2 .\" ** The above line should force tbl to be used as a preprocessor **
4 .\" Man page for fetchmail
6 .\" For license terms, see the file COPYING in this directory.
9 fetchmail \- fetch mail from a POP, IMAP, or ETRN-capable server
12 \fBfetchmail\fR [\fIoptions\fR] [\fImailserver...\fR]
18 is a mail-retrieval and forwarding utility; it fetches
19 mail from remote mailservers and forwards it to your local (client)
20 machine's delivery system. You can then handle the retrieved mail
21 using normal mail user agents such as \fIelm\fR(1) or \fIMail\fR(1).
22 The \fIfetchmail\fR utility can be run in a daemon mode to repeatedly
23 poll one or more systems at a specified interval.
27 program can gather mail from servers supporting any of the common
28 mail-retrieval protocols: POP2, POP3, IMAP2bis, IMAP4, and IMAPrev1.
29 It can also use the ESMTP ETRN extension and ODMR. (The RFCs describing all
30 these protocols are listed at the end of this manual page.)
34 is primarily intended to be used over on-demand TCP/IP links (such as
35 SLIP or PPP connections), it may also be useful as a message transfer
36 agent for sites which refuse for security reasons to permit
37 (sender-initiated) SMTP transactions with sendmail.
39 As each message is retrieved \fIfetchmail\fR normally delivers it via SMTP to
40 port 25 on the machine it is running on (localhost), just as though it
41 were being passed in over a normal TCP/IP link. The mail will then be
42 delivered locally via your system's MDA (Mail Delivery Agent, usually
43 \fIsendmail\fR(8) but your system may use a different one such
44 as \fIsmail\fR, \fImmdf\fR, \fIexim\fR, or \fIqmail\fR). All the
45 delivery-control mechanisms (such as \fI.forward\fR files) normally
46 available through your system MDA and local delivery agents will
51 is available, it will assist you in setting up and editing a
52 fetchmailrc configuration. It runs under X and requires that the
53 language Python and the Tk toolkit be present on your system. If
54 you are first setting up fetchmail for single-user mode, it is
55 recommended that you use Novice mode. Expert mode provides
56 complete control of fetchmail configuration, including the
57 multidrop features. In either case, the `Autoprobe' button
58 will tell you the most capable protocol a given mailserver
59 supports, and warn you of potential problems with that server.
64 is controlled by command-line options and a run control file,
65 .IR ~/.fetchmailrc\fR ,
66 the syntax of which we describe in a later section (this file is what
67 the \fIfetchmailconf\fR program edits). Command-line options override
71 Each server name that you specify following the options on the
72 command line will be queried. If you don't specify any servers
73 on the command line, each `poll' entry in your
77 To facilitate the use of
79 in scripts and pipelines, it returns an appropriate exit code upon
80 termination -- see EXIT CODES below.
82 The following options modify the behavior of \fIfetchmail\fR. It is
83 seldom necessary to specify any of these once you have a
84 working \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file set up.
86 Almost all options have a corresponding keyword which can be used to
91 Some special options are not covered here, but are documented instead
92 in sections on AUTHENTICATION and DAEMON MODE which follow.
96 Displays the version information for your copy of
98 No mail fetch is performed.
99 Instead, for each server specified, all the option information
100 that would be computed if
102 were connecting to that server is displayed. Any non-printables in
103 passwords or other string names are shown as backslashed C-like
104 escape sequences. This option is useful for verifying that your
105 options are set the way you want them.
108 Return a status code to indicate whether there is mail waiting,
109 without actually fetching or deleting mail (see EXIT CODES below).
110 This option turns off daemon mode (in which it would be useless). It
111 doesn't play well with queries to multiple sites, and doesn't work
112 with ETRN or ODMR. It will return a false positive if you leave read but
113 undeleted mail in your server mailbox and your fetch protocol can't
114 tell kept messages from new ones. This means it will work with IMAP,
115 not work with POP2, and may occasionally flake out under POP3.
118 Silent mode. Suppresses all progress/status messages that are
119 normally echoed to standard error during a fetch (but does not
120 suppress actual error messages). The --verbose option overrides this.
123 Verbose mode. All control messages passed between
125 and the mailserver are echoed to stderr. Overrides --silent.
126 Doubling this option (-v -v) causes extra diagnostic information
132 Retrieve both old (seen) and new messages from the mailserver. The
133 default is to fetch only messages the server has not marked seen.
134 Under POP3, this option also forces the use of RETR rather than TOP.
135 Note that POP2 retrieval behaves as though --all is always on (see
136 RETRIEVAL FAILURE MODES below) and this option does not work with ETRN
141 Keep retrieved messages on the remote mailserver. Normally, messages
142 are deleted from the folder on the mailserver after they have been retrieved.
145 option causes retrieved messages to remain in your folder on the
146 mailserver. This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
150 Delete retrieved messages from the remote mailserver. This
151 option forces retrieved mail to be deleted. It may be useful if
152 you have specified a default of \fBkeep\fR in your
153 \&\fI.fetchmailrc\fR. This option is forced on with ETRN and ODMR.
156 POP3/IMAP only. Delete old (previously retrieved) messages from the mailserver
157 before retrieving new messages. This option does not work with ETRN or
159 Warning: if your local MTA hangs and fetchmail is aborted, the next
160 time you run fetchmail, it will delete mail that was never delivered to you.
161 What you probably want is the default setting: if you don't specify `-k', then
162 fetchmail will automatically delete messages after successful delivery.
163 .SS Protocol and Query Options
165 .B \-p, \--protocol <proto>
166 (Keyword: proto[col])
167 Specify the protocol to use when communicating with the remote
168 mailserver. If no protocol is specified, the default is AUTO.
170 may be one of the following:
173 Tries IMAP, POP3, and POP2 (skipping any of these for which support
174 has not been compiled in).
176 Post Office Protocol 2
178 Post Office Protocol 3
180 Use POP3 with old-fashioned MD5-challenge authentication.
182 Use POP3 with RPOP authentication.
184 Use POP3 with Kerberos V4 authentication on port 1109.
186 Use POP3 with Demon Internet's SDPS extensions.
188 IMAP2bis, IMAP4, or IMAP4rev1 (\fIfetchmail\fR autodetects their capabilities).
190 Use the ESMTP ETRN option.
192 Use the the On-Demand Mail Relay ESMTP profile.
195 All these alternatives work in basically the same way (communicating
196 with standard server daemons to fetch mail already delivered to a
197 mailbox on the server) except ETRN and ODMR. The ETRN mode
198 allows you to ask a compliant ESMTP server (such as BSD sendmail at
199 release 8.8.0 or higher) to immediately open a sender-SMTP connection
200 to your client machine and begin forwarding any items addressed to
201 your client machine in the server's queue of undelivered mail. The
202 ODMR mode requires an ODMR-capable server and works similarly to
203 ETRN, except that it does not require the client machine to have
208 Force UIDL use (effective only with POP3). Force client-side tracking
209 of `newness' of messages (UIDL stands for ``unique ID listing'' and is
210 described in RFC1725). Use with `keep' to use a mailbox as a baby
211 news drop for a group of users.
213 .B \-P, --port <portnumber>
215 The port option permits you to specify a TCP/IP port to connect on.
216 This option will seldom be necessary as all the supported protocols have
217 well-established default port numbers.
219 .B \--principal <principal>
221 The principal option permits you to specify a service principal for
222 mutual authentication. This is applicable to POP3 or IMAP with Kerberos
225 .B \-t, --timeout <seconds>
227 The timeout option allows you to set a server-nonresponse
228 timeout in seconds. If a mailserver does not send a greeting message
229 or respond to commands for the given number of seconds,
230 \fIfetchmail\fR will hang up on it. Without such a timeout
231 \fIfetchmail\fR might hang up indefinitely trying to fetch mail from a
232 down host. This would be particularly annoying for a \fIfetchmail\fR
233 running in background. There is a default timeout which fetchmail -V
234 will report. If a given connection receives too many timeouts in
235 succession, fetchmail will consider it wedged and stop retrying,
236 the calkling user will be notified by email if this happens.
238 .B \--plugin <command>
239 (Keyword: plugin) The plugin option allows you to use an external
240 program to establish the TCP connection. This is useful if you want
241 to use socks, SSL, ssh, or need some special firewalling setup. The
242 program will be looked up in $PATH and can optionally be passed the
243 hostname and port as arguments using "%h" and "%p" respectively (note
244 that the interpolation logic is rather promitive, and these token must
245 be bounded by whitespace or beginning of string or end of string).
246 Fetchmail will write to the plugin's stdin and read from the plugin's
249 .B \--plugout <command>
251 Identical to the plugin option above, but this one is used for the SMTP
252 connections (which will probably not need it, so it has been separated
255 .B \-r <name>, --folder <name>
257 Causes a specified non-default mail folder on the mailserver (or
258 comma-separated list of folders) to be retrieved. The syntax of the
259 folder name is server-dependent. This option is not available under
264 Causes the connection to the mail server to be encrypted via SSL. Connect
265 to the server using the specified base protocol over a connection secured
266 by SSL. SSL support must be present at the server. If no port is
267 specified, the connection is attempted to the well known port of the SSL
268 version of the base protocol. This is generally a different port than the
269 port used by the base protocol. For IMAP, this is port 143 for the clear
270 protocol and port 993 for the SSL secured protocol.
274 Specifies the file name of the client side public SSL certificate. Some
275 SSL encrypted servers may require client side keys and certificates for
276 authentication. In most cases, this is optional. This specifies
277 the location of the public key certificate to be presented to the server
278 at the time the SSL session is established. It is not required (but may
279 be provided) if the server does not require it. Some servers may
280 require it, some servers may request it but not require it, and some
281 servers may not request it at all. It may be the same file
282 as the private key (combined key and certificate file) but this is not
287 Specifies the file name of the client side private SSL key. Some SSL
288 encrypted servers may require client side keys and certificates for
289 authentication. In most cases, this is optional. This specifies
290 the location of the private key used to sign transactions with the server
291 at the time the SSL session is established. It is not required (but may
292 be provided) if the server does not require it. Some servers may
293 require it, some servers may request it but not require it, and some
294 servers may not request it at all. It may be the same file
295 as the public key (combined key and certificate file) but this is not
296 recommended. If a password is required to unlock the key, it will be
297 prompted for at the time just prior to establishing the session to the
298 server. This can cause some complications in daemon mode.
300 .B \--sslproto <name>
302 Forces an ssl protocol. Possible values are \&`\fBssl2\fR', `\fBssl3\fR' and
303 `\fBtls1\fR'. Try this if the default handshake does not work for your server.
304 .SS Delivery Control Options
306 .B \-S <hosts>, --smtphost <hosts>
307 (Keyword: smtp[host])
308 Specify a hunt list of hosts to forward mail to (one or more
309 hostnames, comma-separated). In ETRN mode, set the host that the
310 mailserver is asked to ship mail to. Hosts are tried in list order;
311 the first one that is up becomes the forwarding target for the
312 current run. Normally, `localhost' is added to the end of the list as
313 an invisible default. However, when using ETRN mode or Kerberos
314 authentication, the FQDN of the machine running fetchmail is added to
315 the end of the list as an invisible default. Each hostname may have a
316 port number following the host name. The port number is separated from
317 the host name by a slash; the default port is 25 (or ``smtp'' under IPv6).
318 If you specify an absolute pathname (beginning with a /), it will be
319 interpreted as the name of a UNIX socket accepting LMTP connections
320 (such as is supported by the Cyrus IMAP daemon) Example:
322 --smtphost server1,server2/2525,server3,/var/imap/socket/lmtp
324 In ODMR mode, this option specifies the list of domains the ODMR
325 server should ship mail for once the connection is turned around.
327 .B \-D <domain>, --smtpaddress <domain>
328 (Keyword: smtpaddress)
329 Specify the domain to be put in RCPT TO lines shipped to SMTP. The
330 name of the SMTP server (as specified by --smtphost, or defaulted to
331 "localhost") is used when this is not specified.
333 .B --smtpname <user@domain>
335 Specify the domain and user to be put in RCPT TO lines shipped to SMTP.
336 The default user is the current local user.
338 .B \-Z <nnn>, --antispam <nnn[, nnn]...>
340 Specifies the list of numeric SMTP errors that are to be interpreted
341 as a spam-block response from the listener. A value of -1 disables
342 this option. For the command-line option, the list values should
345 .B \-m <command>, \--mda <command>
347 You can force mail to be passed to an MDA directly (rather than
348 forwarded to port 25) with the -mda or -m option. Be aware that this
349 disables some valuable resource-exhaustion checks and error handling
350 provided by SMTP listeners; it's not a good idea unless running an
351 SMTP listener is impossible. If \fIfetchmail\fR is running as root,
352 it sets its userid to that of the target user while delivering mail
353 through an MDA. Some possible MDAs are "/usr/sbin/sendmail -oem -f %F
354 %T", "/usr/bin/deliver" and "/usr/bin/procmail -d %T" (but the latter
355 is usually redundant as it's what SMTP listeners usually forward
356 to). Local delivery addresses will be inserted into the MDA command
357 wherever you place a %T; the mail message's From address will be
358 inserted where you place an %F. Do \fInot\fR use an MDA invocation
359 like "sendmail -oem -t" that dispatches on the contents of To/Cc/Bcc,
360 it will create mail loops and bring the just wrath of many postmasters
365 Cause delivery via LMTP (Local Mail Transfer Protocol). A service
366 port \fImust\fR be explicitly specified (with a slash suffix) on each
367 host in the smtphost hunt list if this option is selected; the
368 default port 25 will (in accordance with RFC 2033) not be accepted.
370 .B \--bsmtp <filename>
372 Append fetched mail to a BSMTP file. This simply contains the SMTP
373 commands that would normally be generated by fetchmail when passing
374 mail to an SMTP listener daemon. An argument of `-' causes the mail
375 to be written to standard output. Note that fetchmail's
376 reconstruction of MAIL FROM and RCPT TO lines is not guaranteed
377 correct; the caveats discussed under THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP
378 MAILBOXES below apply.
379 .SS Resource Limit Control Options
381 .B \-l <maxbytes>, --limit <maxbytes>
383 Takes a maximum octet size argument. Messages larger than this size
384 will not be fetched and will be left on the server (in foreground
385 sessions, the progress messages will note that they are "oversized").
386 If the fetch protocol permits (in particular, under IMAP or POP3
387 without the fetchall option) the message will not be marked seen An
388 explicit --limit of 0 overrides any limits set in your run control
389 file. This option is intended for those needing to strictly control
390 fetch time due to expensive and variable phone rates. In daemon mode,
391 oversize notifications are mailed to the calling user (see the
392 --warnings option). This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
394 .B \-w <interval>, --warnings <interval>
396 Takes an interval in seconds. When you call
398 with a `limit' option in daemon mode, this controls the interval at
399 which warnings about oversized messages are mailed to the calling user
400 (or the user specified by the `postmaster' option). One such
401 notification is always mailed at the end of the the first poll that
402 the oversized message is detected. Thereafter, renotification is
403 suppressed until after the warning interval elapses (it will take
404 place at the end of the first following poll).
406 .B -b <count>, --batchlimit <count>
407 (Keyword: batchlimit)
408 Specify the maximum number of messages that will be shipped to an SMTP
409 listener before the connection is deliberately torn down and rebuilt
410 (defaults to 0, meaning no limit). An explicit --batchlimit of 0
411 overrides any limits set in your run control file. While
412 \fBsendmail\fR(8) normally initiates delivery of a message immediately
413 after receiving the message terminator, some SMTP listeners are not so
414 prompt. MTAs like \fIqmail\fR(8) and \fIsmail\fR(8) may wait till the
415 delivery socket is shut down to deliver. This may produce annoying
416 delays when \fIfetchmail\fR is processing very large batches. Setting
417 the batch limit to some nonzero size will prevent these delays. This
418 option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
420 .B -B <number>, --fetchlimit <number>
421 (Keyword: fetchlimit)
422 Limit the number of messages accepted from a given server in a single
423 poll. By default there is no limit. An explicit --fetchlimit of 0
424 overrides any limits set in your run control file.
425 This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
427 .B -e <count>, --expunge <count>
429 Arrange for deletions to be made final after a given number of
430 messages. Under POP2 or POP3, fetchmail cannot make deletions final
431 without sending QUIT and ending the session -- with this option on,
432 fetchmail will break a long mail retrieval session into multiple
433 subsessions, sending QUIT after each sub-session. This is a good
434 defense against line drops on POP3 servers that do not do the
435 equivalent of a QUIT on hangup. Under IMAP,
437 normally issues an EXPUNGE command after each deletion in order to
438 force the deletion to be done immediately. This is safest when your
439 connection to the server is flaky and expensive, as it avoids
440 resending duplicate mail after a line hit. However, on large
441 mailboxes the overhead of re-indexing after every message can slam the
442 server pretty hard, so if your connection is reliable it is good to do
443 expunges less frequently. If you specify this option to an integer N,
446 to only issue expunges on every Nth delete. An argument of zero
447 suppresses expunges entirely (so no expunges at all will be done until
448 the end of run). This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
449 .SS Authentication Options
451 .B \-u <name>, --username <name>
452 (Keyword: user[name])
453 Specifies the user identification to be used when logging in to the mailserver.
454 The appropriate user identification is both server and user-dependent.
455 The default is your login name on the client machine that is running
457 See USER AUTHENTICATION below for a complete description.
459 .B \-I <specification>, --interface <specification>
461 Require that a specific interface device be up and have a specific local
462 or remote IP address (or range) before polling. Frequently
464 is used over a transient point-to-point TCP/IP link established directly
465 to a mailserver via SLIP or PPP. That is a relatively secure channel.
466 But when other TCP/IP routes to the mailserver exist (e.g. when the link
467 is connected to an alternate ISP), your username and password may be
468 vulnerable to snooping (especially when daemon mode automatically polls
469 for mail, shipping a clear password over the net at predictable
470 intervals). The --interface option may be used to prevent this. When
471 the specified link is not up or is not connected to a matching IP
472 address, polling will be skipped. The format is:
474 interface/iii.iii.iii.iii/mmm.mmm.mmm.mmm
476 The field before the first slash is the interface name (i.e. sl0, ppp0
477 etc.). The field before the second slash is the acceptable IP address.
478 The field after the second slash is a mask which specifies a range of
479 IP addresses to accept. If no mask is present 255.255.255.255 is
480 assumed (i.e. an exact match). This option is currently only supported
481 under Linux and FreeBSD. Please see the
483 section for below for FreeBSD specific information.
485 .B \-M <interface>, --monitor <interface>
487 Daemon mode can cause transient links which are automatically taken down
488 after a period of inactivity (e.g. PPP links) to remain up
489 indefinitely. This option identifies a system TCP/IP interface to be
490 monitored for activity. After each poll interval, if the link is up but
491 no other activity has occurred on the link, then the poll will be
492 skipped. However, when fetchmail is woken up by a signal, the
493 monitor check is skipped and the poll goes through unconditionally.
494 This option is currently only supported under Linux and FreeBSD.
499 options to work for non root users under FreeBSD, the fetchmail binary
500 must be installed SGID kmem. This would be a security hole, but
501 fetchmail runs with the effective GID set to that of the kmem group
503 when interface data is being collected.
506 (Keyword: auth[enticate])
507 This option permits you to specify an authentication type (see USER
508 AUTHENTICATION below for details). The possible values are \fBany\fR,
509 \&`\fBpassword\fR', `\fBkerberos_v5\fR' and `\fBkerberos\fR' (or, for
510 excruciating exactness, `\fBkerberos_v4\fR'), \fRgssapi\fR,
511 \fIcram-md5\fR, \fIotp\fR, \fIntlm\fR, and \fBssh\fR. When \fBany\fR (the
512 default) is specified, fetchmail tries first methods that don't
513 require a password (GSSAPI, KERBEROS_IV); then it looks for methods
514 that mask your password (CRAM-MD5, X-OTP, NTLM); and only if the server
515 doesn't support any of those will it ship your password en clair.
516 Other values may be used to force various authentication methods
517 (\fBssh\fR suppresses authentication). Any value other than
518 \fIpassword\fR, \fIcram-md5\fR, \fIntlm\fR or \fIotp\fR suppresses fetchmail's
519 normal inquiry for a password. Specify \fIssh\fR when you are using
520 an end-to-end secure connection such as an ssh tunnel; specify
521 \fRgssapi\fR or \fBkerberos_v4\fR if you are using a protocol variant
522 that employs GSSAPI or K4. Choosing KPOP protocol automatically
523 selects Kerberos authentication. This option does not work with ETRN
525 .SS Miscellaneous Options
527 .B \-f <pathname>, --fetchmailrc <pathname>
528 Specify a non-default name for the
530 run control file. The pathname argument must be either "-" (a single
531 dash, meaning to read the configuration from standard input) or a
532 filename. Unless the --version option is also on, a named file
533 argument must have permissions no more open than 0600 (u=rw,g=,o=) or
536 .B \-i <pathname>, --idfile <pathname>
538 Specify an alternate name for the .fetchids file used to save POP3
542 (Keyword: no rewrite)
545 edits RFC-822 address headers (To, From, Cc, Bcc, and Reply-To) in
546 fetched mail so that any mail IDs local to the server are expanded to
547 full addresses (@ and the mailserver hostname are appended). This enables
548 replies on the client to get addressed correctly (otherwise your
549 mailer might think they should be addressed to local users on the
550 client machine!). This option disables the rewrite. (This option is
551 provided to pacify people who are paranoid about having an MTA edit
552 mail headers and want to know they can prevent it, but it is generally
553 not a good idea to actually turn off rewrite.)
554 When using ETRN or ODMR, the rewrite option is ineffective.
556 .B -E <line>, --envelope <line>
558 This option changes the header
560 assumes will carry a copy of the mail's envelope address. Normally
561 this is `X-Envelope-To' but as this header is not standard, practice
562 varies. See the discussion of multidrop address handling below. As a
563 special case, `envelope "Received"' enables parsing of sendmail-style
564 Received lines. This is the default, and it should not be necessary
565 unless you have globally disabled Received parsing with `no envelope'
566 in the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file.
568 .B -Q <prefix>, --qvirtual <prefix>
570 The string prefix assigned to this option will be removed from the user
571 name found in the header specified with the \fIenvelope\fR option
572 (\fIbefore\fR doing multidrop name mapping or localdomain checking,
573 if either is applicable). This option is useful if you are using
575 to collect the mail for an entire domain and your ISP (or your mail
576 redirection provider) is using qmail.
577 One of the basic features of qmail is the
581 message header. Whenever qmail delivers a message to a local mailbox
582 it puts the username and hostname of the envelope recipient on this
583 line. The major reason for this is to prevent mail loops. To set up
584 qmail to batch mail for a disconnected site the ISP-mailhost will have
585 normally put that site in its `Virtualhosts' control file so it will
586 add a prefix to all mail addresses for this site. This results in mail
587 .\" The \&@\& tries to stop HTML converters from making a mailto URL here.
588 sent to 'username\&@\&userhost.userdom.dom.com' having a
589 \&`Delivered-To:' line of the form:
591 Delivered-To: mbox-userstr-username\&@\&userhost.userdom.dom.com
593 The ISP can make the 'mbox-userstr-' prefix anything they choose
594 but a string matching the user host name is likely.
595 By using the option `envelope Delivered-To:' you can make fetchmail reliably
596 identify the original envelope recipient, but you have to strip the
597 `mbox-userstr-' prefix to deliver to the correct user.
598 This is what this option is for.
603 file, interpret any command-line options specified, and dump a
604 configuration report to standard output. The configuration report is
605 a data structure assignment in the language Python. This option
606 is meant to be used with an interactive
612 .SH USER AUTHENTICATION AND ENCRYPTION
613 All modes except ETRN and ODMR requires authentication of the client.
614 Normal user authentication in
616 is very much like the authentication mechanism of
618 The correct user-id and password depend upon the underlying security
619 system at the mailserver.
621 If the mailserver is a Unix machine on which you have an ordinary user
622 account, your regular login name and password are used with
624 If you use the same login name on both the server and the client machines,
625 you needn't worry about specifying a user-id with the
628 the default behavior is to use your login name on the client machine as the
629 user-id on the server machine. If you use a different login name
630 on the server machine, specify that login name with the
632 option. e.g. if your login name is 'jsmith' on a machine named 'mailgrunt',
637 fetchmail -u jsmith mailgrunt
639 The default behavior of
641 is to prompt you for your mailserver password before the connection is
642 established. This is the safest way to use
644 and ensures that your password will not be compromised. You may also specify
645 your password in your
647 file. This is convenient when using
649 in daemon mode or with scripts.
651 If you do not specify a password, and
653 cannot extract one from your
655 file, it will look for a
657 file in your home directory before requesting one interactively; if an
658 entry matching the mailserver is found in that file, the password will
659 be used. Fetchmail first looks for a match on poll name; if it finds none,
660 it checks for a match on via name. See the
662 man page for details of the syntax of the
664 file. (This feature may allow you to avoid duplicating password
665 information in more than one file.)
667 On mailservers that do not provide ordinary user accounts, your user-id and
668 password are usually assigned by the server administrator when you apply for
669 a mailbox on the server. Contact your server administrator if you don't know
670 the correct user-id and password for your mailbox account.
672 Early versions of POP3 (RFC1081, RFC1225) supported a crude form of
673 independent authentication using the
675 file on the mailserver side. Under this RPOP variant, a fixed
676 per-user ID equivalent to a password was sent in clear over a link to
677 a reserved port, with the command RPOP rather than PASS to alert the
678 server that it should do special checking. RPOP is supported
681 (you can specify `protocol RPOP' to have the program send `RPOP'
682 rather than `PASS') but its use is strongly discouraged. This
683 facility was vulnerable to spoofing and was withdrawn in RFC1460.
685 RFC1460 introduced APOP authentication. In this variant of POP3,
686 you register an APOP password on your server host (the program
687 to do this with on the server is probably called \fIpopauth\fR(8)). You
688 put the same password in your
692 logs in, it sends a cryptographically secure hash of your password and
693 the server greeting time to the server, which can verify it by
694 checking its authorization database.
696 If your \fIfetchmail\fR was built with Kerberos support and you specify
697 Kerberos authentication (either with --auth or the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
698 option \fBauthenticate kerberos_v4\fR) it will try to get a Kerberos
699 ticket from the mailserver at the start of each query. Note: if
700 either the pollnane or via name is `hesiod', fetchmail will try to use
701 Hesiod to look up the mailserver.
703 If you use POP3 or IMAP with GSSAPI authentication, \fIfetchmail\fR will
704 expect the server to have RFC1731- or RFC1734-conformant GSSAPI
705 capability, and will use it. Currently this has only been tested over
706 Kerberos V, so you're expected to already have a ticket-granting
707 ticket. You may pass a username different from your principal name
708 using the standard \fB--user\fR command or by the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
711 If your IMAP daemon returns the PREAUTH response in its greeting line,
712 fetchmail will notice this and skip the normal authentication step.
713 This can be useful, e.g. if you start imapd explicitly using ssh.
714 In this case you can declare the authentication value `ssh' on that
715 site entry to stop \fI.fetchmail\fR from asking you for a password
718 If you are using POP3, and the server issues a one-time-password
719 challenge conforming to RFC1938, \fIfetchmail\fR will use your
720 password as a pass phrase to generate the required response. This
721 avoids sending secrets over the net unencrypted.
723 Compuserve's RPA authentication (similar to APOP) is supported. If you
724 compile in the support, \fIfetchmail\fR will try to perform an RPA pass-phrase
725 authentication instead of sending over the password en clair if it
726 detects "@compuserve.com" in the hostname.
728 Microsoft's NTLM authentication (used by Microsoft Exchange) is
729 supported. If you compile in the support, \fIfetchmail\fR will try to
730 perform an NTLM authentication (instead of sending over the
731 password en clair) whenever the server returns AUTH=NTLM in its
732 capability response. Note: if you specify a user option value
733 that looks like `user@domain', the part to the left of the @ will
734 be passed as the username and the part to the right as the NTLM domain.
736 If you are using IPsec, the -T (--netsec) option can be used to pass
737 an IP security request to be used when outgoing IP connections are
738 initialized. You can also do this using the `netsec' server option
739 in the .fetchmailrc file. In either case, the option value is a
740 string in the format accepted by the net_security_strtorequest()
741 function of the inet6_apps library.
743 You can access SSL encrypted services by specifying the --ssl option.
744 You can also do this using the "ssl" server option in the .fetchmailrc
745 file. With SSL encryption enabled, queries are initiated over a connection
746 after negotiating an SSL session. Some services, such as POP3 and IMAP,
747 have different well known ports defined for the SSL encrypted services.
748 The encrypted ports will be selected automatically when SSL is enabled and
749 no explicit port is specified.
751 When connecting to an SSL encrypted server, the server presents a certificate
752 to the client for validation. The certificate is checked to verify that
753 the common name in the certificate matches the name of the server being
754 contacted and that the effective and expiration dates in the certificate
755 indicate that it is currently valid. If any of these checks fail, a warning
756 message is printed, but the connection continues. The server certificate
757 does not need to be signed by any specific Certifying Authority and may
758 be a "self-signed" certificate.
760 Some SSL encrypted servers may request a client side certificate. A client
761 side public SSL certificate and private SSL key may be specified. If
762 requested by the server, the client certificate is sent to the server for
763 validation. Some servers may require a valid client certificate and may
764 refuse connections if a certificate is not provided or if the certificate
765 is not valid. Some servers may require client side certificates be signed
766 by a recognized Certifying Authority. The format for the key files and
767 the certificate files is that required by the underlying SSL libraries
768 (OpenSSL in the general case).
770 Finally, a word of care about the use of SSL: While above mentioned
771 setup with self-signed server certificates retrieved over the wires
772 can protect you from a passive eavesdropper it doesn't help against an
773 active attacker. It's clearly an improvement over sending the
774 passwords in clear but you should be aware that a man-in-the-middle
775 attack is trivially possible (in particular with tools such as dsniff,
776 http://www.monkey.org/~dugsong/dsniff/). Use of an ssh tunnel (see
777 below for some examples) is preferable if you care seriously about the
778 security of your mailbox.
782 .B --daemon <interval>
787 in daemon mode. You must specify a numeric argument which is a
788 polling interval in seconds.
792 puts itself in background and runs forever, querying each specified
793 host and then sleeping for the given polling interval.
799 will, therefore, poll all the hosts described in your
801 file (except those explicitly excluded with the `skip' verb) once
802 every fifteen minutes.
804 It is possible to set a polling interval
807 file by saying `set daemon <interval>', where <interval> is an
808 integer number of seconds. If you do this, fetchmail will always
809 start in daemon mode unless you override it with the command-line
810 option --daemon 0 or -d0.
812 Only one daemon process is permitted per user; in daemon mode,
814 makes a per-user lockfile to guarantee this.
816 Normally, calling fetchmail with a daemon in the background sends a
817 wakeup signal to the daemon, forcing it to poll mailservers
818 immediately. (The wakeup signal is SIGHUP if fetchmail is running as
819 root, SIGUSR1 otherwise.) The wakeup action also clears any `wedged'
820 flags indicating that connections have wedged due to failed
821 authentication or multiple timeouts.
825 will kill a running daemon process instead of waking it up (if there
828 notifies you). If the --quit option is the only command-line option,
829 that's all there is to it.
831 The quit option may also be mixed with other command-line options; its
832 effect is to kill any running daemon before doing what the other
833 options specify in combination with the rc file.
838 .B --logfile <filename>
839 option (keyword: set logfile) allows you to redirect status messages
840 emitted while detached into a specified logfile (follow the
841 option with the logfile name). The logfile is opened for append, so
842 previous messages aren't deleted. This is primarily useful for
843 debugging configurations.
847 option (keyword: set syslog) allows you to redirect status and error
848 messages emitted to the
850 system daemon if available.
851 Messages are logged with an id of \fBfetchmail\fR, the facility \fBLOG_MAIL\fR,
852 and priorities \fBLOG_ERR\fR, \fBLOG_ALERT\fR or \fBLOG_INFO\fR.
853 This option is intended for logging status and error messages which
854 indicate the status of the daemon and the results while fetching mail
856 Error messages for command line options and parsing the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
857 file are still written to stderr, or to the specified log file.
860 option turns off use of
862 assuming it's turned on in the
872 or --nodetach option suppresses backgrounding and detachment of the
873 daemon process from its control terminal. This is primarily useful
874 for debugging. Note that this also causes the logfile option to be
875 ignored (though perhaps it shouldn't).
877 Note that while running in daemon mode polling a POP2 or IMAP2bis server,
878 transient errors (such as DNS failures or sendmail delivery refusals)
879 may force the fetchall option on for the duration of the next polling
880 cycle. This is a robustness feature. It means that if a message is
881 fetched (and thus marked seen by the mailserver) but not delivered
882 locally due to some transient error, it will be re-fetched during the
883 next poll cycle. (The IMAP logic doesn't delete messages until
884 they're delivered, so this problem does not arise.)
886 If you touch or change the
888 file while fetchmail is running in daemon mode, this will be detected
889 at the beginning of the next poll cycle. When a changed
891 is detected, fetchmail rereads it and restarts from scratch (using
892 exec(2); no state information is retained in the new instance). Note also
893 that if you break the
895 file's syntax, the new instance will softly and silently vanish away
898 .SH ADMINISTRATIVE OPTIONS
901 .B --postmaster <name>
902 option (keyword: set postmaster) specifies the last-resort username to
903 which multidrop mail is to be forwarded if no matching local recipient
904 can be found. Normally this is just the user who invoked fetchmail.
905 If the invoking user is root, then the default of this option is
906 the user `postmaster'.
910 option suppresses the normal action of bouncing errors back to the
911 sender in an RFC1894-conformant error message. If nobounce is on, the
912 message will go to the postmaster instead.
916 option (keyword: set invisible) tries to make fetchmail invisible.
917 Normally, fetchmail behaves like any other MTA would -- it generates a
918 Received header into each message describing its place in the chain of
919 transmission, and tells the MTA it forwards to that the mail came from
920 the machine fetchmail itself is running on. If the invisible option
921 is on, the Received header is suppressed and fetchmail tries to spoof
922 the MTA it forwards to into thinking it came directly from the
927 option (keyword: set showdots) forces fetchmail to show progress dots
928 even if the current tty is not stdout (for example logfiles).
929 Starting with fetchmail version 5.3.0,
930 progress dots are only shown on stdout by default.
932 .SH RETRIEVAL FAILURE MODES
933 The protocols \fIfetchmail\fR uses to talk to mailservers are next to
934 bulletproof. In normal operation forwarding to port 25, no message is
935 ever deleted (or even marked for deletion) on the host until the SMTP
936 listener on the client has acknowledged to \fIfetchmail\fR that the
937 message has been accepted for delivery or rejected due to a spam
938 block. When forwarding to an MDA, however, there is more possibility
939 of error (because there's no way for fetchmail to get a reliable
940 positive acknowledgement from the MDA).
942 The normal mode of \fIfetchmail\fR is to try to download only `new'
943 messages, leaving untouched (and undeleted) messages you have already
944 read directly on the server (or fetched with a previous \fIfetchmail
945 --keep\fR). But you may find that messages you've already read on the
946 server are being fetched (and deleted) even when you don't specify
947 --all. There are several reasons this can happen.
949 One could be that you're using POP2. The POP2 protocol includes no
950 representation of `new' or `old' state in messages, so \fIfetchmail\fR
951 must treat all messages as new all the time. But POP2 is obsolete, so
954 Under POP3, blame RFC1725. That version of the POP3 protocol
955 specification removed the LAST command, and some POP servers follow it
956 (you can verify this by invoking \fIfetchmail -v\fR to the mailserver
957 and watching the response to LAST early in the query). The
958 \fIfetchmail\fR code tries to compensate by using POP3's UID feature,
959 storing the identifiers of messages seen in each session until the
960 next session, in the \fI.fetchids\fR file. But this doesn't track
961 messages seen with other clients, or read directly with a mailer on
962 the host but not deleted afterward. A better solution would be to
965 Another potential POP3 problem might be servers that insert messages
966 in the middle of mailboxes (some VMS implementations of mail are
967 rumored to do this). The \fIfetchmail\fR code assumes that new
968 messages are appended to the end of the mailbox; when this is not true
969 it may treat some old messages as new and vice versa. The only
970 real fix for this problem is to switch to IMAP.
972 Yet another POP3 problem is that if they can't make tempfiles in the
973 user's home directory, some POP3 servers will hand back an
974 undocumented response that causes fetchmail to spuriously report "No
977 The IMAP code uses the presence or absence of the server flag \eSeen
978 to decide whether or not a message is new. Under Unix, it counts on
979 your IMAP server to notice the BSD-style Status flags set by mail user
980 agents and set the \eSeen flag from them when appropriate. All Unix
981 IMAP servers we know of do this, though it's not specified by the IMAP
982 RFCs. If you ever trip over a server that doesn't, the symptom will
983 be that messages you have already read on your host will look new to
984 the server. In this (unlikely) case, only messages you fetched with
985 \fIfetchmail --keep\fR will be both undeleted and marked old.
987 In ETRN and ODMR modes, \fIfetchmail\fR does not actually retrieve messages;
988 instead, it asks the server's SMTP listener to start a queue flush
989 to the client via SMTP. Therefore it sends only undelivered messages.
992 Many SMTP listeners allow administrators to set up `spam filters' that
993 block unsolicited email from specified domains. A MAIL FROM or DATA line that
994 triggers this feature will elicit an SMTP response which
995 (unfortunately) varies according to the listener.
999 return an error code of 571. This return value
1000 is blessed by RFC1893 as "Delivery not authorized, message refused".
1002 According to current drafts of the replacement for RFC821, the correct
1003 thing to return in this situation is 550 "Requested action not taken:
1004 mailbox unavailable" (the draft adds "[E.g., mailbox not found, no
1005 access, or command rejected for policy reasons].").
1009 MTA returns 501 "Syntax error in parameters or arguments", but will
1014 MTA runs 554 as an antispam response.
1018 code recognizes and discards the message on any of a list of responses
1019 that defaults to [571, 550, 501, 554] but can be set with the `antispam'
1020 option. This is one of the
1022 three circumstance under which fetchmail ever discards mail (the others
1023 are the 552 and 553 errors described below, and the suppression of
1024 multidropped messages with a message-ID already seen).
1028 is fetching from an IMAP server, the antispam response will be detected and
1029 the message rejected immediately after the headers have been fetched,
1030 without reading the message body. Thus, you won't pay for downloading
1031 spam message bodies.
1033 Mail that is spam-blocked triggers an RFC1892 bounce message informing
1034 the originator that we do not accept mail from it.
1036 .SH SMTP/ESMTP ERROR HANDLING
1037 Besides the spam-blocking described above,fetchmail takes special
1038 actions on the following SMTP/ESMTP error responses
1040 452 (insufficient system storage)
1041 Leave the message in the server mailbox for later retrieval.
1043 552 (message exceeds fixed maximum message size)
1044 Delete the message from the server. Send bounce-mail to the originator.
1046 553 (invalid sending domain)
1047 Delete the message from the server. Send bounce-mail to the originator.
1049 Other errors trigger bounce mail back to the originator.
1051 .SH THE RUN CONTROL FILE
1052 The preferred way to set up fetchmail is to write a
1053 \&\fI.fetchmailrc\fR file in your home directory (you may do this
1054 directly, with a text editor, or indirectly via \fIfetchmailconf\fR).
1055 When there is a conflict between the command-line arguments and the
1056 arguments in this file, the command-line arguments take precedence.
1058 To protect the security of your passwords, when --version is not on
1059 your \fI~/.fetchmailrc\fR may not have more than 0600 (u=rw,g=,o=) permissions;
1061 will complain and exit otherwise.
1063 You may read the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file as a list of commands to
1066 is called with no arguments.
1067 .SS Run Control Syntax
1069 Comments begin with a '#' and extend through the end of the line.
1070 Otherwise the file consists of a series of server entries or global
1071 option statements in a free-format, token-oriented syntax.
1073 There are four kinds of tokens: grammar keywords, numbers
1074 (i.e. decimal digit sequences), unquoted strings, and quoted strings.
1075 A quoted string is bounded by double quotes and may contain
1076 whitespace (and quoted digits are treated as a string). An unquoted
1077 string is any whitespace-delimited token that is neither numeric, string
1078 quoted nor contains the special characters `,', `;', `:', or `='.
1080 Any amount of whitespace separates tokens in server entries, but is
1081 otherwise ignored. You may use standard C-style escapes (\en, \et,
1082 \eb, octal, and hex) to embed non-printable characters or string
1083 delimiters in strings.
1085 Each server entry consists of one of the keywords `poll' or `skip',
1086 followed by a server name, followed by server options, followed by any
1087 number of user descriptions. Note: the most common cause of syntax
1088 errors is mixing up user and server options.
1090 For backward compatibility, the word `server' is a synonym for `poll'.
1092 You can use the noise keywords `and', `with',
1093 \&`has', `wants', and `options' anywhere in an entry to make
1094 it resemble English. They're ignored, but but can make entries much
1095 easier to read at a glance. The punctuation characters ':', ';' and
1096 \&',' are also ignored.
1099 The `poll' verb tells fetchmail to query this host when it is run with
1100 no arguments. The `skip' verb tells
1102 not to poll this host unless it is explicitly named on the command
1103 line. (The `skip' verb allows you to experiment with test entries
1104 safely, or easily disable entries for hosts that are temporarily down.)
1106 .SS Keyword/Option Summary
1107 Here are the legal options. Keyword suffixes enclosed in
1108 square brackets are optional. Those corresponding to command-line
1109 options are followed by `-' and the appropriate option letter.
1111 Here are the legal global options:
1115 Keyword Opt Function
1118 Set a background poll interval in seconds
1120 set postmaster \& T{
1121 Give the name of the last-resort mail recipient
1123 set no bouncemail \& T{
1124 Direct error mail to postmaster rather than sender
1126 set no spambounce \& T{
1130 Name of a file to dump error and status messages to
1133 Name of the file to store UID lists in
1136 Do error logging through syslog(3).
1139 Turn off error logging through syslog(3).
1141 set properties \& T{
1142 String value is ignored by fetchmail (may be used by extension scripts)
1146 Here are the legal server options:
1150 Keyword Opt Function
1153 Specify DNS name of mailserver, overriding poll name
1156 Specify protocol (case insensitive):
1157 POP2, POP3, IMAP, APOP, KPOP
1159 local[domains] \& T{
1160 Specify domain(s) to be regarded as local
1163 Specify TCP/IP service port
1165 auth[enticate] -A T{
1166 Set authentication type (default `password')
1169 Server inactivity timeout in seconds (default 300)
1172 Specify envelope-address header name
1175 Disable looking for envelope address
1178 Qmail virtual domain prefix to remove from user name
1181 Specify alternate DNS names of mailserver
1184 specify IP interface(s) that must be up for server poll to take place
1187 Specify IP address to monitor for activity
1190 Specify command through which to make server connections.
1193 Specify command through which to make listener connections.
1196 Enable DNS lookup for multidrop (default)
1199 Disable DNS lookup for multidrop
1202 Do comparison by IP address for multidrop
1205 Do comparison by name for multidrop (default)
1208 Force POP3 to use client-side UIDLs
1211 Turn off POP3 use of client-side UIDLs (default)
1214 Only check this site every N poll cycles; N is a numeric argument.
1217 Pass in IPsec security option request.
1220 Set Kerberos principal (only useful with imap and kerberos)
1224 Here are the legal user options:
1228 Keyword Opt Function
1231 Set remote user name
1232 (local user name if name followed by `here')
1235 Connect local and remote user names
1238 Connect local and remote user names
1241 Specify remote account password
1244 Connect to server over the specified base protocol using SSL encryption
1247 Specify file for client side public SSL certificate
1250 Specify file for client side private SSL key
1253 Force ssl protocol for connection
1256 Specify remote folder to query
1259 Specify smtp host(s) to forward to
1262 Specify the domain to be put in RCPT TO lines
1265 Specify the user and domain to be put in RCPT TO lines
1268 Specify what SMTP returns are interpreted as spam-policy blocks
1271 Specify MDA for local delivery
1274 Specify BSMTP batch file to append to
1277 Command to be executed before each connection
1280 Command to be executed after each connection
1283 Don't delete seen messages from server
1286 Flush all seen messages before querying
1289 Fetch all messages whether seen or not
1292 Rewrite destination addresses for reply (default)
1295 Strip carriage returns from ends of lines
1298 Force carriage returns at ends of lines
1301 Force BODY=8BITMIME to ESMTP listener
1304 Strip Status and X-Mozilla-Status lines out of incoming mail
1307 Strip Delivered-To lines out of incoming mail
1310 Convert quoted-printable to 8-bit in MIME messages
1313 Idle waiting for new messages after each poll (IMAP only)
1316 Delete seen messages from server (default)
1319 Don't flush all seen messages before querying (default)
1322 Retrieve only new messages (default)
1325 Don't rewrite headers
1328 Don't strip carriage returns (default)
1331 Don't force carriage returns at EOL (default)
1334 Don't force BODY=8BITMIME to ESMTP listener (default)
1337 Don't drop Status headers (default)
1339 no dropdelivered \& T{
1340 Don't drop Delivered-To headers (default)
1343 Don't convert quoted-printable to 8-bit in MIME messages (default)
1346 Don't idle waiting for new messages after each poll (IMAP only)
1349 Set message size limit
1352 Set message size warning interval
1355 Max # messages to forward in single connect
1358 Max # messages to fetch in single connect
1361 Perform an expunge on every #th message (IMAP and POP3 only)
1364 String value is ignored by fetchmail (may be used by extension scripts)
1368 Remember that all user options must \fIfollow\fR all server options.
1370 In the .fetchmailrc file, the `envelope' string argument may be
1371 preceded by a whitespace-separated number. This number, if specified,
1372 is the number of such headers to skip (that is, an argument of 1
1373 selects the second header of the given type). This is sometime useful
1374 for ignoring bogus Received headers created by an ISP's local delivery
1376 .SS Keywords Not Corresponding To Option Switches
1378 The `folder' and `smtphost' options (unlike their command-line
1379 equivalents) can take a space- or comma-separated list of names
1382 All options correspond to the obvious command-line arguments, except
1383 the following: `via', `interval', `aka', `is', `to', `dns'/`no dns',
1384 `checkalias'/`no checkalias', `password', `preconnect', `postconnect',
1385 `localdomains', `stripcr'/`no stripcr', `forcecr'/`no forcecr',
1386 `pass8bits'/`no pass8bits' `dropstatus/no dropstatus',
1387 `dropdelivered/no dropdelivered', `mimedecode/no mimedecode', `idle/no
1388 idle', and `no envelope'.
1390 The `via' option is for use with ssh, or if you want to have more
1391 than one configuration pointing at the same site. If it is present,
1392 the string argument will be taken as the actual DNS name of the
1393 mailserver host to query.
1394 This will override the argument of poll, which can then simply be a
1395 distinct label for the configuration (e.g. what you would give on the
1396 command line to explicitly query this host).
1397 If the `via' name is `localhost', the poll name will also still be
1398 used as a possible match in multidrop mode; otherwise the `via' name
1399 will be used instead and the poll name will be purely a label.
1401 The `interval' option (which takes a numeric argument) allows you to poll a
1402 server less frequently than the basic poll interval. If you say
1403 \&`interval N' the server this option is attached to will only be
1404 queried every N poll intervals.
1406 The `is' or `to' keywords associate the following local (client)
1407 name(s) (or server-name to client-name mappings separated by =) with
1408 the mailserver user name in the entry. If an is/to list has `*' as
1409 its last name, unrecognized names are simply passed through.
1411 A single local name can be used to support redirecting your mail when
1412 your username on the client machine is different from your name on the
1413 mailserver. When there is only a single local name, mail is forwarded
1414 to that local username regardless of the message's Received, To, Cc,
1415 and Bcc headers. In this case
1417 never does DNS lookups.
1419 When there is more than one local name (or name mapping) the
1420 \fIfetchmail\fR code does look at the Received, To, Cc, and Bcc
1421 headers of retrieved mail (this is `multidrop mode'). It looks for
1422 addresses with hostname parts that match your poll name or your `via',
1423 `aka' or `localdomains' options, and usually also for hostname parts
1424 which DNS tells it are aliases of the mailserver. See the discussion
1425 of `dns', `checkalias', `localdomains', and `aka' for details on how
1426 matching addresses are handled.
1428 If \fIfetchmail\fR cannot match any mailserver usernames or
1429 localdomain addresses, the mail will be bounced.
1430 Normally it will be bounced to the sender, but if `nobounce' is on
1431 it will go to the postmaster (which in turn defaults to being the
1434 The `dns' option (normally on) controls the way addresses from
1435 multidrop mailboxes are checked. On, it enables logic to check each
1436 host address that doesn't match an `aka' or `localdomains' declaration
1437 by looking it up with DNS. When a mailserver username is recognized
1438 attached to a matching hostname part, its local mapping is added to
1439 the list of local recipients.
1441 The `checkalias' option (normally off) extends the lookups performed
1442 by the `dns' keyword in multidrop mode, providing a way to cope with
1443 remote MTAs that identify themselves using their canonical name, while
1444 they're polled using an alias.
1445 When such a server is polled, checks to extract the envelope address
1448 reverts to delivery using the To/Cc/Bcc headers (See below
1449 `Header vs. Envelope addresses').
1450 Specifying this option instructs
1452 to retrieve all the IP addresses associated with both the poll name
1453 and the name used by the remote MTA and to do a comparison of the IP
1454 addresses. This comes in handy in situations where the remote server
1455 undergoes frequent canonical name changes, that would otherwise
1456 require modifications to the rcfile. `checkalias' has no effect if
1457 `no dns' is specified in the rcfile.
1459 The `aka' option is for use with multidrop mailboxes. It allows you
1460 to pre-declare a list of DNS aliases for a server. This is an
1461 optimization hack that allows you to trade space for speed. When
1463 while processing a multidrop mailbox, grovels through message headers
1464 looking for names of the mailserver, pre-declaring common ones can
1465 save it from having to do DNS lookups. Note: the names you give
1466 as arguments to `aka' are matched as suffixes -- if you specify
1467 (say) `aka netaxs.com', this will match not just a hostnamed
1468 netaxs.com, but any hostname that ends with `.netaxs.com'; such as
1469 (say) pop3.netaxs.com and mail.netaxs.com.
1471 The `localdomains' option allows you to declare a list of domains
1472 which fetchmail should consider local. When fetchmail is parsing
1473 address lines in multidrop modes, and a trailing segment of a host
1474 name matches a declared local domain, that address is passed through
1475 to the listener or MDA unaltered (local-name mappings are \fInot\fR
1478 If you are using `localdomains', you may also need to specify \&`no
1479 envelope', which disables \fIfetchmail\fR's normal attempt to deduce
1480 an envelope address from the Received line or X-Envelope-To header or
1481 whatever header has been previously set by `envelope'. If you set `no
1482 envelope' in the defaults entry it is possible to undo that in
1483 individual entries by using `envelope <string>'. As a special case,
1484 \&`envelope "Received"' restores the default parsing of
1487 The \fBpassword\fR option requires a string argument, which is the password
1488 to be used with the entry's server.
1490 The `preconnect' keyword allows you to specify a shell command to be
1491 executed just before each time
1493 establishes a mailserver connection. This may be useful if you are
1494 attempting to set up secure POP connections with the aid of
1496 If the command returns a nonzero status, the poll of that mailserver
1499 Similarly, the `postconnect' keyword similarly allows you to specify a
1500 shell command to be executed just after each time a mailserver
1501 connection is taken down.
1503 The `forcecr' option controls whether lines terminated by LF only are
1504 given CRLF termination before forwarding. Strictly speaking RFC821
1505 requires this, but few MTAs enforce the requirement it so this option
1506 is normally off (only one such MTA, qmail, is in significant use at
1509 The `stripcr' option controls whether carriage returns are stripped
1510 out of retrieved mail before it is forwarded. It is normally not
1511 necessary to set this, because it defaults to `on' (CR stripping
1512 enabled) when there is an MDA declared but `off' (CR stripping
1513 disabled) when forwarding is via SMTP. If `stripcr' and `forcecr' are
1514 both on, `stripcr' will override.
1516 The `pass8bits' option exists to cope with Microsoft mail programs that
1517 stupidly slap a "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit" on everything. With
1518 this option off (the default) and such a header present,
1520 declares BODY=7BIT to an ESMTP-capable listener; this causes problems for
1521 messages actually using 8-bit ISO or KOI-8 character sets, which will
1522 be garbled by having the high bits of all characters stripped. If
1523 \&`pass8bits' is on,
1525 is forced to declare BODY=8BITMIME to any ESMTP-capable listener. If
1526 the listener is 8-bit-clean (as all the major ones now are) the right
1527 thing will probably result.
1529 The `dropstatus' option controls whether nonempty Status and
1530 X-Mozilla-Status lines are retained in fetched mail (the default) or
1531 discarded. Retaining them allows your MUA to see what messages (if
1532 any) were marked seen on the server. On the other hand, it can
1533 confuse some new-mail notifiers, which assume that anything with a
1534 Status line in it has been seen. (Note: the empty Status lines
1535 inserted by some buggy POP servers are unconditionally discarded.)
1537 The `dropdelivered' option controls wether Delivered-To headers will
1538 be kept in fetched mail (the default) or discarded. These headers are
1539 added by Qmail and Postfix mailservers in order to avoid mail loops but
1540 may get in your way if you try to "mirror" a mailserver within the same
1541 domain. Use with caution.
1543 The `mimedecode' option controls whether MIME messages using the
1544 quoted-printable encoding are automatically converted into pure 8-bit
1545 data. If you are delivering mail to an ESMTP-capable, 8-bit-clean
1546 listener (that includes all of the major MTAs like sendmail), then
1547 this will automatically convert quoted-printable message headers and
1548 data into 8-bit data, making it easier to understand when reading
1549 mail. If your e-mail programs know how to deal with MIME messages,
1550 then this option is not needed. The mimedecode option is off by
1551 default, because doing RFC2047 conversion on headers throws away
1552 character-set information and can lead to bad results if the encoding
1553 of the headers differs from the body encoding.
1555 The `idle' option is usable only with IMAP servers supporting the
1556 RFC2177 IDLE command extension. If it is enabled, and fetchmail
1557 detects that IDLE is supported, an IDLE will be issued at the end
1558 of each poll. This will tell the IMAP server to hold the connection
1559 open and notify the client when new mail is available. If you need to
1560 poll a link frequently, IDLE can save bandwidth by eliminating TCP/IP
1561 connects and LOGIN/LOGOUT sequences. On the other hand, an IDLE
1562 connection will eat almost akll of your fetchmail's time, because it
1563 will never drop the connection and allow other pools to occur unless
1564 the server times out the IDLE.
1566 The `properties' option is an extension mechanism. It takes a string
1567 argument, which is ignored by fetchmail itself. The string argument may be
1568 used to store configuration information for scripts which require it.
1569 In particular, the output of `--configdump' option will make properties
1570 associated with a user entry readily available to a Python script.
1572 .SS Miscellaneous Run Control Options
1573 The words `here' and `there' have useful English-like
1574 significance. Normally `user eric is esr' would mean that
1575 mail for the remote user `eric' is to be delivered to `esr',
1576 but you can make this clearer by saying `user eric there is esr here',
1577 or reverse it by saying `user esr here is eric there'
1579 Legal protocol identifiers for use with the `protocol' keyword are:
1590 Legal authentication types are `password', `kerberos', and `gssapi'.
1591 The `password' type specifies authentication by normal transmission of a
1592 password (the password may be plaintext or subject to
1593 protocol-specific encryption as in APOP); `kerberos' tells
1594 \fIfetchmail\fR to try to get a Kerberos ticket at the start of each
1595 query instead, and send an arbitrary string as the password; and
1596 `gssapi' tells fetchmail to use GSSAPI authentication.
1598 Specifying `kpop' sets POP3 protocol over port 1109 with Kerberos V4
1599 authentication. These defaults may be overridden by later options.
1601 There are currently four global option statements; `set logfile'
1602 followed by a string sets the same global specified by --logfile. A
1603 command-line --logfile option will override this. Also, `set daemon'
1604 sets the poll interval as --daemon does. This can be overridden by a
1605 command-line --daemon option; in particular --daemon 0 can be used to
1606 force foreground operation. The `set postmaster' statement sets the
1607 address to which multidrop mail defaults if there are no local
1608 matches. Finally, `set syslog' sends log messages to syslogd(8).
1610 .SH INTERACTION WITH RFC 822
1611 When trying to determine the originating address of a message,
1612 fetchmail looks through headers in the following order:
1622 The originating address is used for logging, and to set the MAIL FROM
1623 address when forwarding to SMTP. This order is intended to cope
1624 gracefully with receiving mailing list messages in multidrop mode. The
1625 intent is that if a local address doesn't exist, the bounce message
1626 won't be returned blindly to the author or to the list itself, but
1627 rather to the list manager (which is less annoying).
1629 In multidrop mode, destination headers are processed as follows:
1630 First, fetchmail looks for the Received: header (or whichever one is
1631 specified by the `envelope' option) to determine the local
1632 recipient address. If the mail is addressed to more than one recipient,
1633 the Received line won't contain any information regarding recipient addresses.
1635 Then fetchmail looks for the Resent-To:, Resent-Cc:, and Resent-Bcc:
1636 lines. If they exists, they should contain the final recipients and
1637 have precedence over their To:/Cc:/Bcc: counterparts. If the Resent-*
1638 lines doesn't exist, the To:, Cc:, Bcc: and Apparently-To: lines are
1639 looked for. (The presence of a Resent-To: is taken to imply that the
1640 person referred by the To: address has already received the original
1643 .SH CONFIGURATION EXAMPLES
1644 Note that although there are password declarations in a good many
1645 of the examples below, this is mainly for illustrative purposes.
1646 We recommend stashing account/password pairs in your $HOME/.netrc
1647 file, where they can be used not just by fetchmail but by ftp(1) and
1653 poll SERVERNAME protocol PROTOCOL username NAME password PASSWORD
1659 poll pop.provider.net protocol pop3 username "jsmith" password "secret1"
1662 Or, using some abbreviations:
1665 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" password "secret1"
1668 Multiple servers may be listed:
1671 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" pass "secret1"
1672 poll other.provider.net proto pop2 user "John.Smith" pass "My^Hat"
1675 Here's a version of those two with more whitespace and some noise words:
1678 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3
1679 user "jsmith", with password secret1, is "jsmith" here;
1680 poll other.provider.net proto pop2:
1681 user "John.Smith", with password "My^Hat", is "John.Smith" here;
1684 This version is much easier to read and doesn't cost significantly
1685 more (parsing is done only once, at startup time).
1688 If you need to include whitespace in a parameter string, enclose the
1689 string in double quotes. Thus:
1692 poll mail.provider.net with proto pop3:
1693 user "jsmith" there has password "u can't krak this"
1694 is jws here and wants mda "/bin/mail"
1697 You may have an initial server description headed by the keyword
1698 `defaults' instead of `poll' followed by a name. Such a record
1699 is interpreted as defaults for all queries to use. It may be overwritten
1700 by individual server descriptions. So, you could write:
1705 poll pop.provider.net
1707 poll mail.provider.net
1708 user "jjsmith" there has password "secret2"
1711 It's possible to specify more than one user per server (this is only
1712 likely to be useful when running fetchmail in daemon mode as root).
1713 The `user' keyword leads off a user description, and every user specification
1714 in a multi-user entry must include it. Here's an example:
1717 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 port 3111
1718 user "jsmith" with pass "secret1" is "smith" here
1719 user jones with pass "secret2" is "jjones" here
1722 This associates the local username `smith' with the pop.provider.net
1723 username `jsmith' and the local username `jjones' with the
1724 pop.provider.net username `jones'.
1726 Here's what a simple retrieval configuration for a multi-drop mailbox
1730 poll pop.provider.net:
1731 user maildrop with pass secret1 to golux 'hurkle'='happy' snark here
1734 This says that the mailbox of account `maildrop' on the server is a
1735 multi-drop box, and that messages in it should be parsed for the
1736 server user names `golux', `hurkle', and `snark'. It further
1737 specifies that `golux' and `snark' have the same name on the
1738 client as on the server, but mail for server user `hurkle' should be
1739 delivered to client user `happy'.
1741 Here's an example of another kind of multidrop connection:
1744 poll pop.provider.net localdomains loonytoons.org toons.org:
1745 user maildrop with pass secret1 to 'esr' * here
1748 This also says that the mailbox of account `maildrop' on the server is
1749 a multi-drop box. It tells fetchmail that any address in the
1750 loonytoons.org or toons.org domains (including subdomain addresses like
1751 `joe@daffy.loonytoons.org') should be passed through to the local SMTP
1752 listener without modification. Be careful of mail loops if you do this!
1754 Here's an example configuration using ssh. The queries go through an
1755 ssh connecting local port 1234 to port 110 on mailhost.net; the
1756 preconnect command sets up the ssh.
1759 poll mailhost.net via localhost port 1234 with proto pop3:
1760 preconnect "ssh -f -L 1234:mailhost.net:110
1761 mailhost.net sleep 20 </dev/null >/dev/null";
1762 user esr is esr here
1766 Here's an example configuration using ssh and the plugin option (this
1767 method is better, as it doesn't require the IMAP port to be open on
1768 the server). The queries are made directly on the stdin and stdout of
1769 imapd via ssh. Note that in this setup, IMAP authentication can be
1773 poll mailhost.net with proto imap:
1774 plugin "ssh %h /usr/sbin/imapd" auth ssh;
1775 user esr is esr here
1778 .SH THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP MAILBOXES
1779 Use the multiple-local-recipients feature with caution -- it can bite.
1780 All multidrop features are ineffective in ETRN and ODMR modes.
1782 Also, note that in multidrop mode duplicate mails are suppressed. A
1783 piece of mail is considered duplicate if it has the same message-ID as
1784 the message immediately preceding and more than one addressee. Such
1785 runs of messages may be generated when copies of a message addressed
1786 to multiple users are delivered to a multidrop box.
1788 .SS Header vs. Envelope addresses
1789 The fundamental problem is that by having your mailserver toss several
1790 peoples' mail in a single maildrop box, you may have thrown away
1791 potentially vital information about who each piece of mail was
1792 actually addressed to (the `envelope address', as opposed to the
1793 header addresses in the RFC822 To/Cc/Bcc headers). This `envelope
1794 address' is the address you need in order to reroute mail properly.
1798 can deduce the envelope address. If the mailserver MTA is
1800 and the item of mail had just one recipient, the MTA will have written
1801 a `by/for' clause that gives the envelope addressee into its Received
1802 header. But this doesn't work reliably for other MTAs, nor if there is
1803 more than one recipient. By default, \fIfetchmail\fR looks for
1804 envelope addresses in these lines; you can restore this default with
1805 -E "Received" or \&`envelope Received'.
1807 Alternatively, some SMTP listeners and/or mail servers insert a header
1808 in each message containing a copy of the envelope addresses. This
1809 header (when it exists) is often `X-Envelope-To'. Fetchmail's
1810 assumption about this can be changed with the -E or `envelope' option.
1811 Note that writing an envelope header of this kind exposes the names of
1812 recipients (including blind-copy recipients) to all receivers of the
1813 messages; it is therefore regarded by some administrators as a
1814 security/privacy problem.
1816 A slight variation of the `X-Envelope-To' header is the `Delivered-To' put
1817 by qmail to avoid mail loops. It will probably prefix the user name with a
1818 string that normally matches the user's domain. To remove this prefix you
1819 can use the -Q or `qvirtual' option.
1821 Sometimes, unfortunately, neither of these methods works. When they
1822 all fail, fetchmail must fall back on the contents of To/Cc/Bcc
1823 headers to try to determine recipient addressees -- and these are not
1824 reliable. In particular, mailing-list software often ships mail with
1825 only the list broadcast address in the To header.
1829 cannot deduce a recipient address that is local, and the intended
1830 recipient address was anyone other than fetchmail's invoking user,
1831 mail will get lost. This is what makes the multidrop feature risky.
1833 A related problem is that when you blind-copy a mail message, the Bcc
1834 information is carried \fIonly\fR as envelope address (it's not put
1835 in the headers fetchmail can see unless there is an X-Envelope
1836 header). Thus, blind-copying to someone who gets mail over a
1837 fetchmail link will fail unless the the mailserver host routinely
1838 writes X-Envelope or an equivalent header into messages in your maildrop.
1840 .SS Good Ways To Use Multidrop Mailboxes
1841 Multiple local names can be used to administer a mailing list from the
1842 client side of a \fIfetchmail\fR collection. Suppose your name is
1843 \&`esr', and you want to both pick up your own mail and maintain a mailing
1844 list called (say) "fetchmail-friends", and you want to keep the alias
1845 list on your client machine.
1847 On your server, you can alias \&`fetchmail-friends' to `esr'; then, in
1848 your \fI.fetchmailrc\fR, declare \&`to esr fetchmail-friends here'.
1849 Then, when mail including `fetchmail-friends' as a local address
1850 gets fetched, the list name will be appended to the list of
1851 recipients your SMTP listener sees. Therefore it will undergo alias
1852 expansion locally. Be sure to include `esr' in the local alias
1853 expansion of fetchmail-friends, or you'll never see mail sent only to
1854 the list. Also be sure that your listener has the "me-too" option set
1855 (sendmail's -oXm command-line option or OXm declaration) so your name
1856 isn't removed from alias expansions in messages you send.
1858 This trick is not without its problems, however. You'll begin to see
1859 this when a message comes in that is addressed only to a mailing list
1860 you do \fInot\fR have declared as a local name. Each such message
1861 will feature an `X-Fetchmail-Warning' header which is generated
1862 because fetchmail cannot find a valid local name in the recipient
1863 addresses. Such messages default (as was described above) to being
1864 sent to the local user running
1866 but the program has no way to know that that's actually the right thing.
1868 .SS Bad Ways To Abuse Multidrop Mailboxes
1869 Multidrop mailboxes and
1871 serving multiple users in daemon mode do not mix. The problem, again, is
1872 mail from mailing lists, which typically does not have an individual
1873 recipient address on it. Unless
1875 can deduce an envelope address, such mail will only go to the account
1876 running fetchmail (probably root). Also, blind-copied users are very
1877 likely never to see their mail at all.
1879 If you're tempted to use
1881 to retrieve mail for multiple users from a single mail drop via POP or
1882 IMAP, think again (and reread the section on header and envelope
1883 addresses above). It would be smarter to just let the mail sit in the
1884 mailserver's queue and use fetchmail's ETRN or ODMR modes to trigger
1885 SMTP sends periodically (of course, this means you have to poll more
1886 frequently than the mailserver's expiry period). If you can't arrange
1887 this, try setting up a UUCP feed.
1889 If you absolutely \fImust\fR use multidrop for this purpose, make sure
1890 your mailserver writes an envelope-address header that fetchmail can
1891 see. Otherwise you \fIwill\fR lose mail and it \fIwill\fR come back
1894 .SS Speeding Up Multidrop Checking
1895 Normally, when multiple users are declared
1897 extracts recipient addresses as described above and checks each host
1898 part with DNS to see if it's an alias of the mailserver. If so, the
1899 name mappings described in the to ... here declaration are done and
1900 the mail locally delivered.
1902 This is the safest but also slowest method. To speed it up,
1903 pre-declare mailserver aliases with `aka'; these are checked before
1904 DNS lookups are done. If you're certain your aka list contains
1906 DNS aliases of the mailserver (and all MX names pointing at it)
1907 you can declare `no dns' to suppress DNS lookups entirely and
1908 \fIonly\fR match against the aka list.
1911 To facilitate the use of
1913 in shell scripts, an exit code is returned to give an indication
1914 of what occurred during a given connection.
1916 The exit codes returned by
1920 One or more messages were successfully retrieved (or, if the -c option
1921 was selected, were found waiting but not retrieved).
1923 There was no mail awaiting retrieval. (There may have been old mail still
1924 on the server but not selected for retrieval.)
1926 An error was encountered when attempting to open a socket to retrieve
1927 mail. If you don't know what a socket is, don't worry about it --
1928 just treat this as an 'unrecoverable error'. This error can also be
1929 because a protocol fetchmail wants to use is not listed in /etc/services.
1931 The user authentication step failed. This usually means that a bad
1932 user-id, password, or APOP id was specified. Or it may mean that you
1933 tried to run fetchmail under circumstances where it did not have
1934 standard input attached to a terminal and could not prompt for a
1937 Some sort of fatal protocol error was detected.
1939 There was a syntax error in the arguments to
1942 The run control file had bad permissions.
1944 There was an error condition reported by the server. Can also
1947 timed out while waiting for the server.
1949 Client-side exclusion error. This means
1951 either found another copy of itself already running, or failed in such
1952 a way that it isn't sure whether another copy is running.
1954 The user authentication step failed because the server responded "lock
1955 busy". Try again after a brief pause! This error is not implemented
1956 for all protocols, nor for all servers. If not implemented for your
1957 server, "3" will be returned instead, see above. May be returned when
1958 talking to qpopper or other servers that can respond with "lock busy"
1959 or some similar text containing the word "lock".
1963 run failed while trying to do an SMTP port open or transaction.
1965 Fatal DNS error. Fetchmail encountered an error while performing
1966 a DNS lookup at startup and could not proceed.
1968 BSMTP batch file could not be opened.
1970 Poll terminated by a fetch limit (see the --fetchlimit option).
1972 Internal error. You should see a message on standard error with
1977 queries more than one host, return status is 0 if \fIany\fR query
1978 successfully retrieved mail. Otherwise the returned error status is
1979 that of the last host queried.
1984 default run control file
1987 default location of file associating hosts with last message IDs seen
1988 (used only with newer RFC1725-compliant POP3 servers supporting the
1992 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (non-root mode).
1995 your FTP run control file, which (if present) will be searched for
1996 passwords as a last resort before prompting for one interactively.
1998 /var/run/fetchmail.pid
1999 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, Linux systems).
2002 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, systems without /var/run).
2005 If the FETCHMAILUSER variable is set, it is used as the name of the
2006 calling user (default local name) for purposes such as mailing error
2007 notifications. Otherwise, if either the LOGNAME or USER variable is
2008 correctly set (e.g. the corresponding UID matches the session user ID)
2009 then that name is used as the default local name. Otherwise
2010 \fBgetpwuid\fR(3) must be able to retrieve a password entry for the
2011 session ID (this elaborate logic is designed to handle the case of
2012 multiple names per userid gracefully).
2014 If the environment variable FETCHMAILHOME is set to a valid and
2015 existing directory name, the .fetchmailrc and .fetchids and
2016 \&.fetchmail.pid files are put there instead of in the invoking user's
2017 home directory (and lose the leading dots on theirt names). The
2018 \&.netrc file is looked for in the the invoking user's home directory
2019 regardless of FETCHMAILHOME's setting.
2024 daemon is running as root, SIGHUP wakes it up from its sleep phase and
2025 forces a poll of all non-skipped servers (this is in accordance with
2026 the usual conventions for system daemons).
2030 is running in daemon mode as non-root, use SIGUSR1 to wake it (this is
2031 so SIGHUP due to logout can retain the default action of killing it).
2035 in foreground while a background fetchmail is running will do
2036 whichever of these is appropriate to wake it up.
2038 .SH BUGS AND KNOWN PROBLEMS
2039 The RFC822 address parser used in multidrop mode chokes on some
2040 @-addresses that are technically legal but bizarre. Strange uses of
2041 quoting and embedded comments are likely to confuse it.
2043 In a message with multiple envelope headers, only the last one
2044 processed will be visible to fetchmail. To get around this, use a
2045 mailserver-side filter that consolidates the contents of all envelope
2046 headers into a single one (procmail, mailagent, or maildrop can be
2047 programmed to do this fairly easily).
2049 Use of some of these protocols requires that the program send
2050 unencrypted passwords over the TCP/IP connection to the mailserver.
2051 This creates a risk that name/password pairs might be snaffled with a
2052 packet sniffer or more sophisticated monitoring software. Under Linux
2053 and FreeBSD, the --interface option can be used to restrict polling to
2054 availability of a specific interface device with a specific local or
2055 remote IP address, but snooping is still possible if (a) either host
2056 has a network device that can be opened in promiscuous mode, or (b)
2057 the intervening network link can be tapped.
2059 Use of the %F or %T escapes in an mda option could open a security
2060 hole, because they pass text manipulable by an attacker to a shell
2061 command. Potential shell characters are replaced by `_' before
2062 execution. The hole is further reduced by the fact that fetchmail
2063 temporarily discards any suid privileges it may have while running the
2064 MDA. For maximum safety, however, don't use an mda command containing
2065 %F or %T when fetchmail is run from the root account itself.
2067 Fetchmail's method of sending bouncemail and spambounce requires that
2068 port 25 of localhost be available for sending mail via SMTP.
2072 while a background instance is running and break the syntax, the
2073 background instance will die silently. Unfortunately, it can't
2074 die noisily because we don't yet know whether syslog should be enabled.
2076 The RFC 2177 IDLE support is flaky. It sort of works, but may generate
2077 spurious socket error messages or silently hang in the presence of
2078 various network or server errors.
2080 The combination of using a remote name with embedded spaces and POP3
2081 UIDs will not work; the UIDL-handling code will core-dump while trying
2082 to read in what it sees as malformed .fetchids lines, typically
2083 on the second poll after startup.
2085 The UIDL code is generally flaky and tends to lose its state on errors
2086 and line drops (so that old messages are re-seen). If this happens to
2087 you, switch to IMAP4.
2089 ODMR is very new. The ODMR code is untested.
2091 The `principal' option only handles Kerberos IV, not V.
2093 Send comments, bug reports, gripes, and the like to the
2094 fetchmail-friends list <fetchmail-friends@ccil.org>. An HTML FAQ is
2095 available at the fetchmail home page; surf to
2096 http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail or do a WWW search for pages with
2097 `fetchmail' in their titles.
2100 Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>. Too many other people to
2101 name here have contributed code and patches.
2102 This program is descended from and replaces
2104 by Carl Harris <ceharris@mal.com>; the internals have become quite different,
2105 but some of its interface design is directly traceable to that
2109 mutt(1), elm(1), mail(1), sendmail(8), popd(8), imapd(8), netrc(5)
2110 .SH APPLICABLE STANDARDS
2113 RFC 821, RFC 1869, RFC 1652, RFC 1870, RFC1983, RFC 1985
2116 RFC 822, RFC 1892, RFC 1894
2122 RFC 1081, RFC 1225, RFC 1460, RFC 1725, RFC1734, RFC 1939, RFC 1957,
2126 RFC 1460, RFC 1725, RFC 1939
2135 RFC 1730, RFC 1731, RFC 1732, RFC 2060, RFC 2061, RFC 2195, RFC 2177,
projects / ~andy / fetchmail / blob