmail] Error 1
634 then you must add "-lresolv" to the LOADLIBS line in your Makefile
635 once you have installed the `bind' package.<P>
638 <h2><a name="F1">F1. Why does my old .fetchmailrc file no longer work?</a></h2>
640 <h3>If your file predates 5.1.0</h3>
642 In 5.1.0, the <tt>auth</tt> keyword and option were changed to
645 <h3>If your file predates 4.5.5</h3>
647 If the <code>dns</code> option is on (the default), you may need to
648 make sure that any hostname you specify (for mail hosts or for an SMTP
649 target) is a canonical fully-qualified hostname). In order to avoid
650 DNS overhead and complications, fetchmail no longer tries to derive
651 the fetchmail client machine's canonical DNS name at startup.<P>
653 <h3>If your file predates 4.0.6:</h3>
655 Just after the `<CODE>via</CODE>' option was introduced, I realized
656 that the interactions between the `<CODE>via</CODE>',
657 `<CODE>aka</CODE>', and `<CODE>localdomains</CODE>' options were out
658 of control. Their behavior had become complex and confusing, so much so
659 that I was no longer sure I understood it myself. Users were being
660 unpleasantly surprised.<P>
662 Rather than add more options or crock the code, I re-thought it. The
663 redesign simplified the code and made the options more orthogonal, but
664 may have broken some complex multidrop configurations.
666 Any multidrop configurations that depended on the name just after the
667 `<CODE>poll</CODE>' or `<CODE>skip</CODE>' keyword being still
668 interpreted as a DNS name for address-matching purposes, even in the
669 presence of a `<CODE>via</CODE>' option, will break.<P>
671 It is theoretically possible that other unusual configurations (such
672 as those using a non-FQDN poll name to generate Kerberos IV tickets) might
673 also break; the old behavior was sufficiently murky that we can't be
674 sure. If you think this has happened to you, contact the maintainer.<P>
676 <h3>If your file predates 3.9.5:</h3>
678 The `<code>remote</code>' keyword has been changed to `<code>folder</code>'.
679 If you try to use the old keyword, the parser will utter a warning.<P>
681 <h3>If your file predates 3.9:</h3>
683 It could be because you're using a .fetchmailrc that's written in the
684 old popclient syntax without an explicit `<CODE>username</CODE>'
685 keyword leading the first user entry attached to a server entry.
687 This error can be triggered by having a user option such as `<CODE>keep</CODE>'
688 or `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>' before the first explicit username. For
689 example, if you write<p>
692 poll openmail protocol pop3
693 keep user "Hal DeVore" there is hdevore here
696 the `<CODE>keep</CODE>' option will generate an entire user entry with
697 the default username (the name of fetchmail's invoking user).<p>
699 The popclient compatibility syntax was removed in 4.0. It complicated
700 the configuration file grammar and confused users.<p>
702 <h3>If your file predates 2.8:</h3>
704 The `<CODE>interface</CODE>', `<CODE>monitor</CODE>' and
705 `<CODE>batchlimit</CODE>' options changed after 2.8.<p>
707 They used to be global options with `<CODE>set</CODE>' syntax like the
708 batchlimit and logfile options. Now they're per-server options, like
709 `<CODE>protocol</CODE>'.<p>
711 If you had something like<p>
714 set interface = "sl0/10.0.2.15"
717 in your .fetchmailrc file, simply delete that line and insert
718 `interface sl0/10.0.2.15' in the server options part of your `defaults'
721 Do similarly for any `<CODE>monitor</CODE>' or `<CODE>batchlimit</CODE>' options.<p>
724 <h2><a name="F2">F2. The .fetchmailrc parser won't accept my all-numeric user name.</a></h2>
726 Either upgrade to a post-5.0.5 fetchmail or put string quotes around it. :-)<p>
728 The configuration file parser in older fetchmail versions treated any
729 all-numeric token as a number, which confused it when it was
730 expecting a name. String quoting forces the token's class.<p>
732 The lexical analyzer in 5.0.6 and beyond is smarter and assumes
733 any token following "username" or "password" is a string.
736 <h2><a name="F3">F3. The .fetchmailrc parser won't accept my host or username beginning with `no'.</a></h2>
738 See <a href="#F2">F2</a> You're caught in an unfortunate crack between
739 the newer-style syntax for negated options (`no keep', `no rewrite'
740 etc.) and the older style run-on syntax (`nokeep', `norewrite'
743 Upgrade to a 5.0.6 or later fetchmail, or put string quotes around your
747 <h2><a name="F4">F4. I'm migrating from popclient. How do I need to modify my .poprc?</a></h2>
749 If you have been using popclient (the ancestor of this program)
750 at version 3.0b6 or later, start with this<p>
753 (cd; mv .poprc .fetchmailrc)
756 and do <code>fetchmail -V</code> to see if fetchmail's parser understands
757 your configuration.<p>
759 Be aware that some of popclient's unnecessary options have been
760 removed (see the NOTES file in the distribution for explanation). You
761 can't deliver to a local mail file or to standard output any more, and
762 using an MDA for delivery is discouraged. If you throw those options
763 away, fetchmail will now forward your mail into your system's normal
764 Internet-mail delivery path.<p>
766 Actually, using an MDA is now almost always the wrong thing; the MDA
767 facility has been retained only for people who can't or won't run a
768 sendmail-like SMTP listener on port 25. The default, SMTP forwarding
769 to port 25, is better for at least three major reasons. One: it feeds
770 retrieved POP and IMAP mail into your system's normal delivery path
771 along with local mail and normal Internet mail, so all your normal
772 filtering/aliasing/forwarding setup for local mail works. Two:
773 because the port 25 listener returns a positive acknowledge, fetchmail
774 can be sure you're not going to lose mail to a disk-full or some other
775 resource-exhaustion problem. Three: it means fetchmail doesn't have
776 to know where the system mailboxes are, or futz with file locking
777 (which makes two fewer places for it to potentially mess up).<p>
779 If you used to use <CODE>-mda "procmail -d</CODE>
780 <em><you></em><CODE>"</CODE> or something similar, forward to port
781 25 and do "<CODE>| procmail -d</CODE> <em><you></em><CODE>"</CODE> in
782 your ~/.forward file.<p>
784 As long as your new .fetchmailrc file does not use the removed
785 `localfolder' option or `<CODE>limit</CODE>' (which now takes a
786 maximum byte size rather than a line count), a straight move or copy
787 of your .poprc will often work. (The new run control file syntax also
788 has to be a little stricter about the order of options than the old,
789 in order to support multiple user descriptions per server; thus you
790 may have to rearrange things a bit.)<p>
792 Run control files in the minimal .poprc format (without the `username'
793 token) will trigger a warning. To eliminate this warning, add the
794 `<CODE>username</CODE>' keyword before your first user entry per server (it is
795 already required before second and subsequent user entries per server.<p>
797 In some future version the `<CODE>username</CODE>' keyword will be required.<p>
800 <h2><a name="F5">F5. I'm getting a `parse error' message I don't understand.</a></h2>
802 The most common cause of mysterious parse errors is putting a server
803 option after a user option. Check the manual page; you'll probably
804 find that by moving one or more options closer to the `poll' keyword
805 you can eliminate the problem.<p>
807 Yes, I know these ordering restrictions are hard to understand.
808 Unfortunately, they're necessary in order to allow the `defaults'
812 <h2><a name="C1">C1. Why do I need a .fetchmailrc when running as root on my own machine?</a></h2>
814 Ian T. Zimmerman <itz@rahul.net> asked:<p>
816 On the machine where I'm the only real user, I run fetchmail as root
817 from a cron job, like this:<p>
820 fetchmail -u "itz" -p POP3 -s bolero.rahul.net
823 This used to work as is (with no .fetchmailrc file in root's home
824 directory) with the last version I had (1.7 or 1.8, I don't
825 remember). But with 2.0, it RECPs all mail to the local root user,
826 unless I create a .fetchmailrc in root's home directory containing:<p>
829 skip bolero.rahul.net proto POP3
833 It won't work if the second line is just "<CODE>user itz</CODE>". This is silly.<p>
835 It seems fetchmail decides to RECP the `default local user' (i.e. the
836 uid running fetchmail) unless there are local aliases, and the
837 `default' aliases (itz->itz) don't count. They should.<p>
841 No they shouldn't. I thought about this for a while, and I don't much
842 like the conclusion I reached, but it's unavoidable. The problem is
843 that fetchmail has no way to know, in general, that a local user `itz'
846 "Ah!" you say, "Why doesn't it check the password file to see if the remote
847 name matches a local one?" Well, there are two reasons.<p>
849 One: it's not always possible. Suppose you have an SMTP host declared
850 that's not the machine fetchmail is running on? You lose.<p>
852 Two: How do you know server itz and SMTP-host itz are the same person?
853 They might not be, and fetchmail shouldn't assume they are unless
854 local-itz can explicitly produce credentials to prove it (that is, the
855 server-itz password in local-itz's .fetchmailrc file.).<p>
857 Once you start running down possible failure modes and thinking about
858 ways to tinker with the mapping rules, you'll quickly find that all the
859 alternatives to the present default are worse or unacceptably
860 more complicated or both.<p>
863 <h2><a name="C2">C2. How can I arrange for a fetchmail daemon to get killed when I log out?</a></h2>
865 The easiest way to dispatch fetchmail on logout (which will work
866 reliably only if you have just one login going at any time) is to
867 arrange for the command `fetchmail -q' to be called on logout. Under
868 bash, you can arrange this by putting `fetchmail -q' in the file
869 `~/.bash_logout'. Most csh variants execute `~/.logout' on logout.
870 For other shells, consult your shell manual page.<p>
872 Automatic startup/shutdown of fetchmail is a little harder to arrange
873 if you may have multiple login sessions going. In the contrib
874 subdirectory of the fetchmail distribution there is some shell code
875 you can add to your .bash_login and .bash_logout profiles that will
876 accomplish this. Thank James Laferriere <babydr@nwrain.net> for
879 Some people start up and shut down fetchmail using the ppp-up and
880 ppp-down scripts of pppd.<p>
883 <h2><a name="C3">C3. How do I know what interface and address to use with --interface?</a></h2>
885 This depends a lot on your local networking configuration (and right
886 now you can't use it at all except under Linux). However, here are
887 some important rules of thumb that can help. If they don't work, ask
888 your local sysop or your Internet provider.<p>
890 First, you may not need to use --interface at all. If your machine
891 only ever does SLIP or PPP to one provider, it's almost certainly by a
892 point to point modem connection to your provider's local subnet that's
893 pretty secure against snooping (unless someone can tap your phone or
894 the provider's local subnet!). Under these circumstances, specifying
895 an interface address is fairly pointless.<p>
897 What the option is really for is sites that use more than one
898 provider. Under these circumstances, typically one of your provider
899 IP addresses is your mailserver (reachable fairly securely via the
900 modem and provider's subnet) but the others might ship your packets
901 (including your password) over unknown portions of the general
902 Internet that could be vulnerable to snooping. What you'll use
903 --interface for is to make sure your password only goes over the
906 To determine the device:<p>
909 <li> If you're using a SLIP link, the correct device is probably sl0.
910 <li> If you're using a PPP link, the correct device is probably ppp0.
911 <li> If you're using a direct connection over a local network such as
912 an ethernet, use the command `netstat -r' to look at your routing table.
913 Try to match your mailserver name to a destination entry; if you don't
914 see it in the first column, use the `default' entry. The device name
915 will be in the rightmost column.
918 To determine the address and netmask:<p>
921 <li> If you're talking to slirp, the correct address is probably 10.0.2.15,
922 with no netmask specified. (It's possible to configure slirp to present
923 other addresses, but that's the default.)
925 <li> If you have a static IP address, run `ifconfig <device>', where <device>
926 is whichever one you've determined. Use the IP address given after
927 "inet addr:". That is the IP address for your end of the link, and is
928 what you need. You won't need to specify a netmask.
930 <li> If you have a dynamic IP address, your connection IP will vary randomly
931 over some given range (that is, some number of the least significant bits
932 change from connection to connection). You need to declare an address
933 with the variable bits zero and a complementary netmask that sets
937 To illustrate the rule for dynamic IP addresses, let's suppose you're
938 hooked up via SLIP and your IP provider tells you that the dynamic
939 address pool is 255 addresses ranging from 205.164.136.1 to
940 205.164.136.255. Then<p>
943 interface "sl0/205.164.136.0/255.255.255.0"
946 would work. To range over any value of the last two octets
947 (65536 addresses) you would use<p>
950 interface "sl0/205.164.0.0/255.255.0.0"
954 <h2><a name="C4">C4. How can I set up support for sendmail's anti-spam features?</a></h2>
956 This answer covers versions of sendmail from 8.8.7 (the version
957 installed in Red Hat 5.1) upwards. If you have an older version,
958 upgrade to sendmail 8.9.<P>
960 Stock sendmails can now do anti-spam exclusions based on a database of
961 filter rules. The human-readable form of the database is at
962 <tt>/etc/mail/deny</tt>. The database itself is at
963 <tt>/etc/mail/deny.db</tt>.<P>
965 The table itself uses email addresses, domain names, and network
966 numbers as keys. For example,</P>
968 spammer@aol.com REJECT
969 cyberspammer.com REJECT
972 <P>would refuse mail from spammer@aol.com, any user from
973 cyberspammer.com (or any host within the cyberspammer.com domain), and
974 any host on the 192.168.212.* network. (This feature can be used to
975 do other things as well; see the <a
976 href="http://www.sendmail.org/m4/anti-spam.html">sendmail
977 documentation</a> for details)</P>
979 To actually set up the database, run
982 makemap hash deny <deny
986 To test, send a message to your mailing address from that host and
987 then pop off the message with fetchmail, using the -v argument. You
988 can monitor the SMTP transaction, and when the FROM address is parsed,
989 if sendmail sees that it is an address in spamlist, fetchmail will
990 flush and delete it.<p>
992 Under no circumstances put your <strong>mailhost</strong> or <strong>any host
993 you accept mail from</strong> using fetchmail into your reject file. You
994 <strong>will</strong> lose mail if you do this!!!<p>
997 <h2><a name="C5">C5. How can I poll some of my mailboxes more/less
998 often than others?</a></h2>
1000 Use the <cite>interval</cite> keyword on the ones that should be
1001 checked less often. For example, if you do a poll every 5 minutes,
1002 and want to poll some mailboxes every 5 minutes and some every 30
1003 minutes, use something like this:<p>
1006 poll mainsite.example.com proto pop3 user ....
1007 poll secondary.example.com proto pop3 interval 6 user ...
1010 Then secondary.example.com will be polled every 6th time that
1011 mainsite.example.com is polled, which with a polling interval of every
1012 5 minutes means that secondary.example.com will be polled every 30
1016 <h2><a name="C6">Fetchmail works OK started up manually, but not from an init script.</a></h2>
1018 Often, startup scripts have a different environment than an interactive
1019 login shell. For instance, $HOME might point to "/root" when you are
1020 logged in as root, but it might be either unset, or set to "/" when the
1021 startup scripts are running. That means fetchmail at startup can't find
1022 the .fetchmailrc.<p>
1024 Pick a location (such as /etc/fetchmailrc) and use fetchmail's -f
1025 option to point fetchmail at it. That should solve the problem.<p>
1028 <h2><a name="T1">T1. How can I use fetchmail with sendmail?</a></h2>
1030 For most sendmails, no special configuration is required. Eric Allman
1031 tells me that if <code>FEATURE(always_add_domain)</code> is included
1032 in sendmail's configuration, you can leave the <code>rewrite</code>
1035 If your sendmail complains ``sendmail does not relay'', make sure
1036 your sendmail,cf file says
1042 so that sendmail recognizes `localhost' as a name of its host.<p>
1044 If you're mailing from another machine on your local network, also
1045 ensure that its IP address is listed in ip_allow or name in name_allow
1046 (usually in /etc/mail/)<p>
1048 If you find that your sendmail doesn't like the address
1049 `FETCHMAIL-DAEMON@localhost' (which is used in the bouncemail
1050 that fetchmail generates), you may have to set
1051 <code>FEATURE(accept_unqualified_senders)</code>.<P>
1053 Günther Leber reports that Digital Unix sendmails won't work with
1054 fetchmail. The symptom is an error message "<code>553 Local configuration
1055 error, hostname not recognized as local</code>". The problem is that
1056 fetchmail normally feeds sendmail with the client machine's host
1057 address in the MAIL FROM line. These sendmails think this means
1058 they're seeing the result of a mail loop and suppress the mail. You
1059 may be able to work around this by running in <code>--invisible</code> mode.<P>
1061 If you want to support multidrop mode, and you can get access to your
1062 mailserver's sendmail.cf file, it's a good idea to add this rule:<P>
1065 H?l?Delivered-To: $u
1068 and declare `<CODE>envelope "Delivered-To:"</CODE>'. This will cause the
1069 mailserver's sendmail to reliably write the appropriate envelope
1070 address into each message before fetchmail sees it, and tell fetchmail
1071 which header it is. With this change, multidrop mode should work
1072 reliably even when the Received header omits the envelope address
1073 (which will typically be the case when the message has multiple
1076 Martijn Lievart has a more detailed recipe in the contrib subdirectory
1077 of the fetchmail source distribution.
1080 <h2><a name="T2">T2. How can I use fetchmail with qmail?</a></h2>
1082 Turn on the <CODE>forcecr</CODE> option; qmail's listener mode doesn't like
1083 header or message lines terminated with bare linefeeds.<p>
1085 (This information is thanks to Robert de Bath
1086 <robert@mayday.cix.co.uk>.)<p>
1088 If a mailhost is using the qmail package (see <a
1089 href="http://pobox.com/~djb/qmail.html">http://pobox.com/~djb/qmail.html</a>)
1090 then, providing the local hosts are also using qmail, it is possible
1091 to set up one fetchmail link to be reliably collect the mail for an
1094 One of the basic features of qmail is the `Delivered-To:' message
1095 header. Whenever qmail delivers a message to a local mailbox it puts
1096 the username and hostname of the envelope recipient on this line. The
1097 major reason for this is to prevent mail loops. <p>
1099 To set up qmail to batch mail for a disconnected site the ISP-mailhost
1100 will have normally put that site in its `virtualhosts' control file so
1101 it will add a prefix to all mail addresses for this site. This results
1102 in mail sent to 'username@userhost.userdom.dom.com' having a
1103 'Delivered-To:' line of the form:<p>
1106 Delivered-To: mbox-userstr-username@userhost.userdom.dom.com
1109 A single host maildrop will be slightly simpler:
1112 Delivered-To: mbox-userstr-username@userhost.dom.com
1115 The ISP can make the 'mbox-userstr-' prefix anything they choose
1116 but a string matching the user host name is likely.<p>
1118 To use this line you must:<p>
1121 <li>Ensure the option `envelope Delivered-To:' is in the fetchmail
1124 <li>Ensure you have a localdomains containing 'userdom.dom.com' or
1125 `userhost.dom.com' respectively.
1128 So far this reliably delivers messages to the correct machine of the
1129 local network, to deliver to the correct user the 'mbox-userstr-'
1130 prefix must be stripped off of the user name. This can be done by
1131 setting up an alias within the qmail MTA on each local machine.
1132 Simply create a dot-qmail file called '.qmail-mbox-userstr-default'
1133 in the alias directory (normally /var/qmail/alias) with the contents:<p>
1136 | ../bin/qmail-inject -a -f"$SENDER" "${LOCAL#mbox-userstr-}@$HOST"
1139 Note this <em>does</em> require a modern /bin/sh.<p>
1141 Peter Wilson adds: <P>
1143 ``My ISP uses "alias-unzzippedcom-" as the prefix, which means that I
1144 need to name my file ".qmail-unzzippedcom-default". This is due to
1145 qmail's assumption that a message sent to user-xyz is handled by the
1146 file ~user/.qmail-xyz (or ~user/.qmail-default).''<p>
1148 Luca Olivetti adds:<P>
1150 If you aren't using qmail locally, or you don't want to set up the
1151 alias mechanism described above, you can use the option `<code>qvirtual
1152 "mbox-userstr-"</code>' in your fetchmail config file to strip the prefix
1153 from the local user name.<p>
1156 <h2><a name="T3">T3. How can I use fetchmail with exim?</a></h2><p>
1158 If you have <CODE>rewrite</CODE> on: <P>
1160 There is an RFC1123 requirement that MAIL FROM and RCPT TO addresses
1161 you pass to it have to be canonical (e.g. with a fully qualified
1162 hostname part). Therefore fetchmail tries to pass fully qualified
1163 RCPT TO addresses. But exim does not by default accept `localhost' as
1164 a fully qualified domain. This can be fixed.<P>
1166 In exim.conf, add `localhost' to your local_domains declaration if it's not
1167 already present. For example, the author's site at thyrsus.com would
1168 have a line reading:<P>
1171 local_domains = thyrsus.com:localhost
1174 If you have <CODE>rewrite</CODE> off:<P>
1176 MAIL FROM is a potential problem if the MTAs upstream from your fetchmail
1177 don't necessarily pass canonicalized From and Return-Path addresses,
1178 and fetchmail's <CODE>rewrite</CODE> option is off. The specific case
1179 where this has come up involves bounce messages generated by sendmail
1180 on your mailer host, which have the (un-canonicalized) origin address
1183 The right way to fix this is to enable the <CODE>rewrite</CODE> option and
1184 have fetchmail canonicalize From and Return-Path addresses with the
1185 mailserver hostname before exim sees them. This option is enabled by
1186 default, so it won't be off unless you turned it off.<p>
1188 If you must run with <CODE>rewrite</CODE> off, there is a switch in exim's
1189 configuration files that allows it to accept domainless MAIL FROM
1190 addresses; you will have to flip it by putting the line <p>
1193 sender_unqualified_hosts = localhost
1196 in the main section of the exim configuration file. Note that this
1197 will result in such messages having an incorrect domain name attached
1198 to their return address (your SMTP listener's hostname rather than
1199 that of the remote mail server). <p>
1202 <h2><a name="T4">T4. How can I use fetchmail with smail?</a></h2><p>
1204 Smail 3.2 is very nearly plug-compatible with sendmail, and may work
1205 fine out of the box.<P>
1207 We have one report that when processing multiple messages from a
1208 single fetchmail session, smail sometimes delivers them in an
1209 order other than received-date order. This can be annoying because it
1210 scrambles conversational threads. This is not fetchmail's problem,
1211 it is an smail `feature' and has been reported to the maintainers
1214 Very recent smail versions require an <code>-smtp_hello_verify</code>
1215 option in the smail config file. This overrides smail's check to see
1216 that the HELO address is actually that of the client machine, which
1217 is never going to be the case when fetchmail is in the picture.
1218 According to RFC1123 an SMTP listener <em>must</em> allow this
1219 mismatch, so smail's new behavior (introduced sometime between
1220 3.2.0.90 and 3.2.0.95) is a bug.<P>
1223 <h2><a name="T5">T5. How can I use fetchmail with SCO's MMDF?</a></h2><p>
1225 MMDF itself is difficult to configure, but it turns out that
1226 connecting fetchmail to MMDF's SMTP channel isn't that hard.
1228 href="http://www.aplawrence.com/Unixart/uucptofetch.html">
1229 MMDF recipe</a> that describes replacing a UUCP link with
1230 fetchmail feeding MMDF.<P>
1233 <h2><a name="T6">T6. How can I use fetchmail with Lotus Notes?</a></h2><p>
1235 The Lotus Notes SMTP gateway tries to deduce when it should convert \n
1236 to \r\n, but its rules are not the intuitive and correct-for-RFC822
1237 ones. Use `forcecr'.<P>
1240 <h2><a name="S1">S1. How can I use fetchmail with qpopper?</a></h2>
1242 Qualcomm's qpopper is probably the best-of-breed among POP3 servers, and
1243 is very widely deployed. Nevertheless, it has some problems which
1244 fetchmail exposes. We recommend using <a href="#G7">IMAP</a> instead if at
1245 all possible. If you must talk to qpopper, here are some problems to
1248 <h3>Problems with retrieving large messages from qpopper 2.53</h3>
1250 Tony Tang <a href="mailto:tony@atn.com.hk"><tony@atn.com.hk></a>
1251 reports that there is a bad intercation between fetchmail and qpopper
1252 2.5.3 under Red Hat Linux versions 5.0 to 5.2, kernels 2.0.34 to
1253 2.0.35. When fetching very large messages (over 700K) from 2.5.3,
1254 fetchmail will hang with a socket error.<p>
1256 This is probably not a fetchmail bug, but rather a symptom of some
1257 problem in the networking stack that qpopper's transmission pattern is
1258 tickling, as fetchpop (another Linux POP client) also displays the hang
1259 but Netscape running under Win95 does not. The problem can also be
1261 href="http://www.eudora.com/freeware/qpop.html">upgrading to qpopper
1264 <h3>Bad interaction with fetchmail 4.4.2 to 4.4.7</h3>
1266 Versions of fetchmail from 4.4.2 through 4.4.7 had a bad interaction
1267 with Eudora qpopper versions 2.3 and later. See <a href="#X5">X5</a>
1268 for details. The solution is to upgrade your fetchmail.<p>
1271 <h2><a name="S2">S2. How can I use fetchmail with Microsoft Exchange?</a></h2>
1273 Fetchmail now supports the proprietary NTLM mode used with M$ Exchange
1274 servers. To enable this, configure fetchmail with the --enable-NTLM
1275 option and recompile it. Note: if you specify a user option value
1276 that looks like `user@domain', the part to the left of the @ will
1277 be passed as the username and the part to the right as the NTLM domain.<P>
1279 M$ Exchange violates the POP3 RFCs. Its LIST command does not reveal
1280 the real sizes of mail in the pop mailbox, but the sizes of the
1281 compressed versions in the exchange mail database (thanks to Arjan De
1282 Vet and Guido Van Rooij for alerting us to this problem).<P>
1284 Fetchmail works with M$ Exchange, despite this brain damage. Two
1285 features are compromised. One is that the --limit option will not
1286 work right (it will check against compressed and not actual sizes).
1287 The other is that a too-small SIZE argument may be passed to your
1288 ESMTP listener, assuming you're using one (this should not be a
1289 problem unless the actual size of the message is above the listener's
1290 configured length limit).<P>
1292 Somewhat belatedly, I've learned that there's supposed to be a
1293 registry bit that can fix this breakage:<P>
1296 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MsExchangeIs\Parameters
1297 System\Pop3 Compatibility
1300 This is a bitmask that controls the variations from the standard protocol.
1301 The bits defined are:<P>
1305 <DD>Report exact message sizes for the LIST command
1307 <DD>Allow arbitrary linear whitespace between commands and arguments
1309 <DD>Enable the LAST command
1311 <DD>Allow an empty PASS command (needed for users with blank
1312 passwords, but illegal in the protocol)
1314 <DD>Relax the length restrictions for arguments to commands (protocol
1315 requires 40, but some user names may be longer than that).
1317 <DD>Allow spaces in the argument to the USER command.
1320 There's another one that may be useful to know about:<P>
1323 KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MsExchangeIs\Parameters
1324 System\Pop3 Performance
1329 <DD>Render messages to a temporary stream instead of sending directly
1330 from the database (should always be on)
1332 Flag unrenderable messages (instead of just failing commands)
1333 (should only be on if you are seeing the problems reported
1336 <DD>Return from the QUIT command before all messages have been deleted.
1339 The Microsoft pod-person who revealed this information to me admitted
1340 that he couldn't find it anywhere in their public knowledge base.<P>
1342 You can mess with these bits. Or, better yet, you can lose that
1343 brain-dead Microsoft crap and install a real operating system on your
1347 <h2><a name="S3">S3. How can I use fetchmail with CompuServe RPA?</a></h2>
1349 First, make sure your fetchmail has the RPA support compiled in.
1350 Stock fetchmail binaries (such as you might get from an RPM) don't.
1351 You can check this by looking at the output of <code>fetchmail -V</code>;
1352 if you see the string "+RPA" after the version ID you're good to go,
1353 otherwise you'll have to build your own from sources (see the INSTALL
1354 file in the source distribution for directions).<P>
1356 Give your CompuServe pass-phrase in lower case as your password. Add
1357 `@compuserve.com' to your user ID so that it looks like `user
1358 <UserID>@compuserve.com', where <UserID> can be either
1359 your numerical userID or your E-mail nickname. An RPA-enabled
1360 fetchmail will automatically check for csi.com in the POP server's
1361 greeting line. If that's found, and your user ID ends with
1362 `@compuserve.com', it will query the server to see if it
1363 is RPA-capable, and if so do an RPA transaction rather than a
1364 plain-text password handshake.<P>
1366 <strong>Warning:</strong> the debug (-v -v) output of fetchmail will show
1367 your pass-phrase in Unicode!<P>
1369 These two .fetchmailrc entries show the difference between an RPA and
1370 non-RPA configuration:
1373 # This version will use RPA
1374 poll csi.com via "pop.site1.csi.com" with proto POP3 and options no dns
1375 user "CSERVE_USER@compuserve.com" there with password "CSERVE_PASSWORD"
1376 is LOCAL_USER here options fetchall stripcr
1378 # This version will not use RPA
1379 poll non-rpa.csi.com via "pop.site1.csi.com" with proto POP3 and options no dns
1380 user "CSERVE_USER" there with password "CSERVE_POP3_PASSWORD"
1381 is LOCAL_USER here options fetchall stripcr
1385 <h2><a name="S4">S4. How can I use fetchmail with Demon Internet's SDPS?</a></h2>
1387 <h3>Single-drop mode</h3>
1389 You can get fetchmail to download the email for just one user from
1390 Demon Internet's POP3 server by giving it a username consisting of your
1391 Demon user name followed by your account name, with an at-sign between
1394 For example, to download email for the user <philh@vision25.demon.co.uk>,
1395 you could use the following .fetchmailrc file:<P>
1398 set postmaster "philh"
1399 poll pop3.demon.co.uk with protocol POP3:
1400 user "philh@vision25" is philh
1403 <h3>Multi-drop mode</h3>
1405 Demon Internet's SDPS service is an implementation of POP3. All messages
1406 have a Received: header added when they enter the maildrop, like this:
1409 Received: from punt-1.mail.demon.net by mailstore for fred@xyz.demon.co.uk
1410 id 899963657:10:27896:0; Thu, 09 Jul 98 05:54:17 GMT
1413 To enable multi-drop mode you need to tell fetchmail that 'mailstore' is
1414 the name of the host which accepted the mail, and let it know the
1415 hostname part(s) of your E-mail address. The following example assumes
1416 that your hostname is xyz.demon.co.uk, and that you have also bought
1417 "mail forwarding" for the domain my-company.co.uk (in which case your
1418 MTA must also be configured to accept mail sent to user@my-company.co.uk)
1421 poll pop3.demon.co.uk proto pop3 aka mailstore no dns:
1422 localdomains xyz.demon.co.uk my-company.co.uk
1423 user xyz is * fetchall
1426 The `fetchall' command ensures that all mail is downloaded. If you
1427 want to leave mail on the server use `uidl' and `keep'; Demon does not
1428 implement the obsolete `top' command, because SDPS combines messages
1429 residing on two separate punt clusters into a single POP3 maildrop.
1430 If you do use UIDL, be aware that the "user@host" form for fetching
1431 mail from a particular Demon host will confuse fetchmail's UIDL code;
1434 Note that Demon may delete mail on the server which is more than 30
1435 days old; see their <a
1436 href="http://www.demon.net/info/helpdesk/demon_products/mail/sdps-tech.shtml">
1437 POP3 page</a> for details.<P>
1439 <h3>The SDPS extension</h3>
1441 There's a different way to do multidrop. It's not necessary on Demon
1442 Internet, since fetchmail can parse Received addresses, but the person
1443 who implemented this didn't know that. It may be useful if Demon
1444 Internet ever changes mail transports.<P>
1446 SDPS includes a non-standard extension for retrieving the envelope of a
1447 message (*ENV), which fetchmail optionally supports if compiled with the
1448 --enable-SDPS option. If you have it, the first line of the fetchmail -V
1449 response will include the string "+SDPS".<P>
1451 Once you have SDPS compiled in, fetchmail in POP3 mode will
1452 automatically detect when it's talking to a Demon Internet host in
1453 multidrop mode, and use the *ENV extension to get an envelope To address.<P>
1455 The autodetection works by looking at the hostname in the POP3
1456 greeting line; if you're accessing Demon Internet through a proxy it
1457 may fail. To force SDPS mode, pick "sdps" as your protocol.<P>
1460 <h2><a name="S5">S5. How can I use fetchmail with usa.net's servers?</a></h2>
1462 Enable `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>'. A user reports that the 2.2 version
1463 of USA.NET's POP server reports that you must use the
1464 `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>' option to make sure that all of the mail is
1465 retrieved, otherwise some may be left on the server. This is almost
1466 certainly a server bug.<P>
1468 The usa.net servers (at least in their 2.2 version, June 1998) don't
1469 handle the TOP command properly, either. Regardless of the argument
1470 you give it, they retrieve only about 10 lines of the message.
1471 Fetchmail normally uses TOP for message retrieval in order to avoid
1472 marking messages seen, but `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>' forces it to use
1475 (Note: Other failure modes have been reported on usa.net's servers.
1476 They seem to be chronically flaky. We recommend finding another
1480 <h2><a name="S6">S6. How can I use fetchmail with HP OpenMail?</a></h2>
1482 No special configuration is required, but OpenMail versions prior to
1483 6.0 have an annoying bug similar to the big one in <a
1484 href="#S2">Microsoft Exchange</a>. The message sizes it gives in the
1485 LIST are rounded to the nearest 1024 bytes. It also has a nasty habit
1486 of discarding headers it doesn't recognize, such as X- and Resent-
1489 As with M$ Exchange, the only real fix for these problems is to get a
1490 POP (or preferably IMAP) server that isn't brain-dead. OpenMail's
1491 project manager claims these bugs have been fixed in 6.0.<P>
1494 <h2><a name="S8">S8. How can I use fetchmail with Hotmail?</a></h2>
1496 You can't, yet. But Hugo Rabson has written a script called `hotmole'
1497 that can retrieve Hotmail mail via the web using Lynx. The script
1499 href="http://www.jin-sei-kai.demon.co.uk/hugo/linux.html">
1500 Hugo Rabson's Linux page</a>, but we're told that project is dead and
1501 the web page seems to be gone.<P>
1504 <h2><a name="S9">S9. How can I use fetchmail with MSN?</a></h2>
1506 You can't. MSN uses something that looks like POP3, except the
1507 authentication part is nonstandard. And of course they don't
1508 document it, so nobody but their Windows clients can speak it.<p>
1510 This is a customer lock-in tactic; we recommend boycotting MSN as the
1511 only appropriate response.<p>
1513 As of 5.0.8, we have support for the client side of NTLM
1514 authentication. It's possible this may enable fetchmail to talk to
1515 MSN; if so, somebody should report it so this FAQ can be corrected.<p>
1518 <h2><a name="S10">S10. How can I use fetchmail with SpryNet?</a></h2>
1520 The SpryNet POP3 servers mark a message queried with TOP as seen.
1521 This means that if your connection drops in mid-message, it may end
1522 up invisibly stuck on your mail spool. Use the <code>fetchall</code>
1523 flag to ensure that it's recovered on the next cycle.<p>
1526 <h2><a name="S11">S11. How can I use fetchmail with FTGate?</a></h2>
1528 The FTGate V2 server (and possibly older versions as well) has a weird
1529 bug. It answers OK twice to a TOP request! Use the
1530 <code>fetchall</code> option to force use of RETR and work around this
1534 <h2><a name="S12">S12. How can I use fetchmail with MailMax?</a></h2>
1536 You can't. At least not if you want to be able to see attachments.
1537 MailMax has a bug; it reports the message length with attachments
1538 but doesn't download them on TOP or RETR. <p>
1541 <h2><a name="S13">S13. How can I use fetchmail with Novell GroupWise?</a></h2>
1543 The Novell GroupWise IMAP server would be better named GroupFoolish;
1544 it is (according to the designer of IMAP) unusably broken. Among
1545 other things, it doesn't include a required content length in its
1546 BODY[TEXT] response.<p>
1548 Fetchmail works around this problem, but we strongly recommend voting
1549 with your dollars for a server that isn't brain-dead. If you stick
1550 with code as shoddy as GroupWise seems to be, you will probably pay
1551 for it with other problems.<p>
1554 <h2><a name="K1">K1. How can I use fetchmail with SOCKS?</a></h2>
1556 Daniel Sobral <<a href="mailto:dcs@gns.com.br">dcs@gns.com.br</a>
1557 gave us the following recipe:<P>
1560 <LI> Install socks5. You don't need to have a socks server, you just
1561 want the "runsocks" program.
1562 <LI> Set the environment variable SOCKS_SERVER to the server you'll be
1563 using. Alternatively, you may set SOCKS4_SERVER and/or
1564 SOCKS5_SERVER. E.g.:
1566 export SOCKS5_SERVER=socks.my.domain.com
1568 <LI> Set SOCKS5_USER and SOCKS5_PASSWD if needed.
1569 <LI> Run fetchmail through runsocks. Just like this:
1571 runsocks fetchmail [parameters to fetchmail]
1575 It wasn't that hard, was it? :-)<P>
1577 Giuseppe Guerini added a --with-socks option that supports linking
1578 with socks library. If you specify the value of this option as
1579 ``yes'', the configure script will try to find the Rconnect library
1580 and set the makefile up to link it. You can also specify a directory
1581 containing the Rconnect library.<p>
1584 <h2><a name="S7">S7. How can I use fetchmail with geocities POP3 servers?</a></h2>
1586 Nathan Cutler reports that the the mail.geocities.com POP3 servers
1587 fail to include the first Received line of the message in the send to
1588 fetchmail. This can solve problems if your MUA interprets Received
1589 continuations as body lines and doesn't parse any of the following
1592 Workaround is to use "mda" keyword or "-mda" switch:
1594 mda "sed -e '1s/^\t/Received: /' | formail | /usr/bin/procmail -d <user>"
1596 Replace \t with exactly one tabulation character.
1598 You should also consider using "fetchall" option because Geocities' servers
1599 sometimes think that the first 45 messages have already been read.<P>
1601 Fix: Get an email provider that doesn't suck. The pop-up ads on
1602 Geocities are lame, you should boycott them anyway.<P>
1605 <h2><a name="K2">K2. How can I use fetchmail with IPv6 and IPsec?</a></h2>
1607 To use fetchmail with IPv6, you need a system that supports IPv6, the "Basic
1608 Socket Interface Extensions for IPv6" (RFC 2133).
1609 This currently means that you need to have a BSD/OS or NetBSD system with
1610 the NRL IPv6+IPsec software distribution or a Linux system with the latest
1611 experimental kernel and net-tools. It should not be hard to build fetchmail on
1612 other IPv6 implementations if you can port the inet6-apps kit.<P>
1614 To use fetchmail with networking security (read: IPsec), you need a system that
1615 supports IPsec, the API described in the "Network Security API for Sockets"
1616 (draft-metz-net-security-api-01.txt), and the inet6-apps kit. This currently
1617 means that you need to have a BSD/OS or NetBSD system with the NRL IPv6+IPsec
1618 software distribution. A Linux IPsec implementation supporting this API will
1619 probably appear in the coming months.<P>
1621 The NRL IPv6+IPsec software distribution can be obtained from: <a
1622 href="http://web.mit.edu/network/isakmp">http://web.mit.edu/network/isakmp</a>
1625 The inet6-apps kit can be obtained from <a
1626 href="ftp://ftp.ipv6.inner.net/pub/ipv6">ftp://ftp.ipv6.inner.net/pub/ipv6</a>
1627 (via IPv6) or <a href="ftp://ftp.inner.net/pub/ipv6">
1628 ftp://ftp.inner.net/pub/ipv6</a> (via IPv4).<P>
1630 More information on using IPv6 with Linux can be obtained from:
1633 <a href="http://www.bieringer.de/linux/IPv6/IPv6-HOWTO/IPv6-HOWTO.html">
1634 http://www.bieringer.de/linux/IPv6/IPv6-HOWTO/IPv6-HOWTO.html</a>
1636 <a href="http://www.ipv6.inner.net/ipv6">http://www.ipv6.inner.net/ipv6</a>
1639 <a href="http://www.inner.net/ipv6">http://www.inner.net/ipv6</a> (via IPv4)
1643 <h2><a name="K3">K3. How can I get fetchmail to work with ssh?</a></h2>
1645 We have three recipes for this. The first is easy to set up,
1646 but only supports one user at a time.<P>
1648 First, a lightly edited version of a recipe from Masafumi NAKANE:<p>
1650 1. You must have ssh (the ssh client) on the local host and sshd (ssh
1651 server) on the remote mail server. And you have to configure ssh so
1652 you can login to the sshd server host without a password. (Refer to ssh
1653 man page for several authentication methods.)<p>
1655 2. Add something like following to your .fetchmailrc file: <p>
1658 poll mailhost port 1234 via localhost with proto pop3:
1659 preconnect "ssh -f -L 1234:mailhost:110 mailhost sleep 20
1660 </dev/null >/dev/null; sleep 5";
1663 The sleep is needed on slower machines to prevent fetchmail from
1664 trying to open the socket before ssh actually makes it ready. Faster
1665 machines may not need it.<p>
1667 (Note that 1234 can be an arbitrary port number. Privileged ports can
1668 be specified only by root.) The effect of this ssh command is to
1669 forward connections made to localhost port 1234 (in above example) to
1672 This configuration will enable secure mail transfer. All the
1673 conversation between fetchmail and remote pop server will be
1676 If sshd is not running on the remote mail server, you can specify
1677 intermediate host running it. If you do this, however, communication
1678 between the machine running sshd and the POP server will not be encrypted.
1679 And the preconnect line would be like this:<p>
1682 preconnect "ssh -f -L 1234:mailhost:110 sshdhost sleep 20 </dev/null >/dev/null"
1685 You can work this trick with IMAP too, but the port number 110 in the
1686 above would need to become 143.<p>
1688 Second, a recipe from Charlie Brady <cbrady@ind.tansu.com.au>:<p>
1690 Charlie says: "The [previous] recipe certainly works, but
1691 the solution I post here is better in a few respects":
1694 <LI>this method will not fail if two or more users attempt to use fetchmail
1696 <LI>you are able to use the full facilities of tcpd to control access
1697 <LI>this method does not depend on the preconnect feature of fetchmail, so
1698 can be used for tunneling of other services as well.
1705 Make sure that the "socket" program is installed on the server
1706 machine. Presently it lives at <a
1707 href="ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/linux/system/network/misc/socket-1.1.tar.gz">
1708 ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/linux/system/network/misc/socket-1.1.tar.gz</a>,
1709 but watch out for a change in version number.<P>
1711 Set up an unprivileged account on your system with a .ssh directory
1712 containing an SSH identity file "identity" with no pass phrase,
1713 "identity.pub" and "known_hosts" containing the host key of your
1714 mailhost. Let's call this account "noddy".
1716 On mailhost, set up no-password access for noddy@yourhost. Add to your
1717 SSH authorized_keys file:
1720 command="socket localhost 110",no-port-forwarding 1024 ......
1723 where "<code>1024</code> ......" is the content of noddy's identity.pub file.
1725 Create a script /usr/local/bin/ssh.fm and make it executable:
1729 exec ssh -q -C -l your.login.id -e none mailhost socket localhost 110
1732 Add an entry in inetd.conf for whatever port you choose to use - say:
1735 1234 stream tcp nowait noddy /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/local/bin/ssh.fm
1738 Send a HUP signal to your inetd.
1741 Now just use localhost:1234 to access your POP server.<P>
1743 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>
1746 <h2><a name="K4">K4. What do I have to do to use the IMAP-GSS protocol?</a></h2>
1748 Fetchmail can use RFC1731 GSSAPI authorization to safely identify you
1749 to your IMAP server, as long as you can share Kerberos V credentials
1750 with your mail host and you have a GSSAPI-capable IMAP server.
1751 UW-IMAP (available via FTP at <a
1752 href="ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/mail/">ftp.cac.washington.edu</a>)
1753 is the only one I'm aware of and the one I recommend anyway for other
1754 reasons. You'll need version 4.1-FINAL or greater though, and it has
1755 to have GSS support compiled in.<p>
1757 Neither UW-IMAP nor fetchmail compile in support for GSS by default, since
1758 it requires libraries from the Kerberos V distribution (available via FTP at
1759 <a href="ftp://athena-dist.mit.edu/pub/ATHENA/kerberos">athena-dist.mit.edu</a>
1760 but mind the export restrictions). If you have these, compiling in GSS support
1761 is simple: add a <pre>--with-gssapi=[/path/to/krb5/root]</pre> option to
1762 configure. For instance, I have all of my Kerberos V libraries installed under
1763 /usr/krb5 so I run <pre>configure --with-gssapi=/usr/krb5</pre><p>
1765 Setting up Kerberos V authentication is beyond the scope of this FAQ
1766 (you may find Jim Rome's paper <a
1767 href="http://www.ornl.gov/~jar/HowToKerb.html"> How to Kerberize your
1768 site</a> helpful), but you'll at least need to add a credential for
1769 imap/[mailhost] to the keytab of the mail server (IMAP doesn't just
1770 use the host key). Then you'll need to have your credentials ready on
1771 your machine (cf. kinit).<p>
1773 After that things are very simple. Set your protocol to imap-gss in your
1774 .fetchmailrc, and omit the password, since imap-gss doesn't need one. You
1775 can specify a username if you want, but this is only useful if your mailbox
1776 belongs to a username different from your Kerberos principal. <p>
1778 Now you don't have to worry about your password appearing in cleartext in
1779 your .fetchmailrc, or across the network.<p>
1782 <h2><a name="K5">K5. How can I use fetchmail with SSL?</a></h2>
1784 You'll need to have the <a href="http://www.openssl.org/">OpenSSL</a>
1785 libraries installed. Configure with --with-ssl. If you have the
1786 OpenSSL libraries installed in the default location (/usr/local/ssl)
1787 this will suffice. If you have them installed in a non-default
1788 location, you'll need to specify it as an argument to --with-ssl after
1791 Fetchmail binaries built this way support <code>ssl</code>,
1792 <code>sslkey</code>, and <code>sslcert</code> options that control
1793 SSL encryption. You will need to have an SSL-enabled mailserver
1794 to use these options. See the manual page for detals.<p>
1797 <h2><a name="R1">R1. Fetchmail isn't working, and -v shows `SMTP connect failed' messages.</a></h2>
1799 Fetchmail itself is probably working, but your SMTP port 25 listener
1800 is down or inaccessible.<p>
1802 The first thing to check is if you can telnet to port 25 on your smtp
1803 host (which is normally `localhost' unless you've specified an smtp
1804 option in your .fetchmailrc or on the command line) and get a greeting
1805 line from the listener. If the SMTP host is inaccessible or the listener
1806 is down, fix that first.<p>
1808 If the listener seems to be up when you test with telnet, the most
1809 benign and typical problem is that the listener had a momentary seizure
1810 due to resource exhaustion while fetchmail was polling it -- process
1811 table full or some other problem that stopped the listener process
1812 from forking. If your SMTP host is not `localhost' or something else
1813 in /etc/hosts, the fetchmail glitch could also have been caused by
1814 transient nameserver failure. <p>
1816 Try running fetchmail -v again; if it succeeds, you had one of these
1817 kinds of transient glitch. You can ignore these hiccups, because a
1818 future fetchmail run will get the mail through. <p>
1820 If the listener tests up, but you have chronic failures trying to
1821 connect to it anyway, your problem is more serious. One way to work
1822 around chronic SMTP connect problems is to use --mda. But this only
1823 attacks the symptom; you may have a DNS or TCP routing problem. You
1824 should really try to figure out what's going on underneath before it
1825 bites you some other way. <p>
1827 We have one report (from toby@eskimo.com) that you can sometimes solve
1828 such problems by doing an <CODE>smtp</CODE> declaration with an IP
1829 address that your routing table maps to something other than the
1830 loopback device (he used ppp0).<p>
1832 We also have a report that this error can be caused by having an
1833 /etc/hosts file that associates your client host name with more than
1836 It's also possible that your DNS configuration isn't
1837 looking at <code>/etc/hosts</code> at all. If you're using libc5,
1838 look at <code>/etc/resolv.conf</code>; it should say something like
1844 so your <code>/etc/hosts</code> file is checked first. If you're
1845 running GNU libc6, check your <code>/etc/nsswitch.conf</code> file. Make
1846 sure it says something like
1852 again, in order to make sure <code>/etc/hosts</code> is seen first.<P>
1854 If you have a hostname set for your machine, and this hostname does
1855 not appear in /etc/hosts, you will be able to telnet to port 25 and
1856 even send a mail with rcpt to: user@host-not-in-/etc/hosts, but
1857 fetchmail can't seem to get in touch with sendmail, no matter what you
1858 set smtpaddress to.<p>
1860 We had another report from a Linux user of fetchmail 2.1 who solved his SMTP
1861 connection problem by removing the reference to -lresolv from his link
1862 line and relinking. Apparently in some older Linux distributions the
1863 libc bind library version works better.<p>
1865 As of 2.2, the configure script has been hacked so the bind library is
1866 linked only if it is actually needed. So under Linux it won't be, and
1867 this particular cause should go away.<p>
1870 <h2><a name="R2">R2. When I try to configure an MDA, fetchmail doesn't work.</a></h2>
1872 (I hear this one from people who have run into the blank-line problem in <a href="#X1">X1</a>.)<p>
1874 Try sending yourself test mail and retrieving it using the
1875 command-line options `<CODE>-k -m cat</CODE>'. This will dump exactly what
1876 fetchmail retrieves to standard output (plus the Received line
1877 fetchmail itself adds to the headers). <p>
1879 If the dump doesn't match what shows up in your mailbox when you
1880 configure an MDA, your MDA is mangling the message. If it doesn't
1881 match what you sent, then fetchmail or something on the server is
1885 <h2><a name="R3">R3. Fetchmail dumps core when given an invalid rc file.</a></h2>
1887 This is usually reported from AIX or Ultrix, but has even been known
1888 to happen on Linuxes without a recent version of <code>flex</code>
1889 installed. The problem appears to be a result of building with an
1890 archaic version of lex.<P>
1892 Workaround: fix the syntax of your .fetchmailrc file.<P>
1894 Fix: build and install the latest version of <a
1895 href="ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/~ftp/pub/gnu">flex</a> from the Free
1896 Software Foundation. An FSF <a
1897 href="http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/order/ftp.html">mirror site</a>
1898 will help you get it faster.<P>
1901 <h2><a name="R4">R4. Fetchmail dumps core in -V mode, but operates normally otherwise.</a></h2>
1903 We've had this reported to us under Linux using libc-5.4.17 and gcc-2.7.2.
1904 It does not occur with libc-5.3.12 or earlier versions.<p>
1906 Workaround: link with GNU malloc rather than the stock C library malloc.<p>
1908 We're told there is some problem with the malloc() code in that
1909 version which makes it fragile in the presence of multiple free()
1910 calls on the same pointer (the malloc arena gets corrupted).
1911 Unfortunately it appears from doing gdb traces that whatever free()
1912 calls producing the problem are being made by the C library itself, not the
1913 fetchmail code (they're all from within fclose, and not an fclose called
1914 directly by fetchmail, either).<p>
1917 <h2><a name="R5">R5. Running fetchmail in daemon mode doesn't work.</a><br></h2>
1919 We have one report from a SunOS 4.1.4 user that trying to run
1920 fetchmail in detached daemon mode doesn't work, but that using the
1921 same options with -N (nodetach) is OK.<P>
1923 If this happens, you have a specific portability problem with the code
1924 in daemon.c that detaches and backgrounds the daemon fetchmail. Tell
1925 me about it so I can try to fix it. As a workaround, you can start
1926 fetchmail with -N and an ampersand to background it. A Sun user
1931 (fetchmail --nodetach <other params> &)
1934 The extra pair of parens is significant --- it makes sure that the process
1935 detaches from the initial shell (one more shell is started and dies
1936 immediately, detaching fetchmail and making it child of PID 1). This is
1937 important when you start fetchmail interactively and than quit
1938 interactive shell. The line above makes sure fetchmail lives after
1941 This should not happen under Linux or any truly POSIX-conformant Unix.<P>
1944 <h2><a name="R6">R6. Fetchmail hangs when used with pppd.</a></h2>
1946 Your problem may be with pppd's `demand' option. We have a report that
1947 fetchmail doesn't play well with it, but works with pppd if `demand'
1948 is turned off. We have no idea why this is.<p>
1951 <h2><a name="R7">R7. Fetchmail randomly dies with socket errors.</a></h2>
1953 Check the MTU value in your PPP interface reported by
1954 <code>/sbin/ifconfig</code>. If it's over 600, change it in your PPP
1955 options file. (<code>/etc/ppp/options</code> on my box). Here are
1956 option values that work:<P>
1964 <a name="R8">R8. Fetchmail running as root stopped working after an OS upgrade</a></h2>
1966 In RH 6.0, the HOME value in the boot-time root environment changed
1967 from /root to / as the result of a change in init. Move your
1968 .fetchmailrc or use a -f option to explicitly point at the file.
1969 (Oddly, a similar problem has been reported from Debian systems.)<P>
1972 <h2><a name="R9">R9. Fetchmail is timing out after fetching certain
1973 messages but before deleting them</a></h2>
1975 There's a TCP/IP stalling problem under Redhat 6.0 (and possibly other
1976 recent Linuxes) that can cause this symptom. Brian Boutel writes:<p>
1979 TCP timestamps are turned on on my Linux boxes (I assume it's now the
1980 default). This uses 12 extra bytes per segment.
1981 When the tcp connection starts, the other end agrees a MSS of 1460,
1982 and then fragments 1460 byte chunks into 1448 and 12, because
1983 is is not allowing for the timestamp.<p>
1985 Then, for reasons I can't explain, it waits a long time (typically 2
1986 minutes) after the ack is sent before sending the next (fragmented)
1987 packet. Turning off tcp timestamps avoids the fragmentation and
1988 restores normal behaviour. To do this, [execute]<p>
1990 echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_timestamps<p>
1992 I'm still unclear about the details of why this is happening. At least
1993 [now] I am now getting good performance and no queue blocking.
1997 <h2><a name="R10">R10. Fetchmail is timing out during message fetches</a></h2>
1999 This is probably a general networking issue. Sending a "RETR" command will
2000 cause the server to start sending large amounts of data, which means
2001 large packets. If your networking layer has a packet-fragmentation
2002 problem, that's where you'll see it.<p>
2005 <h2><a name="D1">D1. I think I've set up fetchmail correctly, but I'm not getting any mail.</a></h2>
2007 Maybe you have a .forward or alias set up that you've forgotten about. You
2008 should probably remove it.<p>
2010 Or maybe you're trying to run fetchmail in multidrop mode as root
2011 without a .fetchmailrc file. This doesn't do what you think it
2012 should; see question <a href="#C1">C1</a>.<p>
2014 Or you may not be connecting to the SMTP listener. Run fetchmail -v
2015 and see <a href="#R1">R1</a>.<p>
2018 <h2><a name="D2">D2. All my mail seems to disappear after a dropped connection.</a></h2>
2020 One POP3 daemon used in the Berkeley Unix world that reports itself as
2021 POP3 version 1.004 actually throws the queue away. 1.005 fixed that.
2022 If you're running this one, upgrade immediately. (It also truncates
2023 long lines at column 1024)<P>
2025 Many POP servers, if an interruption occurs, will restore the whole
2026 mail queue after about 10 minutes. Others will restore it right
2027 away. If you have an interruption and don't see it right away, cross
2028 your fingers and wait ten minutes before retrying.<P>
2030 Some servers (such as Microsoft's NTMail) are mis-designed to restore
2031 the entire queue, including messages you have deleted. If you have
2032 one of these and it flakes out on you a lot, try setting a small
2033 <code>--fetchlimit</code> value. This will result in more IP connects
2034 to the server, but will mean it actually executes changes to the queue
2037 Qualcomm's qpopper, used at many BSD Unix sites, is better behaved.
2038 If its connection is dropped, it will first execute all DELE commands as
2039 though you had issued a QUIT (this is a technical violation of
2040 the POP3 RFCs, but a good idea in a world of flaky phone lines). Then it
2041 will re-queue any message that was being downloaded at hangup time.
2042 Still, qpopper may require a noticeable amount of time to do deletions
2043 and clean up its queue. (Fetchmail waits a bit before retrying in
2044 order to avoid a `lock busy' error.)<P>
2047 <h2><a name="D3">D3. Mail that was being fetched when I interrupted my fetchmail seems to have been vanished.</a></h2>
2049 Fetchmail only sends a delete mail request to the server when either
2050 (a) it gets a positive delivery acknowledgment from the SMTP
2051 listener, or (b) it gets an error 571 (the spam-filter error) from the
2052 listener. No interrupt can cause it to lose mail.<p>
2054 However, IMAP2bis has a design problem in that its normal fetch
2055 command marks a message `seen' as soon as the fetch command to get it
2056 is sent down. If for some reason the message isn't actually delivered
2057 (you take a line hit during the download, or your port 25 listener
2058 can't find enough free disk space, or you interrupt the delivery in
2059 mid-message) that `seen' message can lurk invisibly in your server
2062 Workaround: add the `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>' keyword to your fetch options.<p>
2064 Solution: switch to an <a href="http://www.imap.org">IMAP4</a> server.<p>
2067 <h2><a name="M1">M1. I've declared local names, but all my multidrop
2068 mail is going to root anyway.</a></h2>
2070 Somehow your fetchmail is never recognizing the hostname part of
2071 recipient names it parses out of To/Cc/envelope-header lines as
2072 matching the name of the mailserver machine. To check this, run
2073 fetchmail in foreground with -v -v on. You will probably see a lot of
2074 messages with the format ``line rejected, %s is not an alias of the
2075 mailserver'' or ``no address matches; forwarding to %s.'' <p>
2077 These errors usually indicate some kind of DNS configuration problem
2078 either on the server or your client machine. <p>
2080 The easiest workaround is to add a `<CODE>via</CODE>' option (if
2081 necessary) and add enough aka declarations to cover all of your
2082 mailserver's aliases, then say `<CODE>no dns</CODE>'. This will take
2083 DNS out of the picture (though it means mail may be uncollected if
2084 it's sent to an alias of the mailserver that you don't have
2087 It would be better to fix your DNS, however. DNS problems can hurt
2088 you in lots of ways, for example by making your machines
2089 intermittently or permanently unreachable to the rest of the net.<P>
2091 Occasionally these errors indicate the sort of header-parsing problem
2092 described in <a href="#M7">M7</a>.<P>
2095 <h2><a name="M2">M2. I can't seem to get fetchmail to route to a local domain properly.</a></h2>
2097 A lot of people want to use fetchmail as a poor man's internetwork
2098 mail gateway, picking up mail accumulated for a whole domain in a single
2099 server mailbox and then routing based on what's in the To/Cc/Bcc lines.<p>
2101 In general, this is not really a good idea. It would be smarter to
2102 just let the mail sit in the mailserver's queue and use fetchmail's
2103 ETRN mode to trigger SMTP sends periodically (of course, this means
2104 you have to poll more frequently than the mailserver's expiration period).
2105 If you can't arrange this, try setting up a UUCP feed.<P>
2107 If neither of these alternatives is available, multidrop mode may do
2108 (though you <em>are</em> going to get hurt by some mailing list
2109 software; see the caveats under THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP
2110 MAILBOXES on the man page). If you want to try it, the way to do it
2111 is with the `<CODE>localdomains</CODE>' option.<p>
2113 In general, if you use localdomains you need to make sure of two other
2116 <strong>1. You've actually set up your .fetchmailrc entry to invoke multidrop mode.</strong><p>
2118 Many people set a `<CODE>localdomains</CODE>' list and then forget
2119 that fetchmail wants to see more than one name (or the wildcard `*')
2120 in a `<CODE>here</CODE>' list before it will do multidrop routing.<p>
2122 <strong>2. You may have to set `no envelope'.</strong><p>
2124 Normally, multidrop mode tries to deduce an envelope address from a message
2125 before parsing the To/Cc/Bcc lines (this enables it to avoid losing to mailing
2126 list software that doesn't put a recipient address in the To lines).<p>
2128 Some ways of accumulating a whole domain's messages in a single server
2129 mailbox mean it all ends up with a single envelope address that is
2130 useless for rerouting purposes. You may have to set `<CODE>no
2131 envelope</CODE>' to prevent fetchmail from being bamboozled by this.<p>
2133 Check also answer <a href="#T1">T1</a> on a reliable way to do multidrop
2134 delivery if your ISP (or your mail redirection provider) is using qmail.<p>
2137 <h2><a name="M3">M3. I tried to run a mailing list using multidrop, and I have a mail loop!</a></h2>
2139 This isn't fetchmail's fault. Check your mailing list. If the list
2140 expansion includes yourself or anybody else at your mailserver (that is, not on
2141 the client side) you've created a mail loop. Just chop the host part off any
2142 local addresses in the list.<p>
2144 If you use sendmail, you can check the list expansion with
2145 <CODE>sendmail -bv</CODE>.<p>
2148 <h2><a name="M4">M4. My multidrop fetchmail seems to be having DNS problems.</a></h2>
2150 We have one report from a Linux user (not the same one as in <a
2151 href="#R1">R1</a>!) who solved this problem by removing the reference
2152 to -lresolv from his link line and relinking. Apparently in some
2153 older Linux distributions the libc5 bind library version works
2156 As of 2.2, the configure script has been hacked so the bind library is linked
2157 only if it is actually needed. So under Linux it won't be, and this problem
2161 <h2><a name="M5">M5. I'm seeing long DNS delays before each message is processed.</a></h2>
2163 Use the `<CODE>aka</CODE>' option to pre-declare as many of your
2164 mailserver's DNS names as you can. When an address's host part
2165 matches an aka name, no DNS lookup needs to be done to check it.<p>
2167 If you're sure you've pre-declared all of your mailserver's DNS names,
2168 you can use the `<CODE>no dns</CODE>' option to prevent other hostname
2169 parts from being looked up at all.<p>
2171 Sometimes delays are unavoidable. Some SMTP listeners try to call DNS
2172 on the From-address hostname as a way of checking that the address is valid.<p>
2175 <h2><a name="M6">M6. How do I get multidrop mode to work with majordomo?</a></h2>
2177 In order for sendmail to execute the command strings in the majordomo
2178 alias file, it is necessary for sendmail to think that the mail it
2179 receives via SMTP really is destined for a local user name. A normal
2180 virtual-domain setup results in delivery to the default mailbox,
2181 rather than expansion through majordomo.<P>
2183 Michael <michael@bizsystems.com> gave us a recipe for dealing
2184 with this case that pairs a run control file like this:<P>
2187 poll your.pop3.server proto pop3:
2189 localdomains virtual.localdomain1.com virtual.localdomain2.com ...
2190 user yourISPusername is root * here,
2191 password yourISPpassword fetchall
2194 with a hack on your local sendmail.cf like this:<P>
2197 #############################################
2198 # virtual info, local hack for ruleset 98 #
2199 #############################################
2201 # domains to treat as direct mapped local domain
2203 CVvirtual.localdomain1.com virtual.localdomain2.com ...
2204 ---------------------------
2206 -------------------------
2207 # handle virtual users
2209 R$+ <@ $=V . > $: $1 < @ $j . >
2210 R< @ > $+ < @ $=V . > $: $1 < @ $j . >
2211 R< @ > $+ $: $1
2212 R< error : $- $+ > $* $#error $@ $1 $: $2
2213 R< $+ > $+ < @ $+ > $: $>97 $1
2216 This ruleset just strips virtual domain names off the addresses of incoming
2217 mail. Your sendmail must be 8.8 or newer for this to work. Michael
2221 I use this scheme with 2 virtual domains and the default ISP
2222 user+domain and service about 30 mail accounts + majordomo on my
2223 inside pop3 server with fetchmail and sendmail 8.83
2227 <h2><a name="M7">M7. Multidrop mode isn't parsing envelope addresses from
2228 my Received headers as it should.</a></h2>
2230 It may happen that you're getting what appear to be well-formed
2231 sendmail Received headers, but fetchmail can't seem to extract an
2232 envelope address from them. There can be a couple of reasons for
2235 <h3>Spurious Received lines need to be skipped:</h3>
2237 First, fetchmail might be looking at the wrong Received header.
2238 Normally it looks only on the first one it sees, on the theory that
2239 that one was last added and is going to be the one containing your
2240 mailserver's theory of who the message was addressed to.<P>
2242 Some (unusual) mailserver configurations will generate extra Received
2243 lines which you need to skip. To arrange this, use the optional
2244 skip prefix argument of the `envelope' option; you may need to say
2245 something like `<code>envelope 1 Received</code>' or `<code>envelope 2
2248 <h3>The `by' clause doesn't contain a mailserver alias:</h3>
2250 When fetchmail parses a Received line that looks like
2253 Received: from send103.yahoomail.com (send103.yahoomail.com [205.180.60.92])
2254 by iserv.ttns.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id RAA10088
2255 for <ksturgeon@fbceg.org>; Wed, 9 Sep 1998 17:01:59 -0700
2258 it checks to see if `iserv.ttns.net' is a DNS alias of your mailserver
2259 before accepting `ksturgeon@fbceg.org' as an envelope address. This
2260 check might fail if your DNS were misconfigured, or if you were using `no dns'
2261 and had failed to declare iserv.ttns.net as an alias of your server.<P>
2264 <h2><a name="M8">M8. Users are getting multiple copies of messages.</a></h2>
2266 It's a consequence of multidrop. What's happening is that you have
2267 N users subscribed to the same list. The list software sends N
2268 copies, not knowing they will end up in the same multidrop box. Since
2269 they are both locally addressed to all N users, fetchmail delivers N
2270 copies to each user.<P>
2272 Fetchmail tries to eliminate adjacent duplicate messages in a
2273 multidrop mailbox. However, this logic depends on the message-ID
2274 being identical in both copies. It also depends on the two copies
2275 being adjacent in the server mailbox. The former is usually the case,
2276 but the latter condition sometimes fails in a timing-dependent way if
2277 the server was processing multiple incoming mail streams.
2279 I could eliminate this problem by keeping a list of all message-IDs
2280 received during a poll so far and dropping any message that matches a
2281 seen mail ID. The touble is that this is an O(N**2) operation that
2282 might significantly slow down the retriweval of large mail batches.<P>
2285 <h2><a name="X1">X1. Spurious blank lines are appearing in the headers of fetched mail.</a></h2>
2287 What's probably happening is that the POP/IMAP daemon on your
2288 mailserver is inserting a non-RFC822 header (like X-POP3-Rcpt:) and
2289 something in your delivery path (most likely an old version of the
2290 <em>deliver</em> program, which sendmail often calls to do local delivery) is
2291 failing to recognize it as a header.<p>
2293 This is not fetchmail's problem. The first thing to try is installing
2294 a current version of <em>deliver</em>. If this doesn't work, try to
2295 figure out which other program in your mail path is inserting the
2296 blank line and replace that. If you can't do either of these things,
2297 pick a different MDA (such as procmail) and declare it with the
2298 `<CODE>mda</CODE>' option.<p>
2301 <h2><a name="X2">X2. My mail client can't see a Subject line.</a></h2>
2303 First, see <a href="#X1">X1</a>. This is quite probably the same
2304 problem (X-POP3-Rcpt header or something similar being inserted by
2305 the server and choked on by an old version of <em>deliver</em>).<p>
2307 The O'Reilly sendmail book does warn that IDA sendmail doesn't process
2308 X- headers correctly. If this is your problem, all I can suggest is
2309 replacing IDA sendmail, because it's broken and not RFC822 conformant.<p>
2312 <h2><a name="X3">X3. Messages containing "From" at start of line are being split.</a></h2>
2314 If you know the messages aren't split in your server mailbox, then this
2315 is a problem with your POP/IMAP server, your client-side SMTP listener or
2316 your local delivery agent. Fetchmail cannot split messages.<p>
2318 Some POP server daemons ignore Content-Length headers and split messages on
2319 From lines. We have one report that the 2.1 version of the BSD popper
2320 program (as distributed on Solaris 2.5 and elsewhere) is broken this way.<p>
2322 You can test this. Declare an mda of `cat' and send yourself one
2323 piece of mail containing "From" at start of a line. If you see a
2324 split message, your POP/IMAP server is at fault. Upgrade to a more
2327 Sendmail and other SMTP listeners don't split RFC822 messages either.
2328 What's probably happening is either sendmail's local delivery agent or
2329 your mail reader are not quite RFC822-conformant and are breaking
2330 messages on what it thinks are Unix-style From headers. You can
2331 figure out which by looking at your client-side mailbox with vi or
2332 more. If the message is already split in your mailbox, your local
2333 delivery agent is the problem. If it's not, your mailreader is the
2336 If you can't replace the offending program, take a look at your
2337 sendmail.cf file. There will likely be a line something like<p>
2340 Mlocal, P=/usr/bin/procmail, F=lsDFMShP, S=10, R=20/40, A=procmail -Y -d $u
2343 describing your local delivery agent. Try inserting the `E' option in the
2344 flags part (the F= string). This will make sendmail turn each dangerous
2345 start-of-line From into a >From, preventing programs further downstream
2349 <h2><a name="generic_mangling"><a name="X4">X4. My mail is being mangled in a new and different way</a></a></h2>
2351 The first thing you need to do is pin down what program is doing the
2352 mangling. We don't like getting bug reports about fetchmail that are
2353 actually due to some other program's malfeasance, so please go through
2354 this diagnostic sequence before sending us a complaint.<P>
2356 There are five possible culprits to consider, listed here in the order
2357 they pass your mail:<P>
2360 <li> Programs upstream of your server mailbox.
2361 <li> The POP or IMAP server on your mailserver host.
2362 <li> The fetchmail program itself.
2363 <li> Your local sendmail.
2364 <li> Your LDA (local delivery agent), as called by sendmail or
2365 specified by <code>mda</CODE>.
2368 Often it happens that fetchmail itself is OK, but using it exposes
2369 pre-existing bugs in your downstream software, or your downstream
2370 software has a bad interaction with POP/IMAP. You need to pin down
2371 exactly where the message is being garbled in order to deduce what is
2372 actually going on.<P>
2374 The first thing to do is send yourself a test message, and retrieve it
2375 with a .fetchmailrc entry containing the following (or by running with
2376 the equivalent command-line options):<P>
2379 mda "cat >MBOX" keep fetchall
2382 This will capture what fetchmail gets from the server, except for (a)
2383 the extra Received header line fetchmail prepends, (b) header address
2384 changes due to <code>rewrite</code>, and (c) any end-of-line changes
2385 due to the <code>forcecr</code> and <code>stripcr</code> options.
2386 MBOX will in fact contain what programs downstream of fetchmail
2389 The most common causes of mangling are bugs and misconfigurations in
2390 those downstream programs. If MBOX looks unmangled, you will know
2391 that is what is going on and that it is not fetchmail's problem. Take
2392 a look at the other FAQ items in this section for possible clues about
2393 how to fix your problem.<P>
2395 If MBOX looks mangled, the next thing to do is compare it with your
2396 actual server mailbox (if possible). That's why you specified
2397 <code>keep</code>, so the server copy would not be deleted. If your
2398 server mailbox looks mangled, programs upstream of your server mailbox
2399 are at fault. Unfortunately there is probably little you can do about
2400 this aside from complaining to your site postmaster, and nothing at
2401 all fetchmail can do about it!<P>
2403 More likely you'll find that the server copy looks OK. In that case
2404 either the POP/IMAP server or fetchmail is doing the mangling. To
2405 determine which, you'll need to telnet to the server port and simulate
2406 a fetchmail session yourself. This is not actually hard (both POP3
2407 and IMAP are simple, text-only, line-oriented protocols) but requires
2408 some attention to detail. You should be able to use a fetchmail -v
2409 log as a model for a session, but remember that the "*" in your LOGIN
2410 or PASS command dump has to be replaced with your actual password.<P>
2412 The objective of manually simulating fetchmail is so you can see
2413 exactly what fetchmail sees. If you see a mangled message, then your
2414 server is at fault, and you probably need to complain to your
2415 mailserver administrators. However, we like to know what the broken
2416 servers are so we can warn people away from them. So please send
2417 us a transcript of the session including the mangling <em>and the
2418 server's initial greeting line</em>. Please tell us anything else
2419 you think might be useful about the server, like the server host's
2420 operating system.<P>
2422 If your manual fetchmail simulation shows an unmangled message,
2423 congratulations. You've found an actual fetchmail bug, which is a
2424 pretty rare thing these days. Complain to us and we'll fix it.
2425 Please include the session transcript of your manual fetchmail
2426 simulation along with the other things described in the FAQ entry on
2427 <a href="#G3">reporting bugs</a>.
2430 <h2><a name="X5">X5. Using POP3, retrievals seems to be fetching too much!</a></h2>
2432 This may happen in versions of fetchmail after 4.4.1 and before 4.4.8.
2433 Versions after 4.4.1 use POP3's TOP command rather than RETR, in order
2434 to avoid marking the message seen (leaving it unseen is helpful for
2435 later recovery if you lose your connection in the middle of a
2438 Versions of fetchmail from 4.4.2 through 4.4.7 had a bad interaction
2439 with Eudora qpopper versions 2.3 and later. The TOP bounds check was
2440 fooled by an overflow condition in the TOP argument. Decrementing the
2441 TOP argument in 4.4.7 fixed this.<P>
2443 Fix: Upgrade to a later version of fetchmail.<P>
2445 Workaround: set the <code>fetchall</code> option. Under POP3 in these
2446 fetchmail version only, this had the side effect of forcing RETR
2450 <h2><a name="O1">O1. The --logfile option doesn't work if the logfile doesn't exist.</a></h2>
2452 This is a feature, not a bug. It's in line with normal practice for
2453 system daemons and allows you to suppress logging by removing the log,
2454 without hacking potentially fragile startup scripts. To get around
2455 it, just touch(1) the logfile before you run fetchmail (this will have
2456 no effect on the contents of the logfile if it already exists).<P>
2459 <h2><a name="O2">O2. Every time I get a POP or IMAP message the header
2460 is dumped to all my terminal sessions.</a></h2>
2462 Fetchmail uses the local sendmail to perform final delivery, which
2463 Netscape and other clients doesn't do; the announcement of new messages
2464 is done by a daemon that sendmail pokes. There should be a ``biff''
2465 command to control this. Type
2471 to turn it off. If this doesn't work, try the command
2477 which is essentially what <code>biff -n</code> will do. If this
2478 doesn't work, comment out any reference to ``comsat'' in your
2479 /etc/inetd.conf file and restart inetd.<P>
2481 In Slackware Linux distributions, the last line in /etc/profile is
2493 to solve the problem system-wide.<P>
2496 <h2><a name="O3">O3. Does fetchmail reread its rc file every poll cycle?</a></h2>
2498 No, but versions 5.2.2 and later will notice when you modify your rc
2499 file and restart, reading it.
2502 <h2><a name="O4">O4. Why do deleted messages show up again when I take
2503 a line hit while downloading?</a></h2>
2505 Because you're using a POP3 other than Qualcomm qpopper, or an IMAP
2506 with a long expunge interval.<P>
2508 According to the POP3 RFCs, deletes aren't actually performed until
2509 you issue the end-of-session QUIT command. Fetchmail cannot fix this,
2510 because doing it right takes cooperation from the server. There are
2511 two possible remedies:<P>
2513 One is to switch to qpopper (the free POP3 server from Qualcomm,
2514 the Eudora people). The qpopper software violates the POP3 RFCs by
2515 doing an expunge (removing deleted messages) on a line hangup, as well
2516 as on processing a QUIT command.<P>
2518 The other (which we recommend) is to switch to <a
2519 href="http://www.imap.org">IMAP</a>. IMAP has an explicit expunge
2520 command and fetchmail normally uses it to delete messages immediately
2521 after they are downloaded.<P>
2523 If you get very unlucky, you might take a line hit in the window
2524 between the delete and the expunge. If you've set a longer expunge
2525 interval, the window gets wider. This problem should correct itself
2526 the next time you complete a successful query.<P>
2529 <h2><a name="O5">O5. Why is fetched mail being logged with my name, not the real From address?</a></h2>
2531 Because logging is done based on the address indicated by the sending
2532 SMTP's MAIL FROM, and some listeners are picky about that address.<p>
2534 Some SMTP listeners get upset if you try to hand them a MAIL FROM
2535 address naming a different host than the originating site for your
2536 connection. This is a feature, not a bug -- it's supposed to help
2537 prevent people from forging mail with a bogus origin site. (RFC 1123
2538 says you shouldn't do this exclusion...)<p>
2540 Since the originating site of a fetchmail delivery connection is
2541 localhost, this effectively means these picky listeners will barf on
2542 any MAIL FROM address fetchmail hands them with an @ in it!<p>
2544 Versions 2.1 and up try the header From address first and fall back to
2545 the calling-user ID. So if your SMTP listener isn't picky, the log
2549 <h2><a name="O6">O6. I'm seeing long sendmail delays or hangs near the start of each poll cycle.</a></h2>
2551 Sendmail does a hostname lookup when it first starts up, and also each
2552 time it gets a HELO in listener mode.<p>
2554 Your resolver configuration may be causing one of these lookups to
2555 fail and time out. Check <code>/etc/resolv.conf</code> and
2556 <code>/etc/hosts</code> file. Make sure your hostname and
2557 fully-qualified domain name are both in <code>/etc/hosts</code>, and
2558 that hosts is looked at before DNS is queried. You probably also want
2559 your remote mail server(s) to be in the hosts file.<p>
2561 You can suppress the startup-time lookup if need to by reconfiguring
2562 with <code>FEATURE(nodns)</code>.<p>
2564 Configuring your bind library to cache DNS lookups locally may help,
2565 and is a good idea for speeding up other services as well. Switching to
2566 a faster MTA like qmail or exim might help. <p>
2569 <h2><a name="O7">O7. Why doesn't fetchmail deliver mail in date-sorted order?</a></h2>
2571 Because that's not the order the server hands it to fetchmail in.<P>
2573 Fetchmail getting mail from a POP server delivers mail in the order
2574 that your server delivers mail. Fetchmail can't do anything about
2575 this; it's a limitation of the underlying POP protocol.<P>
2577 In theory it might be possible for fetchmail in IMAP mode to sort
2578 messages by date, but this would be in violation of two basics of
2579 fetchmail's design philosophy: (a) to be as simple and transparent a
2580 pipe as possible, and (b) to <em>hide</em>, rather than emphasize, the
2581 differences between the remote-fetch protocols it uses.<P>
2583 Re-ordering messages is a user-agent function, anyway.<P>
2586 <h2><a name="O8">O8. I'm using pppd. Why isn't my monitor option working?</a></h2>
2588 There is a combination of circumstances that can confuse fetchmail.
2589 If you have set up demand dialing with pppd, and pppd has an idle
2590 timeout, and you have lcp-echo-interval set, then the
2591 lcp-echo-interval time must be longer than the pppd idle timeout.
2592 Otherwise it is going keep increasing the packet counters that fetchmail
2593 relies upon, triggering fetchmail into polling after its own delay
2594 interval and thus preventing the pppd link from ever reaching its
2595 inactivity timeout.<p>
2598 <h2><a name="O9">O9. Why does fetchmail keep retrieving the same messages
2601 First, check to see that you haven't enabled the <cite>keep</cite>
2602 and <cite>fetchall</cite> option. If you have, turn <cite>keep</cite> off.<p>
2604 This can also happen when some other mail client is logged in to your
2605 mail server, if it uses a simple exclusive-locking scheme (and many,
2606 especially most POP3 servers, do exactly that). Your fetchmail is
2607 able to retrieve the messages, but because the mailbox is write-locked
2608 by the other instance yours can neither mark messages seen or delete them.
2609 The solution is to either (a) wait for the other client to finish, or (b)
2613 <table width="100%" cellpadding=0><tr>
2614 <td width="30%">Back to <a href="index.html">Fetchmail Home Page</a>
2615 <td width="30%" align=center>To <a href="/~esr/sitemap.html">Site Map</a>
2616 <td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 2000/02/15 02:24:27 $
2619 <P><ADDRESS>Eric S. Raymond <A HREF="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com"><esr@snark.thyrsus.com></A></ADDRESS>
2624 compile-command: "(cd ~/WWW; upload fetchmail/fetchmail.html)"