2 .\" ** The above line should force tbl to be used as a preprocessor **
4 .\" Manual page in man(7) format with tbl(1) macros for fetchmail
6 .\" For license terms, see the file COPYING in this directory.
8 .TH fetchmail 1 "fetchmail 6.3.5" "fetchmail" "fetchmail reference manual"
10 fetchmail \- fetch mail from a POP, IMAP, ETRN, or ODMR-capable server
13 \fBfetchmail\fR [\fIoption...\fR] [\fImailserver...\fR]
19 is a mail-retrieval and forwarding utility; it fetches mail from
20 remote mailservers and forwards it to your local (client) machine's
21 delivery system. You can then handle the retrieved mail using normal
22 mail user agents such as \fImutt\fR(1), \fIelm\fR(1) or \fIMail\fR(1).
23 The \fIfetchmail\fR utility can be run in a daemon mode to repeatedly
24 poll one or more systems at a specified interval.
28 program can gather mail from servers supporting any of the common
29 mail-retrieval protocols: POP2 (legacy, to be removed from future
30 release), POP3, IMAP2bis, IMAP4, and IMAP4rev1.
31 It can also use the ESMTP ETRN extension and ODMR. (The RFCs describing all
32 these protocols are listed at the end of this manual page.)
36 is primarily intended to be used over on-demand TCP/IP links (such as
37 SLIP or PPP connections), it may also be useful as a message transfer
38 agent for sites which refuse for security reasons to permit
39 (sender-initiated) SMTP transactions with sendmail.
43 is used with a POP or an IMAP server, it has two fundamental modes of
44 operation for each user account from which it retrieves mail:
45 \fIsingledrop\fR- and \fImultidrop\fR-mode. In singledrop-mode,
47 assumes that all messages in the user's account are intended for a single
48 recipient. An individual mail message will not be inspected for recipient
49 information, rather, the identity of the recipient will either default to
50 the local user currently executing \fIfetchmail\fR,
51 or else will need to be explicitly specified in the configuration file.
52 Singledrop-mode is used when the fetchmailrc configuration contains at
53 most a single local user specification for a given server account.
57 is not able to assume that there is only a single recipient, but rather
58 that the mail server account actually contains mail intended for any
59 number of different recipients. Therefore,
61 must attempt to deduce the proper "envelope recipient" from the mail
62 headers of each message. In this mode of operation,
64 almost resembles an MTA, however it is important to note that neither
65 the POP nor IMAP protocols were intended for use in this fashion, and
66 hence envelope information is often not directly available. Instead,
68 must resort to a process of informed guess-work in an attempt to
69 discover the true envelope recipient of a message, unless the ISP stores
70 the envelope information in some header (not all do). Even if this
71 information is present in the headers, the process can
72 be error-prone and is dependent upon the specific mail server used
73 for mail retrieval. Multidrop-mode is used when more than one local
74 user is specified for a particular server account in the configuration
75 file. Note that the forgoing discussion of singledrop- and
76 multidrop-modes does not apply to the ESMTP ETRN or ODMR retrieval
77 methods, since they are based upon the SMTP protocol which
78 specifically provides the envelope recipient to \fIfetchmail\fR.
80 As each message is retrieved, \fIfetchmail\fR normally delivers it via SMTP to
81 port 25 on the machine it is running on (localhost), just as though it
82 were being passed in over a normal TCP/IP link. \fIfetchmail\fR provides
83 the SMTP server with an envelope recipient derived in the manner described
84 previously. The mail will then be
85 delivered locally via your system's MDA (Mail Delivery Agent, usually
86 \fIsendmail\fR(8) but your system may use a different one such
87 as \fIsmail\fR, \fImmdf\fR, \fIexim\fR, \fIpostfix\fR, or \fIqmail\fR). All the
88 delivery-control mechanisms (such as \fI.forward\fR files) normally
89 available through your system MDA and local delivery agents will
90 therefore work automatically.
92 If no port 25 listener is available, but your fetchmail configuration
93 was told about a reliable local MDA, it will use that MDA for local
98 is available, it will assist you in setting up and editing a
99 fetchmailrc configuration. It runs under the X window system and
100 requires that the language Python and the Tk toolkit be present on your
101 system. If you are first setting up fetchmail for single-user mode, it
102 is recommended that you use Novice mode. Expert mode provides complete
103 control of fetchmail configuration, including the multidrop features.
104 In either case, the 'Autoprobe' button will tell you the most capable
105 protocol a given mailserver supports, and warn you of potential problems
108 .SH GENERAL OPERATION
111 is controlled by command-line options and a run control file,
112 .IR ~/.fetchmailrc\fR ,
113 the syntax of which we describe in a later section (this file is what
114 the \fIfetchmailconf\fR program edits). Command-line options override
118 Each server name that you specify following the options on the
119 command line will be queried. If you don't specify any servers
120 on the command line, each 'poll' entry in your
122 file will be queried.
124 To facilitate the use of
126 in scripts and pipelines, it returns an appropriate exit code upon
127 termination -- see EXIT CODES below.
129 The following options modify the behavior of \fIfetchmail\fR. It is
130 seldom necessary to specify any of these once you have a
131 working \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file set up.
133 Almost all options have a corresponding keyword which can be used to
138 Some special options are not covered here, but are documented instead
139 in sections on AUTHENTICATION and DAEMON MODE which follow.
143 Displays the version information for your copy of
145 No mail fetch is performed.
146 Instead, for each server specified, all the option information
147 that would be computed if
149 were connecting to that server is displayed. Any non-printables in
150 passwords or other string names are shown as backslashed C-like
151 escape sequences. This option is useful for verifying that your
152 options are set the way you want them.
155 Return a status code to indicate whether there is mail waiting,
156 without actually fetching or deleting mail (see EXIT CODES below).
157 This option turns off daemon mode (in which it would be useless). It
158 doesn't play well with queries to multiple sites, and doesn't work
159 with ETRN or ODMR. It will return a false positive if you leave read but
160 undeleted mail in your server mailbox and your fetch protocol can't
161 tell kept messages from new ones. This means it will work with IMAP,
162 not work with POP2, and may occasionally flake out under POP3.
165 Silent mode. Suppresses all progress/status messages that are
166 normally echoed to standard output during a fetch (but does not
167 suppress actual error messages). The \-\-verbose option overrides this.
170 Verbose mode. All control messages passed between
172 and the mailserver are echoed to stdout. Overrides \-\-silent.
173 Doubling this option (\-v \-v) causes extra diagnostic information
177 .B \-a | \-\-all | (since v6.3.3) \-\-fetchall
178 (Keyword: fetchall, since v3.0)
179 Retrieve both old (seen) and new messages from the mailserver. The
180 default is to fetch only messages the server has not marked seen.
181 Under POP3, this option also forces the use of RETR rather than TOP.
182 Note that POP2 retrieval behaves as though \-\-all is always on (see
183 RETRIEVAL FAILURE MODES below) and this option does not work with ETRN
184 or ODMR. While the \-a and \-\-all command-line and fetchall rcfile
185 options have been supported for a long time, the \-\-fetchall
186 command-line option was added in v6.3.3.
190 Keep retrieved messages on the remote mailserver. Normally, messages
191 are deleted from the folder on the mailserver after they have been retrieved.
192 Specifying the \fBkeep\fR option causes retrieved messages to remain in
193 your folder on the mailserver. This option does not work with ETRN or
194 ODMR. If used with POP3, it is recommended to also specify the \-\-uidl
195 option or uidl keyword.
199 Delete retrieved messages from the remote mailserver. This
200 option forces retrieved mail to be deleted. It may be useful if
201 you have specified a default of \fBkeep\fR in your
202 \&\fI.fetchmailrc\fR. This option is forced on with ETRN and ODMR.
205 POP3/IMAP only. This is a dangerous option and can cause mail loss when
206 used improperly. It deletes old (seen) messages from the mailserver
207 before retrieving new messages. \fBWarning:\fR This can cause mail loss if
208 you check your mail with other clients than fetchmail, and cause
209 fetchmail to delete a message it had never fetched before. It can also
210 cause mail loss if the mail server marks the message seen after
211 retrieval (IMAP2 servers). You should probably not use this option in your
212 configuration file. If you use it with POP3, you must use the 'uidl'
213 option. What you probably want is the default setting: if you don't
214 specify '\-k', then fetchmail will automatically delete messages after
218 POP3/IMAP only, since version 6.3.0. Delete oversized messages from the
219 mailserver before retrieving new messages. The size limit should be
220 separately specified with the \-\-limit option. This option does not
221 work with ETRN or ODMR.
222 .SS Protocol and Query Options
224 .B \-p <proto> | \-\-proto <proto> | \-\-protocol <proto>
225 (Keyword: proto[col])
226 Specify the protocol to use when communicating with the remote
227 mailserver. If no protocol is specified, the default is AUTO.
229 may be one of the following:
232 Tries IMAP, POP3, and POP2 (skipping any of these for which support
233 has not been compiled in).
235 Post Office Protocol 2 (legacy, to be removed from future release)
237 Post Office Protocol 3
239 Use POP3 with old-fashioned MD5-challenge authentication.
241 Use POP3 with RPOP authentication.
243 Use POP3 with Kerberos V4 authentication on port 1109.
245 Use POP3 with Demon Internet's SDPS extensions.
247 IMAP2bis, IMAP4, or IMAP4rev1 (\fIfetchmail\fR automatically detects their capabilities).
249 Use the ESMTP ETRN option.
251 Use the the On-Demand Mail Relay ESMTP profile.
254 All these alternatives work in basically the same way (communicating
255 with standard server daemons to fetch mail already delivered to a
256 mailbox on the server) except ETRN and ODMR. The ETRN mode
257 allows you to ask a compliant ESMTP server (such as BSD sendmail at
258 release 8.8.0 or higher) to immediately open a sender-SMTP connection
259 to your client machine and begin forwarding any items addressed to
260 your client machine in the server's queue of undelivered mail. The
261 ODMR mode requires an ODMR-capable server and works similarly to
262 ETRN, except that it does not require the client machine to have
267 Force UIDL use (effective only with POP3). Force client-side tracking
268 of 'newness' of messages (UIDL stands for "unique ID listing" and is
269 described in RFC1939). Use with 'keep' to use a mailbox as a baby
270 news drop for a group of users. The fact that seen messages are skipped
271 is logged, unless error logging is done through syslog while running in
272 daemon mode. Note that fetchmail may automatically enable this option
273 depending on upstream server capabilities. Note also that this option
274 may be removed and forced enabled in a future fetchmail version. See
277 .B \-\-idle (since 6.3.3)
278 (Keyword: idle, since before 6.0.0)
279 Enable IDLE use (effective only with IMAP). Note that this works with
280 only one folder at a given time. While the idle rcfile keyword had been
281 supported for a long time, the \-\-idle command-line option was added in
282 version 6.3.3. IDLE use means that fetchmail tells the IMAP server to
283 send notice of new messages, so they can be retrieved sooner than would
284 be possible with regular polls.
286 .B \-P <portnumber> | \-\-service <servicename>
287 (Keyword: service) Since version 6.3.0.
288 The service option permits you to specify a service name to connect to.
289 You can specify a decimal port number here, if your services database
290 lacks the required service-port assignments. See the FAQ item R12 and
291 the \-\-ssl documentation for details. This replaces the older \-\-port
294 .B \-\-port <portnumber>
296 Obsolete version of \-\-service that does not take service names.
298 this option may be removed from a future version.
300 .B \-\-principal <principal>
302 The principal option permits you to specify a service principal for
303 mutual authentication. This is applicable to POP3 or IMAP with Kerberos
306 .B \-t <seconds> | \-\-timeout <seconds>
308 The timeout option allows you to set a server-nonresponse
309 timeout in seconds. If a mailserver does not send a greeting message
310 or respond to commands for the given number of seconds,
311 \fIfetchmail\fR will hang up on it. Without such a timeout
312 \fIfetchmail\fR might hang up indefinitely trying to fetch mail from a
313 down host. This would be particularly annoying for a \fIfetchmail\fR
314 running in background. There is a default timeout which fetchmail\~\-V
315 will report. If a given connection receives too many timeouts in
316 succession, fetchmail will consider it wedged and stop retrying,
317 the calling user will be notified by email if this happens.
319 .B \-\-plugin <command>
320 (Keyword: plugin) The plugin option allows you to use an external
321 program to establish the TCP connection. This is useful if you want
322 to use socks, SSL, ssh, or need some special firewalling setup. The
323 program will be looked up in $PATH and can optionally be passed the
324 hostname and port as arguments using "%h" and "%p" respectively (note
325 that the interpolation logic is rather primitive, and these token must
326 be bounded by whitespace or beginning of string or end of string).
327 Fetchmail will write to the plugin's stdin and read from the plugin's
330 .B \-\-plugout <command>
332 Identical to the plugin option above, but this one is used for the SMTP
333 connections (which will probably not need it, so it has been separated
336 .B \-r <name> | \-\-folder <name>
338 Causes a specified non-default mail folder on the mailserver (or
339 comma-separated list of folders) to be retrieved. The syntax of the
340 folder name is server-dependent. This option is not available under
344 (Keyword: tracepolls)
345 Tell fetchmail to poll trace information in the form 'polling %s
346 account %s' and 'folder %s' to the Received line it generates,
347 where the %s parts are replaced by the user's remote name, the poll
348 label, and the folder (mailbox) where available (the Received header
349 also normally includes the server's true name). This can be used to
350 facilitate mail filtering based on the account it is being received
351 from. The folder information is written only since version 6.3.4.
355 Causes the connection to the mail server to be encrypted via SSL. Connect
356 to the server using the specified base protocol over a connection secured
357 by SSL. SSL support must be present at the server.
359 Note that fetchmail may still try to negotiate TLS even if this option
360 is not given. You can use the \-\-sslproto option to defeat this
361 behavior or tell fetchmail to negotiate a particular SSL protocol.
363 If no port is specified, the connection is attempted to the well known
364 port of the SSL version of the base protocol. This is generally a
365 different port than the port used by the base protocol. For IMAP, this
366 is port 143 for the clear protocol and port 993 for the SSL secured
367 protocol, for POP3, it is port 110 for the clear text and port 995 for
368 the encrypted variant.
370 If your system lacks the corresponding entries from /etc/services, see
371 the \-\-service option and specify the numeric port number as given in
372 the previous paragraph (unless your ISP had directed you to different
373 ports, which is uncommon however).
375 .B \-\-sslcert <name>
377 Specifies the file name of the client side public SSL certificate. Some
378 SSL encrypted servers may require client side keys and certificates for
379 authentication. In most cases, this is optional. This specifies
380 the location of the public key certificate to be presented to the server
381 at the time the SSL session is established. It is not required (but may
382 be provided) if the server does not require it. Some servers may
383 require it, some servers may request it but not require it, and some
384 servers may not request it at all. It may be the same file
385 as the private key (combined key and certificate file) but this is not
389 If you use client authentication, the user name is fetched from the
390 certificate's CommonName and overrides the name set with \-\-user.
394 Specifies the file name of the client side private SSL key. Some SSL
395 encrypted servers may require client side keys and certificates for
396 authentication. In most cases, this is optional. This specifies
397 the location of the private key used to sign transactions with the server
398 at the time the SSL session is established. It is not required (but may
399 be provided) if the server does not require it. Some servers may
400 require it, some servers may request it but not require it, and some
401 servers may not request it at all. It may be the same file
402 as the public key (combined key and certificate file) but this is not
403 recommended. If a password is required to unlock the key, it will be
404 prompted for at the time just prior to establishing the session to the
405 server. This can cause some complications in daemon mode.
407 .B \-\-sslproto <name>
409 Forces an SSL or TLS protocol. Possible values are '\fBSSL2\fR',
410 \&'\fBSSL3\fR', '\fBSSL23\fR', and '\fBTLS1\fR'. Try this if the default
411 handshake does not work for your server. To defeat automatic TLSv1
412 negotiation when the server advertises STARTTLS or STLS, use \fB''\fR or
413 \&'\fBSSL23\fR'. This option, even if the argument is the empty string,
414 will also suppress the diagnostic 'SERVER: opportunistic upgrade to
415 TLS.' message in verbose mode. The default is to try appropriate
416 protocols depending on context.
420 Causes fetchmail to strictly check the server certificate against a set of
421 local trusted certificates (see the \fBsslcertpath\fR option). If the server
422 certificate is not signed by one of the trusted ones (directly or indirectly),
423 the SSL connection will fail, regardless of the \fBsslfingerprint\fR
424 option. This checking should prevent man-in-the-middle attacks against
425 the SSL connection. Note that CRLs are seemingly not currently supported
426 by OpenSSL in certificate verification! Your system clock should be
427 reasonably accurate when using this option.
429 Note that this optional behavior may become default behavior in future
432 .B \-\-sslcertpath <directory>
433 (Keyword: sslcertpath)
434 Sets the directory fetchmail uses to look up local certificates. The default
435 is your OpenSSL default one. The directory must be hashed as OpenSSL expects
436 it - every time you add or modify a certificate in the directory, you need
437 to use the \fBc_rehash\fR tool (which comes with OpenSSL in the tools/
440 .B \-\-sslfingerprint <fingerprint>
441 (Keyword: sslfingerprint)
442 Specify the fingerprint of the server key (an MD5 hash of the key) in
443 hexadecimal notation with colons separating groups of two digits. The letter
444 hex digits must be in upper case. This is the default format OpenSSL uses,
445 and the one fetchmail uses to report the fingerprint when an SSL connection
446 is established. When this is specified, fetchmail will compare the server key
447 fingerprint with the given one, and the connection will fail if they do not
448 match regardless of the \fBsslcertck\fR setting.
449 This can be used to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, but the finger
450 print from the server needs to be obtained or verified over a secure
451 channel, and certainly not over the same Internet connection that
454 Using this option will prevent printing certificate verification errors
455 as long as \-\-sslcertck is unset.
457 To obtain the fingerprint of a certificate stored in the file cert.pem,
461 openssl x509 \-in cert.pem \-noout \-md5 \-fingerprint
466 .SS Delivery Control Options
468 .B \-S <hosts> | \-\-smtphost <hosts>
469 (Keyword: smtp[host])
470 Specify a hunt list of hosts to forward mail to (one or more
471 hostnames, comma-separated). Hosts are tried in list order; the first
472 one that is up becomes the forwarding target for the current run. If
473 this option is not specified, 'localhost' is used as the default.
474 Each hostname may have a port number following the host name. The
475 port number is separated from the host name by a slash; the default
476 port is "smtp". If you specify an absolute path name (beginning with
477 a /), it will be interpreted as the name of a UNIX socket accepting
478 LMTP connections (such as is supported by the Cyrus IMAP daemon)
482 \-\-smtphost server1,server2/2525,server3,/var/imap/socket/lmtp
485 This option can be used with ODMR, and will make fetchmail a relay
486 between the ODMR server and SMTP or LMTP receiver.
488 .B \-\-fetchdomains <hosts>
489 (Keyword: fetchdomains)
490 In ETRN or ODMR mode, this option specifies the list of domains the
491 server should ship mail for once the connection is turned around. The
492 default is the FQDN of the machine running
495 .B \-D <domain> | \-\-smtpaddress <domain>
496 (Keyword: smtpaddress) Specify the domain to be appended to addresses
497 in RCPT TO lines shipped to SMTP. When this is not specified, the name
498 of the SMTP server (as specified by \-\-smtphost) is used for SMTP/LMTP
499 and 'localhost' is used for UNIX socket/BSMTP.
501 .B \-\-smtpname <user@domain>
503 Specify the domain and user to be put in RCPT TO lines shipped to SMTP.
504 The default user is the current local user.
506 .B \-Z <nnn> | \-\-antispam <nnn[, nnn]...>
508 Specifies the list of numeric SMTP errors that are to be interpreted
509 as a spam-block response from the listener. A value of \-1 disables
510 this option. For the command-line option, the list values should
513 .B \-m <command> | \-\-mda <command>
514 (Keyword: mda) You can force mail to be passed to an MDA directly
515 (rather than forwarded to port 25) with the \-\-mda or \-m option. To
516 avoid losing mail, use this option only with MDAs like maildrop or
517 MTAs like sendmail that return a nonzero status on disk-full and other
518 resource-exhaustion errors; the nonzero status tells fetchmail that
519 delivery failed and prevents the message from being deleted off the
520 server. If \fIfetchmail\fR is running as root, it sets its user id to
521 that of the target user while delivering mail through an MDA. Some
522 possible MDAs are "/usr/sbin/sendmail \-i \-f %F \-\- %T" (\fBNote:\fR
523 some several older or vendor sendmail versions mistake \-\- for an
524 address, rather than an indicator to mark the end of the option arguments),
525 "/usr/bin/deliver" and "/usr/bin/maildrop \-d %T". Local delivery
526 addresses will be inserted into the MDA command wherever you place a
527 %T; the mail message's From address will be inserted where you place
528 an %F. \fBDO NOT ENCLOSE THE %F OR %T STRING IN SINGLE QUOTES!\fR For
529 both %T and %F, fetchmail encloses the addresses in single quotes ('),
530 after removing any single quotes they may contain, before the MDA
531 command is passed to the shell. Do \fINOT\fR use an MDA invocation
532 like "sendmail \-i \-t" that dispatches on the contents of To/Cc/Bcc, it
533 will create mail loops and bring the just wrath of many postmasters
534 down upon your head. Also, do \fInot\fR try to combine multidrop
535 mode with an MDA such as maildrop that can only accept one
536 address; you will lose mail.
538 A word of warning: the well-known
540 package is very hard to configure properly, it has a very nasty "fall
541 through to the next rule" behavior on delivery errors (even temporary
542 ones, such as out of disk space if another user's mail daemon copies the
543 mailbox around to purge old messages), so your mail will end up in the
544 wrong mailbox sooner or later. The proper procmail configuration is
545 outside the scope of this document though. Using
547 is usually much easier, and many users find the filter syntax used by
548 maildrop easier to understand.
553 Cause delivery via LMTP (Local Mail Transfer Protocol). A service
554 host and port \fBmust\fR be explicitly specified on each host in the
555 smtphost hunt list (see above) if this option is selected; the default
556 port 25 will (in accordance with RFC 2033) not be accepted.
558 .B \-\-bsmtp <filename>
560 Append fetched mail to a BSMTP file. This simply contains the SMTP
561 commands that would normally be generated by fetchmail when passing
562 mail to an SMTP listener daemon. An argument of '\-' causes the mail
563 to be written to standard output. Note that fetchmail's
564 reconstruction of MAIL FROM and RCPT TO lines is not guaranteed
565 correct; the caveats discussed under THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP
566 MAILBOXES below apply.
567 .SS Resource Limit Control Options
569 .B \-l <maxbytes> | \-\-limit <maxbytes>
570 (Keyword: limit) Takes a maximum octet size argument. Messages larger
571 than this size will not be fetched and will be left on the server (in
572 foreground sessions, the progress messages will note that they are
573 "oversized"). If the fetch protocol permits (in particular, under
574 IMAP or POP3 without the fetchall option) the message will not be
577 An explicit \-\-limit of 0 overrides any limits set in your
578 run control file. This option is intended for those needing to
579 strictly control fetch time due to expensive and variable phone rates.
581 Combined with \-\-limitflush, it can be used to delete oversized
582 messages waiting on a server. In daemon mode, oversize notifications
583 are mailed to the calling user (see the \-\-warnings option). This
584 option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
586 .B \-w <interval> | \-\-warnings <interval>
588 Takes an interval in seconds. When you call
590 with a 'limit' option in daemon mode, this controls the interval at
591 which warnings about oversized messages are mailed to the calling user
592 (or the user specified by the 'postmaster' option). One such
593 notification is always mailed at the end of the the first poll that
594 the oversized message is detected. Thereafter, re-notification is
595 suppressed until after the warning interval elapses (it will take
596 place at the end of the first following poll).
598 .B \-b <count> | \-\-batchlimit <count>
599 (Keyword: batchlimit)
600 Specify the maximum number of messages that will be shipped to an SMTP
601 listener before the connection is deliberately torn down and rebuilt
602 (defaults to 0, meaning no limit). An explicit \-\-batchlimit of 0
603 overrides any limits set in your run control file. While
604 \fBsendmail\fR(8) normally initiates delivery of a message immediately
605 after receiving the message terminator, some SMTP listeners are not so
606 prompt. MTAs like \fIsmail\fR(8) may wait till the
607 delivery socket is shut down to deliver. This may produce annoying
608 delays when \fIfetchmail\fR is processing very large batches. Setting
609 the batch limit to some nonzero size will prevent these delays. This
610 option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
612 .B \-B <number> | \-\-fetchlimit <number>
613 (Keyword: fetchlimit)
614 Limit the number of messages accepted from a given server in a single
615 poll. By default there is no limit. An explicit \-\-fetchlimit of 0
616 overrides any limits set in your run control file.
617 This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
619 .B \-\-fetchsizelimit <number>
620 (Keyword: fetchsizelimit)
621 Limit the number of sizes of messages accepted from a given server in
622 a single transaction. This option is useful in reducing the delay in
623 downloading the first mail when there are too many mails in the
624 mailbox. By default, the limit is 100. If set to 0, sizes of all
625 messages are downloaded at the start.
626 This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR. For POP3, the only valid
629 .B \-\-fastuidl <number>
631 Do a binary instead of linear search for the first unseen UID. Binary
632 search avoids downloading the UIDs of all mails. This saves time
633 (especially in daemon mode) where downloading the same set of UIDs in
634 each poll is a waste of bandwidth. The number 'n' indicates how rarely
635 a linear search should be done. In daemon mode, linear search is used
636 once followed by binary searches in 'n-1' polls if 'n' is greater than
637 1; binary search is always used if 'n' is 1; linear search is always
638 used if 'n' is 0. In non-daemon mode, binary search is used if 'n' is
639 1; otherwise linear search is used. The default value of 'n' is 4.
640 This option works with POP3 only.
642 .B \-e <count> | \-\-expunge <count>
644 Arrange for deletions to be made final after a given number of
645 messages. Under POP2 or POP3, fetchmail cannot make deletions final
646 without sending QUIT and ending the session -- with this option on,
647 fetchmail will break a long mail retrieval session into multiple
648 sub-sessions, sending QUIT after each sub-session. This is a good
649 defense against line drops on POP3 servers that do not do the
650 equivalent of a QUIT on hangup. Under IMAP,
652 normally issues an EXPUNGE command after each deletion in order to
653 force the deletion to be done immediately. This is safest when your
654 connection to the server is flaky and expensive, as it avoids
655 resending duplicate mail after a line hit. However, on large
656 mailboxes the overhead of re-indexing after every message can slam the
657 server pretty hard, so if your connection is reliable it is good to do
658 expunges less frequently. Also note that some servers enforce a delay
659 of a few seconds after each quit, so fetchmail may not be able to get
660 back in immediately after an expunge -- you may see "lock busy" errors
661 if this happens. If you specify this option to an integer N,
664 to only issue expunges on every Nth delete. An argument of zero
665 suppresses expunges entirely (so no expunges at all will be done until
666 the end of run). This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
667 .SS Authentication Options
669 .B \-u <name> | \-\-user <name> | \-\-username <name>
670 (Keyword: user[name])
671 Specifies the user identification to be used when logging in to the mailserver.
672 The appropriate user identification is both server and user-dependent.
673 The default is your login name on the client machine that is running
675 See USER AUTHENTICATION below for a complete description.
677 .B \-I <specification> | \-\-interface <specification>
679 Require that a specific interface device be up and have a specific local
680 or remote IPv4 (IPv6 is not supported by this option yet) address (or
681 range) before polling. Frequently \fIfetchmail\fP
682 is used over a transient point-to-point TCP/IP link established directly
683 to a mailserver via SLIP or PPP. That is a relatively secure channel.
684 But when other TCP/IP routes to the mailserver exist (e.g. when the link
685 is connected to an alternate ISP), your username and password may be
686 vulnerable to snooping (especially when daemon mode automatically polls
687 for mail, shipping a clear password over the net at predictable
688 intervals). The \-\-interface option may be used to prevent this. When
689 the specified link is not up or is not connected to a matching IP
690 address, polling will be skipped. The format is:
693 interface/iii.iii.iii.iii[/mmm.mmm.mmm.mmm]
696 The field before the first slash is the interface name (i.e. sl0, ppp0
697 etc.). The field before the second slash is the acceptable IP address.
698 The field after the second slash is a mask which specifies a range of
699 IP addresses to accept. If no mask is present 255.255.255.255 is
700 assumed (i.e. an exact match). This option is currently only supported
701 under Linux and FreeBSD. Please see the
703 section for below for FreeBSD specific information.
705 Note that this option may be removed from a future fetchmail version.
707 .B \-M <interface> | \-\-monitor <interface>
709 Daemon mode can cause transient links which are automatically taken down
710 after a period of inactivity (e.g. PPP links) to remain up
711 indefinitely. This option identifies a system TCP/IP interface to be
712 monitored for activity. After each poll interval, if the link is up but
713 no other activity has occurred on the link, then the poll will be
714 skipped. However, when fetchmail is woken up by a signal, the
715 monitor check is skipped and the poll goes through unconditionally.
716 This option is currently only supported under Linux and FreeBSD.
721 options to work for non root users under FreeBSD, the fetchmail binary
722 must be installed SGID kmem. This would be a security hole, but
723 fetchmail runs with the effective GID set to that of the kmem group
725 when interface data is being collected.
727 Note that this option may be removed from a future fetchmail version.
730 (Keyword: auth[enticate])
731 This option permits you to specify an authentication type (see USER
732 AUTHENTICATION below for details). The possible values are \fBany\fR,
733 \&\fBpassword\fR, \fBkerberos_v5\fR, \fBkerberos\fR (or, for
734 excruciating exactness, \fBkerberos_v4\fR), \fBgssapi\fR,
735 \fBcram\-md5\fR, \fBotp\fR, \fBntlm\fR, \fBmsn\fR (only for POP3),
736 \fBexternal\fR (only IMAP) and \fBssh\fR.
737 When \fBany\fR (the default) is specified, fetchmail tries
738 first methods that don't require a password (EXTERNAL, GSSAPI, KERBEROS\ IV,
739 KERBEROS\ 5); then it looks for methods that mask your password
740 (CRAM-MD5, X\-OTP - note that NTLM and MSN are not autoprobed for POP3
741 and MSN is only supported for POP3); and only if the server doesn't
742 support any of those will it ship your password en clair. Other values
743 may be used to force various authentication methods
744 (\fBssh\fR suppresses authentication and is thus useful for IMAP PREAUTH).
745 (\fBexternal\fR suppresses authentication and is thus useful for IMAP EXTERNAL).
746 Any value other than \fBpassword\fR, \fBcram\-md5\fR, \fBntlm\fR,
747 \&\fBmsn\fR or \fBotp\fR suppresses fetchmail's normal inquiry for a
748 password. Specify \fBssh\fR when you are using an end-to-end secure
749 connection such as an ssh tunnel; specify \fBexternal\fR when you use
750 TLS with client authentication and specify \fBgssapi\fR or
751 \&\fBkerberos_v4\fR if you are using a protocol variant that employs
752 GSSAPI or K4. Choosing KPOP protocol automatically selects Kerberos
753 authentication. This option does not work with ETRN.
754 .SS Miscellaneous Options
756 .B \-f <pathname> | \-\-fetchmailrc <pathname>
757 Specify a non-default name for the
759 run control file. The pathname argument must be either "-" (a single
760 dash, meaning to read the configuration from standard input) or a
761 filename. Unless the \-\-version option is also on, a named file
762 argument must have permissions no more open than 0600 (u=rw,g=,o=) or
765 .B \-i <pathname> | \-\-idfile <pathname>
767 Specify an alternate name for the .fetchids file used to save POP3
768 UIDs. NOTE: since fetchmail 6.3.0, write access to the directory
769 containing the idfile is required, as fetchmail writes a temporary file
770 and renames it into the place of the real idfile only if the temporary
771 file has been written successfully. This avoids the truncation of
772 idfiles when running out of disk space.
774 .B \--pidfile <pathname>
775 (Keyword: pidfile; since fetchmail v6.3.4)
776 Override the default location of the PID file. Default: see
779 .B \-n | \-\-norewrite
780 (Keyword: no rewrite)
783 edits RFC-822 address headers (To, From, Cc, Bcc, and Reply\-To) in
784 fetched mail so that any mail IDs local to the server are expanded to
785 full addresses (@ and the mailserver hostname are appended). This enables
786 replies on the client to get addressed correctly (otherwise your
787 mailer might think they should be addressed to local users on the
788 client machine!). This option disables the rewrite. (This option is
789 provided to pacify people who are paranoid about having an MTA edit
790 mail headers and want to know they can prevent it, but it is generally
791 not a good idea to actually turn off rewrite.)
792 When using ETRN or ODMR, the rewrite option is ineffective.
794 .B \-E <line> | \-\-envelope <line>
795 (Keyword: envelope; Multidrop only)
797 In the configuration file, an enhanced syntax is used:
799 .B envelope [<count>] <line>
801 This option changes the header
803 assumes will carry a copy of the mail's envelope address. Normally
804 this is 'X\-Envelope\-To', but as this header is not standard, practice
805 varies. See the discussion of multidrop address handling below. As a
806 special case, 'envelope "Received"' enables parsing of sendmail-style
807 Received lines. This is the default, and it should not be necessary
808 unless you have globally disabled Received parsing with 'no envelope'
809 in the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file.
811 The optional count argument (only available in the configuration file)
812 determines how many header lines of this kind are skipped. A count of 1
813 means: skip the first, take the second. A count of 2 means: skip the
814 first and second, take the third, and so on.
816 .B \-Q <prefix> | \-\-qvirtual <prefix>
817 (Keyword: qvirtual; Multidrop only)
818 The string prefix assigned to this option will be removed from the user
819 name found in the header specified with the \fIenvelope\fR option
820 (\fIbefore\fR doing multidrop name mapping or localdomain checking,
821 if either is applicable). This option is useful if you are using
823 to collect the mail for an entire domain and your ISP (or your mail
824 redirection provider) is using qmail.
825 One of the basic features of qmail is the
829 message header. Whenever qmail delivers a message to a local mailbox
830 it puts the username and hostname of the envelope recipient on this
831 line. The major reason for this is to prevent mail loops. To set up
832 qmail to batch mail for a disconnected site the ISP-mailhost will have
833 normally put that site in its 'Virtualhosts' control file so it will
834 add a prefix to all mail addresses for this site. This results in mail
835 .\" The \&@\& tries to stop HTML converters from making a mailto URL here.
836 sent to 'username\&@\&userhost.userdom.dom.com' having a
837 \&'Delivered\-To:' line of the form:
839 Delivered\-To: mbox\-userstr\-username\&@\&userhost.example.com
841 The ISP can make the 'mbox\-userstr\-' prefix anything they choose
842 but a string matching the user host name is likely.
843 By using the option 'envelope Delivered\-To:' you can make fetchmail reliably
844 identify the original envelope recipient, but you have to strip the
845 \&'mbox\-userstr\-' prefix to deliver to the correct user.
846 This is what this option is for.
851 file, interpret any command-line options specified, and dump a
852 configuration report to standard output. The configuration report is
853 a data structure assignment in the language Python. This option
854 is meant to be used with an interactive
862 Removed before version 6.3.0, the required underlying inet6_apps library
863 had been discontinued and is no longer available.
865 .SH USER AUTHENTICATION AND ENCRYPTION
866 All modes except ETRN require authentication of the client to the server.
867 Normal user authentication in
869 is very much like the authentication mechanism of
871 The correct user-id and password depend upon the underlying security
872 system at the mailserver.
874 If the mailserver is a Unix machine on which you have an ordinary user
875 account, your regular login name and password are used with
877 If you use the same login name on both the server and the client machines,
878 you needn't worry about specifying a user-id with the
880 option -- the default behavior is to use your login name on the
881 client machine as the user-id on the server machine. If you use a
882 different login name on the server machine, specify that login name
885 option. e.g. if your login name is 'jsmith' on a machine named 'mailgrunt',
890 fetchmail \-u jsmith mailgrunt
892 The default behavior of
894 is to prompt you for your mailserver password before the connection is
895 established. This is the safest way to use
897 and ensures that your password will not be compromised. You may also specify
898 your password in your
900 file. This is convenient when using
902 in daemon mode or with scripts.
903 .SS Using netrc files
905 If you do not specify a password, and
907 cannot extract one from your
909 file, it will look for a
911 file in your home directory before requesting one interactively; if an
912 entry matching the mailserver is found in that file, the password will
913 be used. Fetchmail first looks for a match on poll name; if it finds none,
914 it checks for a match on via name. See the
916 man page for details of the syntax of the
918 file. To show a practical example, a .netrc might look like
922 machine hermes.example.org
927 You can repeat this block with different user information if you need to
928 provide more than one password.
930 This feature may allow you to avoid duplicating password
931 information in more than one file.
933 On mailservers that do not provide ordinary user accounts, your user-id and
934 password are usually assigned by the server administrator when you apply for
935 a mailbox on the server. Contact your server administrator if you don't know
936 the correct user-id and password for your mailbox account.
939 Early versions of POP3 (RFC1081, RFC1225) supported a crude form of
940 independent authentication using the
942 file on the mailserver side. Under this RPOP variant, a fixed
943 per-user ID equivalent to a password was sent in clear over a link to
944 a reserved port, with the command RPOP rather than PASS to alert the
945 server that it should do special checking. RPOP is supported
948 (you can specify 'protocol RPOP' to have the program send 'RPOP'
949 rather than 'PASS') but its use is strongly discouraged, and support
950 will be removed from a future fetchmail version. This
951 facility was vulnerable to spoofing and was withdrawn in RFC1460.
953 RFC1460 introduced APOP authentication. In this variant of POP3,
954 you register an APOP password on your server host (the program
955 to do this with on the server is probably called \fIpopauth\fR(8)). You
956 put the same password in your
960 logs in, it sends a cryptographically secure hash of your password and
961 the server greeting time to the server, which can verify it by
962 checking its authorization database.
965 makes some efforts to make the server believe messages had not been
966 retrieved, by using the TOP command with a large number of lines when
967 possible. TOP is a command that retrieves the full header and
968 a \fIfetchmail\fP-specified amount of body lines. It is optional and
969 therefore not implemented by all servers, and some are known to
970 implement it improperly. On many servers however, the RETR command which
971 retrieves the full message with header and body, sets the "seen" flag
972 (for instance, in a web interface), whereas the TOP command does not do
976 will always use the RETR command if "fetchall" is set.
978 will also use the RETR command if "keep" is set and "uidl" is unset.
981 will use the RETR command on Maillennium POP3/PROXY
982 servers (used by Comcast) to avoid a deliberate TOP misinterpretation in
983 this server that causes message corruption.
987 will use the TOP command. This implies that in "keep" setups, "uidl"
988 must be set if "TOP" is desired.
991 that this description is true for the current version of fetchmail, but
992 the behavior may change in future versions. In particular, fetchmail may
993 prefer the RETR command because the TOP command causes much grief on
994 some servers and is only optional.
995 .SH ALTERNATE AUTHENTICATION FORMS
997 If your \fIfetchmail\fR was built with Kerberos support and you specify
998 Kerberos authentication (either with \-\-auth or the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
999 option \fBauthenticate kerberos_v4\fR) it will try to get a Kerberos
1000 ticket from the mailserver at the start of each query. Note: if
1001 either the pollname or via name is 'hesiod', fetchmail will try to use
1002 Hesiod to look up the mailserver.
1004 If you use POP3 or IMAP with GSSAPI authentication, \fIfetchmail\fR will
1005 expect the server to have RFC1731- or RFC1734-conforming GSSAPI
1006 capability, and will use it. Currently this has only been tested over
1007 Kerberos V, so you're expected to already have a ticket-granting
1008 ticket. You may pass a username different from your principal name
1009 using the standard \fB\-\-user\fR command or by the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
1012 If your IMAP daemon returns the PREAUTH response in its greeting line,
1013 fetchmail will notice this and skip the normal authentication step.
1014 This can be useful, e.g. if you start imapd explicitly using ssh.
1015 In this case you can declare the authentication value 'ssh' on that
1016 site entry to stop \fI.fetchmail\fR from asking you for a password
1019 If you use client authentication with \fITLS1\fR and your IMAP daemon
1020 returns the \fIAUTH=EXTERNAL\fR response, fetchmail will notice this
1021 and will use the authentication shortcut and will not send the
1022 passphrase. In this case you can declare the authentication value 'external'
1023 on that site to stop \fIfetchmail\fR from asking you for a password
1026 If you are using POP3, and the server issues a one-time-password
1027 challenge conforming to RFC1938, \fIfetchmail\fR will use your
1028 password as a pass phrase to generate the required response. This
1029 avoids sending secrets over the net unencrypted.
1031 Compuserve's RPA authentication (similar to APOP) is supported. If you
1032 compile in the support, \fIfetchmail\fR will try to perform an RPA pass-phrase
1033 authentication instead of sending over the password en clair if it
1034 detects "@compuserve.com" in the hostname.
1036 If you are using IMAP, Microsoft's NTLM authentication (used by Microsoft
1037 Exchange) is supported. If you compile in the support, \fIfetchmail\fR
1038 will try to perform an NTLM authentication (instead of sending over the
1039 password en clair) whenever the server returns AUTH=NTLM in its
1040 capability response. Specify a user option value that looks like
1041 \&'user@domain': the part to the left of the @ will be passed as the
1042 username and the part to the right as the NTLM domain.
1043 .SS Secure Socket Layers (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS)
1045 You can access SSL encrypted services by specifying the \-\-ssl option.
1046 You can also do this using the "ssl" user option in the .fetchmailrc
1047 file. With SSL encryption enabled, queries are initiated over a connection
1048 after negotiating an SSL session. Some services, such as POP3 and IMAP,
1049 have different well known ports defined for the SSL encrypted services.
1050 The encrypted ports will be selected automatically when SSL is enabled and
1051 no explicit port is specified.
1053 When connecting to an SSL encrypted server, the server presents a certificate
1054 to the client for validation. The certificate is checked to verify that
1055 the common name in the certificate matches the name of the server being
1056 contacted and that the effective and expiration dates in the certificate
1057 indicate that it is currently valid. If any of these checks fail, a warning
1058 message is printed, but the connection continues. The server certificate
1059 does not need to be signed by any specific Certifying Authority and may
1060 be a "self-signed" certificate.
1062 Some SSL encrypted servers may request a client side certificate. A client
1063 side public SSL certificate and private SSL key may be specified. If
1064 requested by the server, the client certificate is sent to the server for
1065 validation. Some servers may require a valid client certificate and may
1066 refuse connections if a certificate is not provided or if the certificate
1067 is not valid. Some servers may require client side certificates be signed
1068 by a recognized Certifying Authority. The format for the key files and
1069 the certificate files is that required by the underlying SSL libraries
1070 (OpenSSL in the general case).
1072 A word of care about the use of SSL: While above mentioned
1073 setup with self-signed server certificates retrieved over the wires
1074 can protect you from a passive eavesdropper it doesn't help against an
1075 active attacker. It's clearly an improvement over sending the
1076 passwords in clear but you should be aware that a man-in-the-middle
1077 attack is trivially possible (in particular with tools such as dsniff,
1078 http://monkey.org/~dugsong/dsniff/). Use of an ssh tunnel (see
1079 below for some examples) is preferable if you care seriously about the
1080 security of your mailbox.
1084 also supports authentication to the ESMTP server on the client side
1085 according to RFC 2554. You can specify a name/password pair to be
1086 used with the keywords 'esmtpname' and 'esmtppassword'; the former
1087 defaults to the username of the calling user.
1090 .SS Introducing the daemon mode
1093 puts itself into the background and runs forever, querying each
1094 specified host and then sleeping for a given polling interval.
1095 .SS Starting the daemon mode
1096 There are several ways to make fetchmail work in daemon mode. On the
1097 command line, \fB\-\-daemon\ <interval>\fR or \fB\-d\ <interval>\fR
1098 option runs \fIfetchmail\fR in daemon mode. You must specify a numeric
1099 argument which is a polling interval in seconds.
1101 Example: simply invoking
1105 will, therefore, poll all the hosts described in your
1107 file (except those explicitly excluded with the 'skip' verb) once
1110 It is also possible to set a polling interval
1111 in your \fI~/.fetchmailrc\fR file by saying 'set\ daemon\ <interval>',
1112 where <interval> is an integer number of seconds. If you do this,
1113 fetchmail will always start in daemon mode unless you override it with
1114 the command-line option \-\-daemon 0 or \-d0.
1116 Only one daemon process is permitted per user; in daemon mode,
1117 \fIfetchmail\fR sets up a per-user lockfile to guarantee this.
1118 (You can however cheat and set the FETCHMAILHOME environment variable to
1119 overcome this setting, but in that case, it is your responsibility to
1120 make sure you aren't polling the same server with two processes at the
1122 .SS Awakening the background daemon
1124 Normally, calling fetchmail with a daemon in the background sends a
1125 wake-up signal to the daemon and quits without output. The background
1126 daemon then starts its next poll cycle immediately. The wake-up signal,
1127 SIGUSR1, can also be sent manually. The wake-up action also clears any
1128 'wedged' flags indicating that connections have wedged due to failed
1129 authentication or multiple timeouts.
1130 .SS Terminating the background daemon
1134 will kill a running daemon process instead of waking it up (if there
1135 is no such process, \fIfetchmail\fP will notify you.
1136 If the \-\-quit option appears last on the command line, \fIfetchmail\fP
1137 will kill the running daemon process and then quit. Otherwise,
1138 \fIfetchmail\fP will first kill a running daemon process and then
1139 continue running with the other options.
1140 .SS Useful options for daemon mode
1145 .B \-\-logfile <filename>
1146 option (keyword: set logfile) is only effective when fetchmail is
1147 detached. This option allows you to redirect status messages
1148 into a specified logfile (follow the option with the logfile name). The
1149 logfile is opened for append, so previous messages aren't deleted. This
1150 is primarily useful for debugging configurations.
1154 option (keyword: set syslog) allows you to redirect status and error
1155 messages emitted to the
1157 system daemon if available.
1158 Messages are logged with an id of \fBfetchmail\fR, the facility \fBLOG_MAIL\fR,
1159 and priorities \fBLOG_ERR\fR, \fBLOG_ALERT\fR or \fBLOG_INFO\fR.
1160 This option is intended for logging status and error messages which
1161 indicate the status of the daemon and the results while fetching mail
1163 Error messages for command line options and parsing the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
1164 file are still written to stderr, or to the specified log file.
1167 option turns off use of
1169 assuming it's turned on in the
1174 .B \-\-logfile <file>
1181 option suppresses backgrounding and detachment of the
1182 daemon process from its control terminal. This is useful
1183 for debugging or when fetchmail runs as the child of a supervisor
1188 Note that this also causes the logfile option to be
1189 ignored (though perhaps it shouldn't).
1191 Note that while running in daemon mode polling a POP2 or IMAP2bis server,
1192 transient errors (such as DNS failures or sendmail delivery refusals)
1193 may force the fetchall option on for the duration of the next polling
1194 cycle. This is a robustness feature. It means that if a message is
1195 fetched (and thus marked seen by the mailserver) but not delivered
1196 locally due to some transient error, it will be re-fetched during the
1197 next poll cycle. (The IMAP logic doesn't delete messages until
1198 they're delivered, so this problem does not arise.)
1200 If you touch or change the
1202 file while fetchmail is running in daemon mode, this will be detected
1203 at the beginning of the next poll cycle. When a changed
1205 is detected, fetchmail rereads it and restarts from scratch (using
1206 exec(2); no state information is retained in the new instance).
1207 Note also that if you break the
1209 file's syntax, the new instance will softly and silently vanish away
1212 .SH ADMINISTRATIVE OPTIONS
1215 .B \-\-postmaster <name>
1216 option (keyword: set postmaster) specifies the last-resort username to
1217 which multidrop mail is to be forwarded if no matching local recipient
1218 can be found. It is also used as destination of undeliverable mail if
1219 the 'bouncemail' global option is off and additionally for spam-blocked
1220 mail if the 'bouncemail' global option is off and the 'spambounce'
1221 global option is on. This option defaults to the user who invoked
1223 If the invoking user is root, then the default of this option is
1224 the user 'postmaster'. Setting postmaster to the empty string causes
1225 such mail as described above to be discarded - this however is usually a
1227 See also the description of the 'FETCHMAILUSER' environment variable in
1228 the ENVIRONMENT section below.
1232 behaves like the "set no bouncemail" global option, which see.
1236 option (keyword: set invisible) tries to make fetchmail invisible.
1237 Normally, fetchmail behaves like any other MTA would -- it generates a
1238 Received header into each message describing its place in the chain of
1239 transmission, and tells the MTA it forwards to that the mail came from
1240 the machine fetchmail itself is running on. If the invisible option
1241 is on, the Received header is suppressed and fetchmail tries to spoof
1242 the MTA it forwards to into thinking it came directly from the
1247 option (keyword: set showdots) forces fetchmail to show progress dots
1248 even if the current tty is not stdout (for example logfiles).
1249 Fetchmail shows the dots by default when run in nodetach mode or when
1250 daemon mode is not enabled.
1254 option, you can ask fetchmail to add information to the Received
1255 header on the form "polling {label} account {user}", where {label} is
1256 the account label (from the specified rcfile, normally ~/.fetchmailrc)
1257 and {user} is the username which is used to log on to the mail
1258 server. This header can be used to make filtering email where no
1259 useful header information is available and you want mail from
1260 different accounts sorted into different mailboxes (this could, for
1261 example, occur if you have an account on the same server running a
1262 mailing list, and are subscribed to the list using that account). The
1263 default is not adding any such header. In
1265 this is called 'tracepolls'.
1267 .SH RETRIEVAL FAILURE MODES
1268 The protocols \fIfetchmail\fR uses to talk to mailservers are next to
1269 bulletproof. In normal operation forwarding to port 25, no message is
1270 ever deleted (or even marked for deletion) on the host until the SMTP
1271 listener on the client side has acknowledged to \fIfetchmail\fR that
1272 the message has been either accepted for delivery or rejected due to a
1275 When forwarding to an MDA, however, there is more possibility
1276 of error. Some MDAs are 'safe' and reliably return a nonzero status
1277 on any delivery error, even one due to temporary resource limits.
1280 program is like this; so are most programs designed as mail transport
1283 including the sendmail wrapper of Postfix and
1285 These programs give back a reliable positive acknowledgement and
1286 can be used with the mda option with no risk of mail loss. Unsafe
1287 MDAs, though, may return 0 even on delivery failure. If this
1288 happens, you will lose mail.
1290 The normal mode of \fIfetchmail\fR is to try to download only 'new'
1291 messages, leaving untouched (and undeleted) messages you have already
1292 read directly on the server (or fetched with a previous \fIfetchmail
1293 \-\-keep\fR). But you may find that messages you've already read on the
1294 server are being fetched (and deleted) even when you don't specify
1295 \-\-all. There are several reasons this can happen.
1297 One could be that you're using POP2. The POP2 protocol includes no
1298 representation of 'new' or 'old' state in messages, so \fIfetchmail\fR
1299 must treat all messages as new all the time. But POP2 is obsolete, so
1302 A potential POP3 problem might be servers that insert messages
1303 in the middle of mailboxes (some VMS implementations of mail are
1304 rumored to do this). The \fIfetchmail\fR code assumes that new
1305 messages are appended to the end of the mailbox; when this is not true
1306 it may treat some old messages as new and vice versa. Using UIDL whilst
1307 setting fastuidl 0 might fix this, otherwise, consider switching to IMAP.
1309 Yet another POP3 problem is that if they can't make tempfiles in the
1310 user's home directory, some POP3 servers will hand back an
1311 undocumented response that causes fetchmail to spuriously report "No
1314 The IMAP code uses the presence or absence of the server flag \eSeen
1315 to decide whether or not a message is new. This isn't the right thing
1316 to do, fetchmail should check the UIDVALIDITY and use UID, but it
1317 doesn't do that yet. Under Unix, it counts on your IMAP server to notice
1318 the BSD-style Status flags set by mail user agents and set the \eSeen
1319 flag from them when appropriate. All Unix IMAP servers we know of do
1320 this, though it's not specified by the IMAP RFCs. If you ever trip over
1321 a server that doesn't, the symptom will be that messages you have
1322 already read on your host will look new to the server. In this
1323 (unlikely) case, only messages you fetched with \fIfetchmail \-\-keep\fR
1324 will be both undeleted and marked old.
1326 In ETRN and ODMR modes, \fIfetchmail\fR does not actually retrieve messages;
1327 instead, it asks the server's SMTP listener to start a queue flush
1328 to the client via SMTP. Therefore it sends only undelivered messages.
1331 Many SMTP listeners allow administrators to set up 'spam filters' that
1332 block unsolicited email from specified domains. A MAIL FROM or DATA line that
1333 triggers this feature will elicit an SMTP response which
1334 (unfortunately) varies according to the listener.
1338 return an error code of 571.
1340 According to RFC2821, the correct thing to return in this situation is
1341 550 "Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable" (the draft adds
1342 "[E.g., mailbox not found, no access, or command rejected for policy
1345 Older versions of the
1347 MTA return 501 "Syntax error in parameters or arguments".
1351 MTA runs 554 as an antispam response.
1354 may reject code with a 500 response (followed by an enhanced status
1355 code that contains more information).
1359 treats as antispam responses and discards
1360 the message can be set with the 'antispam' option. This is one of the
1362 three circumstance under which fetchmail ever discards mail (the others
1363 are the 552 and 553 errors described below, and the suppression of
1364 multidropped messages with a message-ID already seen).
1368 is fetching from an IMAP server, the antispam response will be detected and
1369 the message rejected immediately after the headers have been fetched,
1370 without reading the message body. Thus, you won't pay for downloading
1371 spam message bodies.
1373 By default, the list of antispam responses is empty.
1375 If the \fIspambounce\fR global option is on, mail that is spam-blocked
1376 triggers an RFC1892/RFC1894 bounce message informing the originator that
1377 we do not accept mail from it. See also BUGS.
1379 .SH SMTP/ESMTP ERROR HANDLING
1380 Besides the spam-blocking described above, fetchmail takes special
1381 actions on the following SMTP/ESMTP error responses
1383 452 (insufficient system storage)
1384 Leave the message in the server mailbox for later retrieval.
1386 552 (message exceeds fixed maximum message size)
1387 Delete the message from the server. Send bounce-mail to the
1390 553 (invalid sending domain)
1391 Delete the message from the server. Don't even try to send
1392 bounce-mail to the originator.
1394 Other errors trigger bounce mail back to the originator. See also BUGS.
1396 .SH THE RUN CONTROL FILE
1397 The preferred way to set up fetchmail is to write a
1398 \&\fI.fetchmailrc\fR file in your home directory (you may do this
1399 directly, with a text editor, or indirectly via \fIfetchmailconf\fR).
1400 When there is a conflict between the command-line arguments and the
1401 arguments in this file, the command-line arguments take precedence.
1403 To protect the security of your passwords,
1404 your \fI~/.fetchmailrc\fR may not normally have more than 0600 (u=rw,g=,o=) permissions;
1406 will complain and exit otherwise (this check is suppressed when
1409 You may read the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file as a list of commands to
1412 is called with no arguments.
1413 .SS Run Control Syntax
1415 Comments begin with a '#' and extend through the end of the line.
1416 Otherwise the file consists of a series of server entries or global
1417 option statements in a free-format, token-oriented syntax.
1419 There are four kinds of tokens: grammar keywords, numbers
1420 (i.e. decimal digit sequences), unquoted strings, and quoted strings.
1421 A quoted string is bounded by double quotes and may contain
1422 whitespace (and quoted digits are treated as a string). Note that
1423 quoted strings will also contain line feed characters if they run across
1424 two or more lines, unless you use a backslash to join lines (see below).
1425 An unquoted string is any whitespace-delimited token that is neither
1426 numeric, string quoted nor contains the special characters ',', ';',
1429 Any amount of whitespace separates tokens in server entries, but is
1430 otherwise ignored. You may use backslash escape sequences (\en for LF,
1431 \&\et for HT, \eb for BS, \er for CR, \e\fInnn\fP for decimal (where
1432 nnn cannot start with a 0), \e0\fIooo\fP for octal, and \ex\fIhh\fP for
1433 hex) to embed non-printable characters or string delimiters in strings.
1434 In quoted strings, a backslash at the very end of a line will cause the
1435 backslash itself and the line feed (LF or NL, new line) character to be
1436 ignored, so that you can wrap long strings. Without the backslash at the
1437 line end, the line feed character would become part of the string.
1440 while these resemble C-style escape sequences, they are not the same.
1441 fetchmail only supports these eight styles. C supports more escape
1442 sequences that consist of backslash (\e) and a single character, but
1443 does not support decimal codes and does not require the leading 0 in
1444 octal notation. Example: fetchmail interprets \e233 the same as \exE9
1445 (Latin small letter e with acute), where C would interpret \e233 as
1446 octal 0233 = \ex9B (CSI, control sequence introducer).
1448 Each server entry consists of one of the keywords 'poll' or 'skip',
1449 followed by a server name, followed by server options, followed by any
1450 number of user descriptions. Note: the most common cause of syntax
1451 errors is mixing up user and server options.
1453 For backward compatibility, the word 'server' is a synonym for 'poll'.
1455 You can use the noise keywords 'and', 'with',
1456 \&'has', 'wants', and 'options' anywhere in an entry to make
1457 it resemble English. They're ignored, but but can make entries much
1458 easier to read at a glance. The punctuation characters ':', ';' and
1459 \&',' are also ignored.
1462 The 'poll' verb tells fetchmail to query this host when it is run with
1463 no arguments. The 'skip' verb tells
1465 not to poll this host unless it is explicitly named on the command
1466 line. (The 'skip' verb allows you to experiment with test entries
1467 safely, or easily disable entries for hosts that are temporarily down.)
1469 .SS Keyword/Option Summary
1470 Here are the legal options. Keyword suffixes enclosed in
1471 square brackets are optional. Those corresponding to short command-line
1472 options are followed by '\-' and the appropriate option letter. If
1473 option is only relevant to a single mode of operation, it is noted as
1474 \&'s' or 'm' for singledrop- or multidrop-mode, respectively.
1476 Here are the legal global options:
1480 Keyword Opt Mode Function
1482 set daemon \-d \& T{
1483 Set a background poll interval in seconds.
1485 set postmaster \& \& T{
1486 Give the name of the last-resort mail recipient (default: user running
1487 fetchmail, "postmaster" if run by the root user)
1489 set bouncemail \& \& T{
1490 Direct error mail to the sender (default)
1492 set no bouncemail \& \& T{
1493 Direct error mail to the local postmaster (as per the 'postmaster'
1494 global option above).
1496 set no spambounce \& \& T{
1497 Do not bounce spam-blocked mail (default).
1499 set spambounce \& \& T{
1500 Bounce blocked spam-blocked mail (as per the 'antispam' user option)
1501 back to the destination as indicated by the 'bouncemail' global option.
1502 Warning: Do not use this to bounce spam back to the sender - most spam
1503 is sent with false sender address and thus this option hurts innocent
1506 set logfile \-L \& T{
1507 Name of a file to append error and status messages to.
1509 set idfile \-i \& T{
1510 Name of the file to store UID lists in.
1513 Do error logging through syslog(3).
1515 set no syslog \& \& T{
1516 Turn off error logging through syslog(3). (default)
1518 set properties \& \& T{
1519 String value that is ignored by fetchmail (may be used by extension
1524 Here are the legal server options:
1528 Keyword Opt Mode Function
1531 Specify DNS name of mailserver, overriding poll name
1533 proto[col] \-p \& T{
1534 Specify protocol (case insensitive):
1535 POP2, POP3, IMAP, APOP, KPOP
1537 local[domains] \& m T{
1538 Specify domain(s) to be regarded as local
1541 Specify TCP/IP service port (obsolete, use 'service' instead).
1544 Specify service name (a numeric value is also allowed and
1545 considered a TCP/IP port number).
1547 auth[enticate] \& \& T{
1548 Set authentication type (default 'any')
1551 Server inactivity timeout in seconds (default 300)
1554 Specify envelope-address header name
1557 Disable looking for envelope address
1560 Qmail virtual domain prefix to remove from user name
1563 Specify alternate DNS names of mailserver
1566 specify IP interface(s) that must be up for server poll to take place
1569 Specify IP address to monitor for activity
1572 Specify command through which to make server connections.
1575 Specify command through which to make listener connections.
1578 Enable DNS lookup for multidrop (default)
1581 Disable DNS lookup for multidrop
1584 Do comparison by IP address for multidrop
1586 no checkalias \& m T{
1587 Do comparison by name for multidrop (default)
1590 Force POP3 to use client-side UIDLs (recommended)
1593 Turn off POP3 use of client-side UIDLs (default)
1596 Only check this site every N poll cycles; N is a numeric argument.
1599 Add poll tracing information to the Received header
1602 Set Kerberos principal (only useful with IMAP and kerberos)
1605 Set name for RFC2554 authentication to the ESMTP server.
1607 esmtppassword \& \& T{
1608 Set password for RFC2554 authentication to the ESMTP server.
1612 Here are the legal user options:
1616 Keyword Opt Mode Function
1618 user[name] \-u \& T{
1619 Set remote user name
1620 (local user name if name followed by 'here')
1623 Connect local and remote user names
1626 Connect local and remote user names
1629 Specify remote account password
1632 Connect to server over the specified base protocol using SSL encryption
1635 Specify file for client side public SSL certificate
1638 Specify file for client side private SSL key
1641 Force ssl protocol for connection
1644 Specify remote folder to query
1647 Specify smtp host(s) to forward to
1649 fetchdomains \& m T{
1650 Specify domains for which mail should be fetched
1652 smtpaddress \-D \& T{
1653 Specify the domain to be put in RCPT TO lines
1656 Specify the user and domain to be put in RCPT TO lines
1659 Specify what SMTP returns are interpreted as spam-policy blocks
1662 Specify MDA for local delivery
1665 Specify BSMTP batch file to append to
1668 Command to be executed before each connection
1670 postconnect \& \& T{
1671 Command to be executed after each connection
1674 Don't delete seen messages from server (for POP3, uidl is recommended)
1677 Flush all seen messages before querying (DANGEROUS)
1680 Flush all oversized messages before querying
1683 Fetch all messages whether seen or not
1686 Rewrite destination addresses for reply (default)
1689 Strip carriage returns from ends of lines
1692 Force carriage returns at ends of lines
1695 Force BODY=8BITMIME to ESMTP listener
1698 Strip Status and X-Mozilla-Status lines out of incoming mail
1700 dropdelivered \& \& T{
1701 Strip Delivered-To lines out of incoming mail
1704 Convert quoted-printable to 8-bit in MIME messages
1707 Idle waiting for new messages after each poll (IMAP only)
1710 Delete seen messages from server (default)
1713 Don't flush all seen messages before querying (default)
1715 no fetchall \& \& T{
1716 Retrieve only new messages (default)
1719 Don't rewrite headers
1722 Don't strip carriage returns (default)
1725 Don't force carriage returns at EOL (default)
1727 no pass8bits \& \& T{
1728 Don't force BODY=8BITMIME to ESMTP listener (default)
1730 no dropstatus \& \& T{
1731 Don't drop Status headers (default)
1733 no dropdelivered \& \& T{
1734 Don't drop Delivered\-To headers (default)
1736 no mimedecode \& \& T{
1737 Don't convert quoted-printable to 8-bit in MIME messages (default)
1740 Don't idle waiting for new messages after each poll (IMAP only)
1743 Set message size limit
1746 Set message size warning interval
1748 batchlimit \-b \& T{
1749 Max # messages to forward in single connect
1751 fetchlimit \-B \& T{
1752 Max # messages to fetch in single connect
1754 fetchsizelimit \& \& T{
1755 Max # message sizes to fetch in single transaction
1758 Use binary search for first unseen message (POP3 only)
1761 Perform an expunge on every #th message (IMAP and POP3 only)
1764 String value is ignored by fetchmail (may be used by extension scripts)
1768 Remember that all user options must \fIfollow\fR all server options.
1770 In the .fetchmailrc file, the 'envelope' string argument may be
1771 preceded by a whitespace-separated number. This number, if specified,
1772 is the number of such headers to skip over (that is, an argument of 1
1773 selects the second header of the given type). This is sometime useful
1774 for ignoring bogus envelope headers created by an ISP's local delivery
1775 agent or internal forwards (through mail inspection systems, for
1777 .SS Keywords Not Corresponding To Option Switches
1779 The 'folder' and 'smtphost' options (unlike their command-line
1780 equivalents) can take a space- or comma-separated list of names
1783 All options correspond to the obvious command-line arguments, except
1784 the following: 'via', 'interval', 'aka', 'is', 'to', 'dns'/'no dns',
1785 \&'checkalias'/'no checkalias', 'password', 'preconnect', 'postconnect',
1786 \&'localdomains', 'stripcr'/'no stripcr', 'forcecr'/'no forcecr',
1787 \&'pass8bits'/'no pass8bits' 'dropstatus/no dropstatus',
1788 \&'dropdelivered/no dropdelivered', 'mimedecode/no mimedecode', 'no idle',
1791 The 'via' option is for if you want to have more
1792 than one configuration pointing at the same site. If it is present,
1793 the string argument will be taken as the actual DNS name of the
1794 mailserver host to query.
1795 This will override the argument of poll, which can then simply be a
1796 distinct label for the configuration (e.g. what you would give on the
1797 command line to explicitly query this host).
1799 The 'interval' option (which takes a numeric argument) allows you to poll a
1800 server less frequently than the basic poll interval. If you say
1801 \&'interval N' the server this option is attached to will only be
1802 queried every N poll intervals.
1803 .SS Singledrop vs. Multidrop options
1805 The 'is' or 'to' keywords associate the following local (client)
1806 name(s) (or server-name to client-name mappings separated by =) with
1807 the mailserver user name in the entry. If an is/to list has '*' as
1808 its last name, unrecognized names are simply passed through. Note that
1809 until \fIfetchmail\fR version 6.3.4 inclusively, these lists could only
1810 contain local parts of user names (fetchmail would only look at the part
1811 before the @ sign). \fIfetchmail\fR versions 6.3.5 and
1812 newer support full addresses on the left hand side of these mappings,
1813 and they take precedence over any 'localdomains', 'aka', 'via' or
1816 A single local name can be used to support redirecting your mail when
1817 your username on the client machine is different from your name on the
1818 mailserver. When there is only a single local name, mail is forwarded
1819 to that local username regardless of the message's Received, To, Cc,
1820 and Bcc headers. In this case,
1822 never does DNS lookups.
1824 When there is more than one local name (or name mapping),
1825 \fIfetchmail\fR looks at the envelope header, if configured, and
1826 otherwise at the Received, To, Cc, and Bcc headers of retrieved mail
1827 (this is 'multidrop mode'). It looks for addresses with hostname parts
1828 that match your poll name or your 'via', 'aka' or 'localdomains'
1829 options, and usually also for hostname parts which DNS tells it are
1830 aliases of the mailserver. See the discussion of 'dns', 'checkalias',
1831 \&'localdomains', and 'aka' for details on how matching addresses are
1834 If \fIfetchmail\fR cannot match any mailserver usernames or
1835 localdomain addresses, the mail will be bounced.
1836 Normally it will be bounced to the sender, but if the 'bouncemail'
1837 global option is off, the mail will go to the local postmaster instead.
1838 (see the 'postmaster' global option). See also BUGS.
1840 The 'dns' option (normally on) controls the way addresses from
1841 multidrop mailboxes are checked. On, it enables logic to check each
1842 host address that does not match an 'aka' or 'localdomains' declaration
1843 by looking it up with DNS. When a mailserver username is recognized
1844 attached to a matching hostname part, its local mapping is added to
1845 the list of local recipients.
1847 The 'checkalias' option (normally off) extends the lookups performed
1848 by the 'dns' keyword in multidrop mode, providing a way to cope with
1849 remote MTAs that identify themselves using their canonical name, while
1850 they're polled using an alias.
1851 When such a server is polled, checks to extract the envelope address
1854 reverts to delivery using the To/Cc/Bcc headers (See below
1855 \&'Header vs. Envelope addresses').
1856 Specifying this option instructs
1858 to retrieve all the IP addresses associated with both the poll name
1859 and the name used by the remote MTA and to do a comparison of the IP
1860 addresses. This comes in handy in situations where the remote server
1861 undergoes frequent canonical name changes, that would otherwise
1862 require modifications to the rcfile. 'checkalias' has no effect if
1863 \&'no dns' is specified in the rcfile.
1865 The 'aka' option is for use with multidrop mailboxes. It allows you
1866 to pre-declare a list of DNS aliases for a server. This is an
1867 optimization hack that allows you to trade space for speed. When
1869 while processing a multidrop mailbox, grovels through message headers
1870 looking for names of the mailserver, pre-declaring common ones can
1871 save it from having to do DNS lookups. Note: the names you give
1872 as arguments to 'aka' are matched as suffixes -- if you specify
1873 (say) 'aka netaxs.com', this will match not just a hostname
1874 netaxs.com, but any hostname that ends with '.netaxs.com'; such as
1875 (say) pop3.netaxs.com and mail.netaxs.com.
1877 The 'localdomains' option allows you to declare a list of domains
1878 which fetchmail should consider local. When fetchmail is parsing
1879 address lines in multidrop modes, and a trailing segment of a host
1880 name matches a declared local domain, that address is passed through
1881 to the listener or MDA unaltered (local-name mappings are \fInot\fR
1884 If you are using 'localdomains', you may also need to specify 'no
1885 envelope', which disables \fIfetchmail\fR's normal attempt to deduce
1886 an envelope address from the Received line or X-Envelope-To header or
1887 whatever header has been previously set by 'envelope'. If you set 'no
1888 envelope' in the defaults entry it is possible to undo that in
1889 individual entries by using 'envelope <string>'. As a special case,
1890 \&'envelope "Received"' restores the default parsing of
1893 The \fBpassword\fR option requires a string argument, which is the password
1894 to be used with the entry's server.
1896 The 'preconnect' keyword allows you to specify a shell command to be
1897 executed just before each time
1899 establishes a mailserver connection. This may be useful if you are
1900 attempting to set up secure POP connections with the aid of
1902 If the command returns a nonzero status, the poll of that mailserver
1905 Similarly, the 'postconnect' keyword similarly allows you to specify a
1906 shell command to be executed just after each time a mailserver
1907 connection is taken down.
1909 The 'forcecr' option controls whether lines terminated by LF only are
1910 given CRLF termination before forwarding. Strictly speaking RFC821
1911 requires this, but few MTAs enforce the requirement it so this option
1912 is normally off (only one such MTA, qmail, is in significant use at
1915 The 'stripcr' option controls whether carriage returns are stripped
1916 out of retrieved mail before it is forwarded. It is normally not
1917 necessary to set this, because it defaults to 'on' (CR stripping
1918 enabled) when there is an MDA declared but 'off' (CR stripping
1919 disabled) when forwarding is via SMTP. If 'stripcr' and 'forcecr' are
1920 both on, 'stripcr' will override.
1922 The 'pass8bits' option exists to cope with Microsoft mail programs that
1923 stupidly slap a "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit" on everything. With
1924 this option off (the default) and such a header present,
1926 declares BODY=7BIT to an ESMTP-capable listener; this causes problems for
1927 messages actually using 8-bit ISO or KOI-8 character sets, which will
1928 be garbled by having the high bits of all characters stripped. If
1929 \&'pass8bits' is on,
1931 is forced to declare BODY=8BITMIME to any ESMTP-capable listener. If
1932 the listener is 8-bit-clean (as all the major ones now are) the right
1933 thing will probably result.
1935 The 'dropstatus' option controls whether nonempty Status and
1936 X-Mozilla-Status lines are retained in fetched mail (the default) or
1937 discarded. Retaining them allows your MUA to see what messages (if
1938 any) were marked seen on the server. On the other hand, it can
1939 confuse some new-mail notifiers, which assume that anything with a
1940 Status line in it has been seen. (Note: the empty Status lines
1941 inserted by some buggy POP servers are unconditionally discarded.)
1943 The 'dropdelivered' option controls whether Delivered\-To headers will
1944 be kept in fetched mail (the default) or discarded. These headers are
1945 added by Qmail and Postfix mailservers in order to avoid mail loops but
1946 may get in your way if you try to "mirror" a mailserver within the same
1947 domain. Use with caution.
1949 The 'mimedecode' option controls whether MIME messages using the
1950 quoted-printable encoding are automatically converted into pure 8-bit
1951 data. If you are delivering mail to an ESMTP-capable, 8-bit-clean
1952 listener (that includes all of the major MTAs like sendmail), then
1953 this will automatically convert quoted-printable message headers and
1954 data into 8-bit data, making it easier to understand when reading
1955 mail. If your e-mail programs know how to deal with MIME messages,
1956 then this option is not needed. The mimedecode option is off by
1957 default, because doing RFC2047 conversion on headers throws away
1958 character-set information and can lead to bad results if the encoding
1959 of the headers differs from the body encoding.
1961 The 'idle' option is intended to be used with IMAP servers supporting
1962 the RFC2177 IDLE command extension, but does not strictly require it.
1963 If it is enabled, and fetchmail detects that IDLE is supported, an
1964 IDLE will be issued at the end of each poll. This will tell the IMAP
1965 server to hold the connection open and notify the client when new mail
1966 is available. If IDLE is not supported, fetchmail will simulate it by
1967 periodically issuing NOOP. If you need to poll a link frequently, IDLE
1968 can save bandwidth by eliminating TCP/IP connects and LOGIN/LOGOUT
1969 sequences. On the other hand, an IDLE connection will eat almost all
1970 of your fetchmail's time, because it will never drop the connection
1971 and allow other polls to occur unless the server times out the IDLE.
1972 It also doesn't work with multiple folders; only the first folder will
1976 The 'properties' option is an extension mechanism. It takes a string
1977 argument, which is ignored by fetchmail itself. The string argument may be
1978 used to store configuration information for scripts which require it.
1979 In particular, the output of '\-\-configdump' option will make properties
1980 associated with a user entry readily available to a Python script.
1982 .SS Miscellaneous Run Control Options
1983 The words 'here' and 'there' have useful English-like
1984 significance. Normally 'user eric is esr' would mean that
1985 mail for the remote user 'eric' is to be delivered to 'esr',
1986 but you can make this clearer by saying 'user eric there is esr here',
1987 or reverse it by saying 'user esr here is eric there'
1989 Legal protocol identifiers for use with the 'protocol' keyword are:
1992 auto (or AUTO) (legacy, to be removed from future release)
1993 pop2 (or POP2) (legacy, to be removed from future release)
2002 Legal authentication types are 'any', 'password', 'kerberos',
2003 \&'kerberos_v4', 'kerberos_v5' and 'gssapi', 'cram\-md5', 'otp', 'msn'
2004 (only for POP3), 'ntlm', 'ssh', 'external' (only IMAP).
2005 The 'password' type specifies
2006 authentication by normal transmission of a password (the password may be
2007 plain text or subject to protocol-specific encryption as in APOP);
2008 \&'kerberos' tells \fIfetchmail\fR to try to get a Kerberos ticket at the
2009 start of each query instead, and send an arbitrary string as the
2010 password; and 'gssapi' tells fetchmail to use GSSAPI authentication.
2011 See the description of the 'auth' keyword for more.
2013 Specifying 'kpop' sets POP3 protocol over port 1109 with Kerberos V4
2014 authentication. These defaults may be overridden by later options.
2016 There are some global option statements: 'set logfile'
2017 followed by a string sets the same global specified by \-\-logfile. A
2018 command-line \-\-logfile option will override this. Note that \-\-logfile is
2019 only effective if fetchmail detaches itself from the terminal. Also,
2020 \&'set daemon' sets the poll interval as \-\-daemon does. This can be
2021 overridden by a command-line \-\-daemon option; in particular \-\-daemon\~0
2022 can be used to force foreground operation. The 'set postmaster'
2023 statement sets the address to which multidrop mail defaults if there are
2024 no local matches. Finally, 'set syslog' sends log messages to
2027 .SH DEBUGGING FETCHMAIL
2028 .SS Fetchmail crashing
2029 There are various ways in that fetchmail may "crash", i. e. stop
2030 operation suddenly and unexpectedly. A "crash" usually refers to an
2031 error condition that the software did not handle by itself. A well-known
2032 failure mode is the "segmentation fault" or "signal 11" or "SIGSEGV" or
2033 just "segfault" for short. These can be caused by hardware or by software
2034 problems. Software-induced segfaults can usually be reproduced easily
2035 and in the same place, whereas hardware-induced segfaults can go away if
2036 the computer is rebooted, or powered off for a few hours, and can happen
2037 in random locations even if you use the software the same way.
2039 For solving hardware-induced segfaults, find the faulty component and repair or
2040 replace it. <http://www.bitwizard.nl/sig11/> may help you with details.
2042 For solving software-induced segfaults, the developers may need a "stack
2045 .SS Enabling fetchmail core dumps
2046 By default, fetchmail suppresses core dumps as these might contain
2047 passwords and other sensitive information. For debugging fetchmail
2048 crashes, obtaining a "stack backtrace" from a core dump is often the
2049 quickest way to solve the problem, and when posting your problem on a
2050 mailing list, the developers may ask you for a "backtrace".
2052 1. To get useful backtraces, fetchmail needs to be installed without
2053 getting stripped of its compilation symbols. Unfortunately, most
2054 binary packages that are installed are stripped, and core files from
2055 symbol-stripped programs are worthless. So you may need to recompile
2056 fetchmail. On many systems, you can type
2059 file `which fetchmail`
2062 to find out if fetchmail was symbol-stripped or not. If yours was
2063 unstripped, fine, proceed, if it was stripped, you need to recompile the
2064 source code first. You do not usually need to install fetchmail in order
2067 2. The shell environment that starts fetchmail needs to enable core
2068 dumps. The key is the "maximum core (file) size" that can usually be
2069 configured with a tool named "limit" or "ulimit". See the documentation
2070 for your shell for details. In the popular bash shell, "ulimit \-Sc
2071 unlimited" will allow the core dump.
2073 3. You need to tell fetchmail, too, to allow core dumps. To do
2074 this, run fetchmail with the \fB\-d0 \-v\fP options. It is often easier
2075 to also add \fB\-\-nosyslog \-N\fR as well.
2077 Finally, you need to reproduce the crash. You can just start fetchmail
2078 from the directory where you compiled it by typing \fB./fetchmail\fR,
2079 so the complete command line will start with \fB./fetchmail \-Nvd0
2080 \&\-\-nosyslog\fR and perhaps list your other options.
2082 After the crash, run your debugger to obtain the core dump. The
2083 debugger will often be GNU GDB, you can then type (adjust paths as
2084 necessary) \fBgdb ./fetchmail fetchmail.core\fR and then, after GDB
2085 has started up and read all its files, type \fBbacktrace full\fR, save
2086 the output (copy & paste will do, the backtrace will be read by a human)
2087 and then type \fBquit\fR to leave gdb.
2089 on some systems, the core
2090 files have different names, they might contain a number instead of the
2091 program name, or number and name, but it will usually have "core" as
2094 .SH INTERACTION WITH RFC 822
2095 When trying to determine the originating address of a message,
2096 fetchmail looks through headers in the following order:
2100 Resent-Sender: (ignored if it doesn't contain an @ or !)
2101 Sender: (ignored if it doesn't contain an @ or !)
2108 The originating address is used for logging, and to set the MAIL FROM
2109 address when forwarding to SMTP. This order is intended to cope
2110 gracefully with receiving mailing list messages in multidrop mode. The
2111 intent is that if a local address doesn't exist, the bounce message
2112 won't be returned blindly to the author or to the list itself, but
2113 rather to the list manager (which is less annoying).
2115 In multidrop mode, destination headers are processed as follows:
2116 First, fetchmail looks for the Received: header (or whichever one is
2117 specified by the 'envelope' option) to determine the local
2118 recipient address. If the mail is addressed to more than one recipient,
2119 the Received line won't contain any information regarding recipient addresses.
2121 Then fetchmail looks for the Resent-To:, Resent-Cc:, and Resent-Bcc:
2122 lines. If they exist, they should contain the final recipients and
2123 have precedence over their To:/Cc:/Bcc: counterparts. If the Resent\-*
2124 lines don't exist, the To:, Cc:, Bcc: and Apparently-To: lines are
2125 looked for. (The presence of a Resent\-To: is taken to imply that the
2126 person referred by the To: address has already received the original
2129 .SH CONFIGURATION EXAMPLES
2130 Note that although there are password declarations in a good many
2131 of the examples below, this is mainly for illustrative purposes.
2132 We recommend stashing account/password pairs in your $HOME/.netrc
2133 file, where they can be used not just by fetchmail but by ftp(1) and
2139 poll SERVERNAME protocol PROTOCOL username NAME password PASSWORD
2145 poll pop.provider.net protocol pop3 username "jsmith" password "secret1"
2148 Or, using some abbreviations:
2151 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" password "secret1"
2154 Multiple servers may be listed:
2157 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" pass "secret1"
2158 poll other.provider.net proto pop2 user "John.Smith" pass "My^Hat"
2161 Here's a version of those two with more whitespace and some noise words:
2164 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3
2165 user "jsmith", with password secret1, is "jsmith" here;
2166 poll other.provider.net proto pop2:
2167 user "John.Smith", with password "My^Hat", is "John.Smith" here;
2170 This version is much easier to read and doesn't cost significantly
2171 more (parsing is done only once, at startup time).
2174 If you need to include whitespace in a parameter string, enclose the
2175 string in double quotes. Thus:
2178 poll mail.provider.net with proto pop3:
2179 user "jsmith" there has password "u can't krak this"
2180 is jws here and wants mda "/bin/mail"
2183 You may have an initial server description headed by the keyword
2184 \&'defaults' instead of 'poll' followed by a name. Such a record
2185 is interpreted as defaults for all queries to use. It may be overwritten
2186 by individual server descriptions. So, you could write:
2191 poll pop.provider.net
2193 poll mail.provider.net
2194 user "jjsmith" there has password "secret2"
2197 It's possible to specify more than one user per server (this is only
2198 likely to be useful when running fetchmail in daemon mode as root).
2199 The 'user' keyword leads off a user description, and every user specification
2200 in a multi-user entry must include it. Here's an example:
2203 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 port 3111
2204 user "jsmith" with pass "secret1" is "smith" here
2205 user jones with pass "secret2" is "jjones" here keep
2208 This associates the local username 'smith' with the pop.provider.net
2209 username 'jsmith' and the local username 'jjones' with the
2210 pop.provider.net username 'jones'. Mail for 'jones' is kept on the
2211 server after download.
2213 Here's what a simple retrieval configuration for a multidrop mailbox
2217 poll pop.provider.net:
2218 user maildrop with pass secret1 to golux 'hurkle'='happy' snark here
2221 This says that the mailbox of account 'maildrop' on the server is a
2222 multidrop box, and that messages in it should be parsed for the
2223 server user names 'golux', 'hurkle', and 'snark'. It further
2224 specifies that 'golux' and 'snark' have the same name on the
2225 client as on the server, but mail for server user 'hurkle' should be
2226 delivered to client user 'happy'.
2231 until version 6.3.4, did NOT allow full user@domain specifications here,
2232 these would never match. \fIFetchmail\fP 6.3.5 and newer support
2233 user@domain specifications on the left-hand side of a user mapping.
2235 Here's an example of another kind of multidrop connection:
2238 poll pop.provider.net localdomains loonytoons.org toons.org:
2239 user maildrop with pass secret1 to * here
2242 This also says that the mailbox of account 'maildrop' on the server is
2243 a multidrop box. It tells fetchmail that any address in the
2244 loonytoons.org or toons.org domains (including sub-domain addresses like
2245 \&'joe@daffy.loonytoons.org') should be passed through to the local SMTP
2246 listener without modification. Be careful of mail loops if you do this!
2248 Here's an example configuration using ssh and the plugin option. The
2249 queries are made directly on the stdin and stdout of imapd via ssh.
2250 Note that in this setup, IMAP authentication can be skipped.
2253 poll mailhost.net with proto imap:
2254 plugin "ssh %h /usr/sbin/imapd" auth ssh;
2255 user esr is esr here
2258 .SH THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP MAILBOXES
2259 Use the multiple-local-recipients feature with caution -- it can bite.
2260 All multidrop features are ineffective in ETRN and ODMR modes.
2262 Also, note that in multidrop mode duplicate mails are suppressed. A
2263 piece of mail is considered duplicate if it has the same message-ID as
2264 the message immediately preceding and more than one addressee. Such
2265 runs of messages may be generated when copies of a message addressed
2266 to multiple users are delivered to a multidrop box.
2268 .SS Header vs. Envelope addresses
2269 The fundamental problem is that by having your mailserver toss several
2270 peoples' mail in a single maildrop box, you may have thrown away
2271 potentially vital information about who each piece of mail was
2272 actually addressed to (the 'envelope address', as opposed to the
2273 header addresses in the RFC822 To/Cc headers - the Bcc is not available
2274 at the receiving end). This 'envelope address' is the address you need
2275 in order to reroute mail properly.
2279 can deduce the envelope address. If the mailserver MTA is
2281 and the item of mail had just one recipient, the MTA will have written
2282 a 'by/for' clause that gives the envelope addressee into its Received
2283 header. But this doesn't work reliably for other MTAs, nor if there is
2284 more than one recipient. By default, \fIfetchmail\fR looks for
2285 envelope addresses in these lines; you can restore this default with
2286 \&\-E "Received" or 'envelope Received'.
2288 .B As a better alternative,
2289 some SMTP listeners and/or mail servers insert a header
2290 in each message containing a copy of the envelope addresses. This
2291 header (when it exists) is often 'X\-Original\-To', 'Delivered\-To' or
2292 \&'X\-Envelope\-To'. Fetchmail's assumption about this can be changed with
2293 the \-E or 'envelope' option. Note that writing an envelope header of
2294 this kind exposes the names of recipients (including blind-copy
2295 recipients) to all receivers of the messages, so the upstream must store
2296 one copy of the message per recipient to avoid becoming a privacy problem.
2298 Postfix, since version 2.0, writes an X\-Original\-To: header which
2299 contains a copy of the envelope as it was received.
2301 Qmail and Postfix generally write a 'Delivered\-To' header upon
2302 delivering the message to the mail spool and use it to avoid mail loops.
2303 Qmail virtual domains however will prefix the user name with a string
2304 that normally matches the user's domain. To remove this prefix you can
2305 use the \-Q or 'qvirtual' option.
2307 Sometimes, unfortunately, neither of these methods works. That is the
2308 point when you should contact your ISP and ask them to provide such an
2309 envelope header, and you should not use multidrop in this situation.
2310 When they all fail, fetchmail must fall back on the contents of To/Cc
2311 headers (Bcc headers are not available - see below) to try to determine
2312 recipient addressees -- and these are unreliable.
2313 In particular, mailing-list software often ships mail with only
2314 the list broadcast address in the To header.
2316 .B Note that a future version of \fIfetchmail\fP may remove To/Cc parsing!
2320 cannot deduce a recipient address that is local, and the intended
2321 recipient address was anyone other than fetchmail's invoking user,
2322 .B mail will get lost.
2323 This is what makes the multidrop feature risky without proper envelope
2326 A related problem is that when you blind-copy a mail message, the Bcc
2327 information is carried \fIonly\fR as envelope address (it's removed from
2328 the headers by the sending mail server, so fetchmail can see it only if
2329 there is an X-\Envelope\-To header). Thus, blind-copying to someone who
2330 gets mail over a fetchmail multidrop link will fail unless the the
2331 mailserver host routinely writes X\-Envelope\-To or an equivalent header
2332 into messages in your maildrop.
2334 \fBIn conclusion, mailing lists and Bcc'd mail can only work if the
2335 server you're fetching from (1) stores one copy of the message per
2336 recipient in \fIyour\fP domain and (2) records the envelope
2337 information in a special header (X\-Original\-To, Delivered\-To,
2338 X\-Envelope\-To).\fR
2340 .SS Good Ways To Use Multidrop Mailboxes
2341 Multiple local names can be used to administer a mailing list from the
2342 client side of a \fIfetchmail\fR collection. Suppose your name is
2343 \&'esr', and you want to both pick up your own mail and maintain a mailing
2344 list called (say) "fetchmail-friends", and you want to keep the alias
2345 list on your client machine.
2347 On your server, you can alias 'fetchmail\-friends' to 'esr'; then, in
2348 your \fI.fetchmailrc\fR, declare 'to esr fetchmail\-friends here'.
2349 Then, when mail including 'fetchmail\-friends' as a local address
2350 gets fetched, the list name will be appended to the list of
2351 recipients your SMTP listener sees. Therefore it will undergo alias
2352 expansion locally. Be sure to include 'esr' in the local alias
2353 expansion of fetchmail\-friends, or you'll never see mail sent only to
2354 the list. Also be sure that your listener has the "me-too" option set
2355 (sendmail's \-oXm command-line option or OXm declaration) so your name
2356 isn't removed from alias expansions in messages you send.
2358 This trick is not without its problems, however. You'll begin to see
2359 this when a message comes in that is addressed only to a mailing list
2360 you do \fInot\fR have declared as a local name. Each such message
2361 will feature an 'X\-Fetchmail\-Warning' header which is generated
2362 because fetchmail cannot find a valid local name in the recipient
2363 addresses. Such messages default (as was described above) to being
2364 sent to the local user running
2366 but the program has no way to know that that's actually the right thing.
2368 .SS Bad Ways To Abuse Multidrop Mailboxes
2369 Multidrop mailboxes and
2371 serving multiple users in daemon mode do not mix. The problem, again, is
2372 mail from mailing lists, which typically does not have an individual
2373 recipient address on it. Unless
2375 can deduce an envelope address, such mail will only go to the account
2376 running fetchmail (probably root). Also, blind-copied users are very
2377 likely never to see their mail at all.
2379 If you're tempted to use
2381 to retrieve mail for multiple users from a single mail drop via POP or
2382 IMAP, think again (and reread the section on header and envelope
2383 addresses above). It would be smarter to just let the mail sit in the
2384 mailserver's queue and use fetchmail's ETRN or ODMR modes to trigger
2385 SMTP sends periodically (of course, this means you have to poll more
2386 frequently than the mailserver's expiry period). If you can't arrange
2387 this, try setting up a UUCP feed.
2389 If you absolutely \fImust\fR use multidrop for this purpose, make sure
2390 your mailserver writes an envelope-address header that fetchmail can
2391 see. Otherwise you \fIwill\fR lose mail and it \fIwill\fR come back
2394 .SS Speeding Up Multidrop Checking
2395 Normally, when multiple users are declared
2397 extracts recipient addresses as described above and checks each host
2398 part with DNS to see if it's an alias of the mailserver. If so, the
2399 name mappings described in the "to ... here" declaration are done and
2400 the mail locally delivered.
2402 This is a convenient but also slow method. To speed
2403 it up, pre-declare mailserver aliases with 'aka'; these are checked
2404 before DNS lookups are done. If you're certain your aka list contains
2406 DNS aliases of the mailserver (and all MX names pointing at it - note
2407 this may change in a future version)
2408 you can declare 'no dns' to suppress DNS lookups entirely and
2409 \fIonly\fR match against the aka list.
2412 To facilitate the use of
2414 in shell scripts, an exit\ status code is returned to give an indication
2415 of what occurred during a given connection.
2417 The exit codes returned by
2421 One or more messages were successfully retrieved (or, if the \-c option
2422 was selected, were found waiting but not retrieved).
2424 There was no mail awaiting retrieval. (There may have been old mail still
2425 on the server but not selected for retrieval.)
2427 An error was encountered when attempting to open a socket to retrieve
2428 mail. If you don't know what a socket is, don't worry about it --
2429 just treat this as an 'unrecoverable error'. This error can also be
2430 because a protocol fetchmail wants to use is not listed in /etc/services.
2432 The user authentication step failed. This usually means that a bad
2433 user-id, password, or APOP id was specified. Or it may mean that you
2434 tried to run fetchmail under circumstances where it did not have
2435 standard input attached to a terminal and could not prompt for a
2438 Some sort of fatal protocol error was detected.
2440 There was a syntax error in the arguments to
2443 The run control file had bad permissions.
2445 There was an error condition reported by the server. Can also
2448 timed out while waiting for the server.
2450 Client-side exclusion error. This means
2452 either found another copy of itself already running, or failed in such
2453 a way that it isn't sure whether another copy is running.
2455 The user authentication step failed because the server responded "lock
2456 busy". Try again after a brief pause! This error is not implemented
2457 for all protocols, nor for all servers. If not implemented for your
2458 server, "3" will be returned instead, see above. May be returned when
2459 talking to qpopper or other servers that can respond with "lock busy"
2460 or some similar text containing the word "lock".
2464 run failed while trying to do an SMTP port open or transaction.
2466 Fatal DNS error. Fetchmail encountered an error while performing
2467 a DNS lookup at startup and could not proceed.
2469 BSMTP batch file could not be opened.
2471 Poll terminated by a fetch limit (see the \-\-fetchlimit option).
2473 Server busy indication.
2475 Server timed out during an IMAP IDLE.
2477 Internal error. You should see a message on standard error with
2482 queries more than one host, return status is 0 if \fIany\fR query
2483 successfully retrieved mail. Otherwise the returned error status is
2484 that of the last host queried.
2489 default run control file
2492 default location of file associating hosts with last message IDs seen
2493 (used only with newer RFC1939-compliant POP3 servers supporting the
2497 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (non-root mode).
2500 your FTP run control file, which (if present) will be searched for
2501 passwords as a last resort before prompting for one interactively.
2503 /var/run/fetchmail.pid
2504 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, Linux systems).
2507 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, systems without /var/run).
2510 If the FETCHMAILUSER variable is set, it is used as the name of the
2511 calling user (default local name) for purposes such as mailing error
2512 notifications. Otherwise, if either the LOGNAME or USER variable is
2513 correctly set (e.g. the corresponding UID matches the session user ID)
2514 then that name is used as the default local name. Otherwise
2515 \fBgetpwuid\fR(3) must be able to retrieve a password entry for the
2516 session ID (this elaborate logic is designed to handle the case of
2517 multiple names per userid gracefully).
2519 If the environment variable FETCHMAILHOME is set to a valid and
2520 existing directory name, fetchmail will read $FETCHMAILHOME/fetchmailrc
2521 (the dot is missing in this case), $FETCHMAILHOME/.fetchids and
2522 $FETCHMAILHOME/.fetchmail.pid rather than from the user's home
2523 directory. The .netrc file is always looked for in the the invoking
2524 user's home directory regardless of FETCHMAILHOME's setting.
2526 If the HOME_ETC variable is set, fetchmail will read
2527 $HOME_ETC/.fetchmailrc instead of ~/.fetchmailrc.
2529 If HOME_ETC and FETCHMAILHOME are set, HOME_ETC will be ignored.
2534 daemon is running as root, SIGUSR1 wakes it up from its sleep phase and
2535 forces a poll of all non-skipped servers. For compatibility reasons,
2536 SIGHUP can also be used in 6.3.X but may not be available in future
2541 is running in daemon mode as non-root, use SIGUSR1 to wake it (this is
2542 so SIGHUP due to logout can retain the default action of killing it).
2546 in foreground while a background fetchmail is running will do
2547 whichever of these is appropriate to wake it up.
2549 .SH BUGS AND KNOWN PROBLEMS
2551 Fetchmail cannot handle user names that contain blanks after a "@"
2552 character, for instance "demonstr@ti on". These are rather uncommon and
2553 only hurt when using UID-based \-\-keep setups, so the 6.3.X versions of
2554 fetchmail won't be fixed.
2556 Please check the \fBNEWS\fP file that shipped with fetchmail for more
2557 known bugs than those listed here.
2559 The assumptions that the DNS and in particular the checkalias options
2560 make are not often sustainable. For instance, it has become uncommon for
2561 an MX server to be a POP3 or IMAP server at the same time. Therefore the
2562 MX lookups may go away in a future release.
2564 The mda and plugin options interact badly. In order to collect error
2565 status from the MDA, fetchmail has to change its normal signal
2566 handling so that dead plugin processes don't get reaped until the end
2567 of the poll cycle. This can cause resource starvation if too many
2568 zombies accumulate. So either don't deliver to a MDA using plugins or
2569 risk being overrun by an army of undead.
2571 The \-\-interface option does not support IPv6 and it is doubtful if it
2572 ever will, since there is no portable way to query interface IPv6
2575 The RFC822 address parser used in multidrop mode chokes on some
2576 @-addresses that are technically legal but bizarre. Strange uses of
2577 quoting and embedded comments are likely to confuse it.
2579 In a message with multiple envelope headers, only the last one
2580 processed will be visible to fetchmail.
2582 Use of some of these protocols requires that the program send
2583 unencrypted passwords over the TCP/IP connection to the mailserver.
2584 This creates a risk that name/password pairs might be snaffled with a
2585 packet sniffer or more sophisticated monitoring software. Under Linux
2586 and FreeBSD, the \-\-interface option can be used to restrict polling to
2587 availability of a specific interface device with a specific local or
2588 remote IP address, but snooping is still possible if (a) either host
2589 has a network device that can be opened in promiscuous mode, or (b)
2590 the intervening network link can be tapped. We recommend the use of
2592 tunnelling to not only shroud your passwords but encrypt the entire
2595 Use of the %F or %T escapes in an mda option could open a security
2596 hole, because they pass text manipulable by an attacker to a shell
2597 command. Potential shell characters are replaced by '_' before
2598 execution. The hole is further reduced by the fact that fetchmail
2599 temporarily discards any suid privileges it may have while running the
2600 MDA. For maximum safety, however, don't use an mda command containing
2601 %F or %T when fetchmail is run from the root account itself.
2603 Fetchmail's method of sending bounces due to errors or spam-blocking and
2604 spam bounces requires that port 25 of localhost be available for sending
2609 while a background instance is running and break the syntax, the
2610 background instance will die silently. Unfortunately, it can't
2611 die noisily because we don't yet know whether syslog should be enabled.
2612 On some systems, fetchmail dies quietly even if there is no syntax
2613 error; this seems to have something to do with buggy terminal ioctl
2616 The \-f\~\- option (reading a configuration from stdin) is incompatible
2617 with the plugin option.
2619 The 'principal' option only handles Kerberos IV, not V.
2621 Interactively entered passwords are truncated after 63 characters. If
2622 you really need to use a longer password, you will have to use a
2625 A backslash as the last character of a configuration file will be
2626 flagged as a syntax error rather than ignored.
2628 Send comments, bug reports, gripes, and the like to the
2629 fetchmail\-devel list <fetchmail\-devel@lists.berlios.de>. An HTML FAQ is
2630 available at the fetchmail home page; surf to
2631 http://fetchmail.berlios.de/ or do a WWW search for pages with
2632 \&'fetchmail' in their titles.
2635 Fetchmail is currently maintained by Matthias Andree and Rob Funk with
2636 major assistance from Sunil Shetye (for code) and Rob MacGregor (for the
2639 Most of the code is from Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>. Too
2640 many other people to name here have contributed code and patches.
2642 This program is descended from and replaces
2644 by Carl Harris <ceharris@mal.com>; the internals have become quite different,
2645 but some of its interface design is directly traceable to that
2648 This manual page has been improved by R.\ Hannes Beinert and H\['e]ctor
2652 mutt(1), elm(1), mail(1), sendmail(8), popd(8), imapd(8), netrc(5)
2654 The fetchmail home page: <http://fetchmail.berlios.de/>
2656 The maildrop home page: <http://www.courier-mta.org/maildrop/>
2657 .SH APPLICABLE STANDARDS
2659 Note that this list is just a collection of references and not a
2660 statement as to the actual protocol conformance or requirements in
2664 RFC 821, RFC 2821, RFC 1869, RFC 1652, RFC 1870, RFC 1983, RFC 1985,
2668 RFC 822, RFC 2822, RFC 1123, RFC 1892, RFC 1894.
2674 RFC 1081, RFC 1225, RFC 1460, RFC 1725, RFC 1734, RFC 1939, RFC 1957,
2678 RFC 1460, RFC 1725, RFC 1939.
2687 RFC 1730, RFC 1731, RFC 1732, RFC 2060, RFC 2061, RFC 2195, RFC 2177,
projects / ~andy / fetchmail / blob