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, ETRN, or ODMR-capable server
12 \fBfetchmail\fR [\fIoption...\fR] [\fImailserver...\fR]
18 is a mail-retrieval and forwarding utility; it fetches mail from
19 remote mailservers and forwards it to your local (client) machine's
20 delivery system. You can then handle the retrieved mail using normal
21 mail user agents such as \fImutt\fR(1), \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
47 therefore work automatically.
49 If no port 25 listener is available, but your fetchmail configuration
50 was told about a reliable local MDA, it will use that MDA for local
51 delivery instead. At build time, fetchmail normally looks for
60 is available, it will assist you in setting up and editing a
61 fetchmailrc configuration. It runs under X and requires that the
62 language Python and the Tk toolkit be present on your system. If
63 you are first setting up fetchmail for single-user mode, it is
64 recommended that you use Novice mode. Expert mode provides
65 complete control of fetchmail configuration, including the
66 multidrop features. In either case, the `Autoprobe' button
67 will tell you the most capable protocol a given mailserver
68 supports, and warn you of potential problems with that server.
73 is controlled by command-line options and a run control file,
74 .IR ~/.fetchmailrc\fR ,
75 the syntax of which we describe in a later section (this file is what
76 the \fIfetchmailconf\fR program edits). Command-line options override
80 Each server name that you specify following the options on the
81 command line will be queried. If you don't specify any servers
82 on the command line, each `poll' entry in your
86 To facilitate the use of
88 in scripts and pipelines, it returns an appropriate exit code upon
89 termination -- see EXIT CODES below.
91 The following options modify the behavior of \fIfetchmail\fR. It is
92 seldom necessary to specify any of these once you have a
93 working \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file set up.
95 Almost all options have a corresponding keyword which can be used to
100 Some special options are not covered here, but are documented instead
101 in sections on AUTHENTICATION and DAEMON MODE which follow.
105 Displays the version information for your copy of
107 No mail fetch is performed.
108 Instead, for each server specified, all the option information
109 that would be computed if
111 were connecting to that server is displayed. Any non-printables in
112 passwords or other string names are shown as backslashed C-like
113 escape sequences. This option is useful for verifying that your
114 options are set the way you want them.
117 Return a status code to indicate whether there is mail waiting,
118 without actually fetching or deleting mail (see EXIT CODES below).
119 This option turns off daemon mode (in which it would be useless). It
120 doesn't play well with queries to multiple sites, and doesn't work
121 with ETRN or ODMR. It will return a false positive if you leave read but
122 undeleted mail in your server mailbox and your fetch protocol can't
123 tell kept messages from new ones. This means it will work with IMAP,
124 not work with POP2, and may occasionally flake out under POP3.
127 Silent mode. Suppresses all progress/status messages that are
128 normally echoed to standard error during a fetch (but does not
129 suppress actual error messages). The --verbose option overrides this.
132 Verbose mode. All control messages passed between
134 and the mailserver are echoed to stdout. Overrides --silent.
135 Doubling this option (-v -v) causes extra diagnostic information
141 Retrieve both old (seen) and new messages from the mailserver. The
142 default is to fetch only messages the server has not marked seen.
143 Under POP3, this option also forces the use of RETR rather than TOP.
144 Note that POP2 retrieval behaves as though --all is always on (see
145 RETRIEVAL FAILURE MODES below) and this option does not work with ETRN
150 Keep retrieved messages on the remote mailserver. Normally, messages
151 are deleted from the folder on the mailserver after they have been retrieved.
154 option causes retrieved messages to remain in your folder on the
155 mailserver. This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
159 Delete retrieved messages from the remote mailserver. This
160 option forces retrieved mail to be deleted. It may be useful if
161 you have specified a default of \fBkeep\fR in your
162 \&\fI.fetchmailrc\fR. This option is forced on with ETRN and ODMR.
165 POP3/IMAP only. Delete old (previously retrieved) messages from the mailserver
166 before retrieving new messages. This option does not work with ETRN or
167 ODMR. In combination with the --limit option, --flush can be used to
168 delete oversized messages waiting on the server.
169 Warning: if your local MTA hangs and fetchmail is aborted, the next
170 time you run fetchmail, it will delete mail that was never delivered to you.
171 What you probably want is the default setting: if you don't specify `-k', then
172 fetchmail will automatically delete messages after successful delivery.
173 .SS Protocol and Query Options
175 .B \-p <proto> | \-\-protocol <proto>
176 (Keyword: proto[col])
177 Specify the protocol to use when communicating with the remote
178 mailserver. If no protocol is specified, the default is AUTO.
180 may be one of the following:
183 Tries IMAP, POP3, and POP2 (skipping any of these for which support
184 has not been compiled in).
186 Post Office Protocol 2
188 Post Office Protocol 3
190 Use POP3 with old-fashioned MD5-challenge authentication.
192 Use POP3 with RPOP authentication.
194 Use POP3 with Kerberos V4 authentication on port 1109.
196 Use POP3 with Demon Internet's SDPS extensions.
198 IMAP2bis, IMAP4, or IMAP4rev1 (\fIfetchmail\fR autodetects their capabilities).
200 Use the ESMTP ETRN option.
202 Use the the On-Demand Mail Relay ESMTP profile.
205 All these alternatives work in basically the same way (communicating
206 with standard server daemons to fetch mail already delivered to a
207 mailbox on the server) except ETRN and ODMR. The ETRN mode
208 allows you to ask a compliant ESMTP server (such as BSD sendmail at
209 release 8.8.0 or higher) to immediately open a sender-SMTP connection
210 to your client machine and begin forwarding any items addressed to
211 your client machine in the server's queue of undelivered mail. The
212 ODMR mode requires an ODMR-capable server and works similarly to
213 ETRN, except that it does not require the client machine to have
218 Force UIDL use (effective only with POP3). Force client-side tracking
219 of `newness' of messages (UIDL stands for ``unique ID listing'' and is
220 described in RFC1725). Use with `keep' to use a mailbox as a baby
221 news drop for a group of users. The fact that seen messages are skipped
222 is logged, unless error logging is done through syslog while running in
226 .B \-P <portnumber> | \-\-port <portnumber>
228 The port option permits you to specify a TCP/IP port to connect on.
229 This option will seldom be necessary as all the supported protocols have
230 well-established default port numbers.
232 .B \-\-principal <principal>
234 The principal option permits you to specify a service principal for
235 mutual authentication. This is applicable to POP3 or IMAP with Kerberos
238 .B \-t <seconds> | -\-timeout <seconds>
240 The timeout option allows you to set a server-nonresponse
241 timeout in seconds. If a mailserver does not send a greeting message
242 or respond to commands for the given number of seconds,
243 \fIfetchmail\fR will hang up on it. Without such a timeout
244 \fIfetchmail\fR might hang up indefinitely trying to fetch mail from a
245 down host. This would be particularly annoying for a \fIfetchmail\fR
246 running in background. There is a default timeout which fetchmail -V
247 will report. If a given connection receives too many timeouts in
248 succession, fetchmail will consider it wedged and stop retrying,
249 the calling user will be notified by email if this happens.
251 .B \-\-plugin <command>
252 (Keyword: plugin) The plugin option allows you to use an external
253 program to establish the TCP connection. This is useful if you want
254 to use socks, SSL, ssh, or need some special firewalling setup. The
255 program will be looked up in $PATH and can optionally be passed the
256 hostname and port as arguments using "%h" and "%p" respectively (note
257 that the interpolation logic is rather primitive, and these token must
258 be bounded by whitespace or beginning of string or end of string).
259 Fetchmail will write to the plugin's stdin and read from the plugin's
262 .B \-\-plugout <command>
264 Identical to the plugin option above, but this one is used for the SMTP
265 connections (which will probably not need it, so it has been separated
268 .B \-r <name> | \-\-folder <name>
270 Causes a specified non-default mail folder on the mailserver (or
271 comma-separated list of folders) to be retrieved. The syntax of the
272 folder name is server-dependent. This option is not available under
276 (Keyword: tracepolls)
277 Tell fetchail to poll trace information in the form `polling %s
278 account %s' to the Received line it generates, where the %s parts are
279 replaced by the user's remote name and the poll label (the Received
280 header also normally includes the server's truename). This can be
281 used to facilate mail filtering based on the account it is being
286 Causes the connection to the mail server to be encrypted via SSL. Connect
287 to the server using the specified base protocol over a connection secured
288 by SSL. SSL support must be present at the server. If no port is
289 specified, the connection is attempted to the well known port of the SSL
290 version of the base protocol. This is generally a different port than the
291 port used by the base protocol. For IMAP, this is port 143 for the clear
292 protocol and port 993 for the SSL secured protocol.
294 .B \-\-sslcert <name>
296 Specifies the file name of the client side public SSL certificate. Some
297 SSL encrypted servers may require client side keys and certificates for
298 authentication. In most cases, this is optional. This specifies
299 the location of the public key certificate to be presented to the server
300 at the time the SSL session is established. It is not required (but may
301 be provided) if the server does not require it. Some servers may
302 require it, some servers may request it but not require it, and some
303 servers may not request it at all. It may be the same file
304 as the private key (combined key and certificate file) but this is not
309 Specifies the file name of the client side private SSL key. Some SSL
310 encrypted servers may require client side keys and certificates for
311 authentication. In most cases, this is optional. This specifies
312 the location of the private key used to sign transactions with the server
313 at the time the SSL session is established. It is not required (but may
314 be provided) if the server does not require it. Some servers may
315 require it, some servers may request it but not require it, and some
316 servers may not request it at all. It may be the same file
317 as the public key (combined key and certificate file) but this is not
318 recommended. If a password is required to unlock the key, it will be
319 prompted for at the time just prior to establishing the session to the
320 server. This can cause some complications in daemon mode.
322 .B \-\-sslproto <name>
324 Forces an ssl protocol. Possible values are \&`\fBssl2\fR', `\fBssl3\fR' and
325 `\fBtls1\fR'. Try this if the default handshake does not work for your server.
329 Causes fetchmail to strictly check the server certificate against a set of
330 local trusted certificates (see the \fBsslcertpath\fR option). If the server
331 certificate is not signed by one of the trusted ones (directly or indirectly),
332 the SSL connection will fail. This checking should prevent man-in-the-middle
333 attacks against the SSL connection. Note that CRLs are seemingly not currently
334 supported by OpenSSL in certificate verification! Your system clock should
335 be reasonably accurate when using this option!
337 .B \-\-sslcertpath <directory>
338 (Keyword: sslcertpath)
339 Sets the directory fetchmail uses to look up local certificates. The default
340 is your OpenSSL default one. The directory must be hashed as OpenSSL expects
341 it - every time you add or modify a certificate in the directory, you need
342 to use the \fBc_rehash\fR tool (which comes with OpenSSL in the tools/
345 .B \-\-sslfingerprint
346 (Keyword: sslfingerprint)
347 Specify the fingerprint of the server key (an MD5 hash of the key) in
348 hexadecimal notation with colons separating groups of two digits. The letter
349 hex digits must be in upper case. This is the default format OpenSSL uses,
350 and the one fetchmail uses to report the fingerprint when an SSL connection
351 is established. When this is specified, fetchmail will compare the server key
352 fingerprint with the given one, and the connection will fail if they do not
353 match. This can be used to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.
354 .SS Delivery Control Options
356 .B \-S <hosts> | \-\-smtphost <hosts>
357 (Keyword: smtp[host])
358 Specify a hunt list of hosts to forward mail to (one or more
359 hostnames, comma-separated). Hosts are tried in list order; the first
360 one that is up becomes the forwarding target for the current run.
361 Normally, `localhost' is added to the end of the list as an invisible
362 default. However, when using Kerberos authentication, the FQDN of the
363 machine running fetchmail is added to the end of the list as an
364 invisible default. Each hostname may have a port number following the
365 host name. The port number is separated from the host name by a
366 slash; the default port is 25 (or ``smtp'' under IPv6). If you
367 specify an absolute pathname (beginning with a /), it will be
368 interpreted as the name of a UNIX socket accepting LMTP connections
369 (such as is supported by the Cyrus IMAP daemon) Example:
372 --smtphost server1,server2/2525,server3,/var/imap/socket/lmtp
375 This option can be used with ODMR, and will make fetchmail a relay
376 between the ODMR server and SMTP or LMTP receiver.
378 .B \-\-fetchdomains <hosts>
379 (Keyword: fetchdomains)
380 In ETRN or ODMR mode, this option specifies the list of domains the
381 server should ship mail for once the connection is turned around. The
382 default is the FQDN of the machine running
385 .B \-D <domain> | \-\-smtpaddress <domain>
386 (Keyword: smtpaddress) Specify the domain to be appended to addresses
387 in RCPT TO lines shipped to SMTP. The name of the SMTP server (as
388 specified by --smtphost, or defaulted to "localhost") is used when
389 this is not specified.
391 .B \-\-smtpname <user@domain>
393 Specify the domain and user to be put in RCPT TO lines shipped to SMTP.
394 The default user is the current local user.
396 .B \-Z <nnn> | \-\-antispam <nnn[, nnn]...>
398 Specifies the list of numeric SMTP errors that are to be interpreted
399 as a spam-block response from the listener. A value of -1 disables
400 this option. For the command-line option, the list values should
403 .B \-m <command> | \-\-mda <command>
404 (Keyword: mda) You can force mail to be passed to an MDA directly
405 (rather than forwarded to port 25) with the --mda or -m option. To
406 avoid losing mail, use this option only with MDAs like procmail or
407 sendmail that return a nonzero status on disk-full and other
408 resource-exhaustion errors; the nonzero status tells fetchmail that
409 delivery failed and prevents the message from being deleted off the
410 server. If \fIfetchmail\fR is running as root, it sets its userid to
411 that of the target user while delivering mail through an MDA. Some
412 possible MDAs are "/usr/sbin/sendmail -i -f %F %T", "/usr/bin/deliver"
413 and "/usr/bin/procmail -d %T" (but the latter is usually redundant as
414 it's what SMTP listeners normally forward to). Local delivery
415 addresses will be inserted into the MDA command wherever you place a
416 %T; the mail message's From address will be inserted where you place
417 an %F. In both cases the addresses are enclosed in single quotes ('),
418 after removing any single quotes they may contain, before the MDA
419 command is passed to the shell. Do \fInot\fR use an MDA invocation
420 like "sendmail -i -t" that dispatches on the contents of To/Cc/Bcc, it
421 will create mail loops and bring the just wrath of many postmasters
426 Cause delivery via LMTP (Local Mail Transfer Protocol). A service
427 port \fImust\fR be explicitly specified (with a slash suffix) on each
428 host in the smtphost hunt list if this option is selected; the
429 default port 25 will (in accordance with RFC 2033) not be accepted.
431 .B \-\-bsmtp <filename>
433 Append fetched mail to a BSMTP file. This simply contains the SMTP
434 commands that would normally be generated by fetchmail when passing
435 mail to an SMTP listener daemon. An argument of `-' causes the mail
436 to be written to standard output. Note that fetchmail's
437 reconstruction of MAIL FROM and RCPT TO lines is not guaranteed
438 correct; the caveats discussed under THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP
439 MAILBOXES below apply.
440 .SS Resource Limit Control Options
442 .B \-l <maxbytes> | \-\-limit <maxbytes>
443 (Keyword: limit) Takes a maximum octet size argument. Messages larger
444 than this size will not be fetched and will be left on the server (in
445 foreground sessions, the progress messages will note that they are
446 "oversized"). If the fetch protocol permits (in particular, under
447 IMAP or POP3 without the fetchall option) the message will not be
448 marked seen An explicit --limit of 0 overrides any limits set in your
449 run control file. This option is intended for those needing to
450 strictly control fetch time due to expensive and variable phone rates.
451 Combined with --flush, it can be used to delete oversized messages
452 waiting on a server. In daemon mode, oversize notifications are
453 mailed to the calling user (see the --warnings option). This option
454 does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
456 .B \-w <interval> | \-\-warnings <interval>
458 Takes an interval in seconds. When you call
460 with a `limit' option in daemon mode, this controls the interval at
461 which warnings about oversized messages are mailed to the calling user
462 (or the user specified by the `postmaster' option). One such
463 notification is always mailed at the end of the the first poll that
464 the oversized message is detected. Thereafter, renotification is
465 suppressed until after the warning interval elapses (it will take
466 place at the end of the first following poll).
468 .B \-b <count> | \-\-batchlimit <count>
469 (Keyword: batchlimit)
470 Specify the maximum number of messages that will be shipped to an SMTP
471 listener before the connection is deliberately torn down and rebuilt
472 (defaults to 0, meaning no limit). An explicit --batchlimit of 0
473 overrides any limits set in your run control file. While
474 \fBsendmail\fR(8) normally initiates delivery of a message immediately
475 after receiving the message terminator, some SMTP listeners are not so
476 prompt. MTAs like \fIsmail\fR(8) may wait till the
477 delivery socket is shut down to deliver. This may produce annoying
478 delays when \fIfetchmail\fR is processing very large batches. Setting
479 the batch limit to some nonzero size will prevent these delays. This
480 option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
482 .B \-B <number> | \-\-fetchlimit <number>
483 (Keyword: fetchlimit)
484 Limit the number of messages accepted from a given server in a single
485 poll. By default there is no limit. An explicit --fetchlimit of 0
486 overrides any limits set in your run control file.
487 This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
489 .B \-e <count> | \-\-expunge <count>
491 Arrange for deletions to be made final after a given number of
492 messages. Under POP2 or POP3, fetchmail cannot make deletions final
493 without sending QUIT and ending the session -- with this option on,
494 fetchmail will break a long mail retrieval session into multiple
495 subsessions, sending QUIT after each sub-session. This is a good
496 defense against line drops on POP3 servers that do not do the
497 equivalent of a QUIT on hangup. Under IMAP,
499 normally issues an EXPUNGE command after each deletion in order to
500 force the deletion to be done immediately. This is safest when your
501 connection to the server is flaky and expensive, as it avoids
502 resending duplicate mail after a line hit. However, on large
503 mailboxes the overhead of re-indexing after every message can slam the
504 server pretty hard, so if your connection is reliable it is good to do
505 expunges less frequently. Also note that some servers enforce a delay
506 of a few seconds after each quit, so fetchmail may not be able to get
507 back in immediately after an expunge -- you may see "lock busy" errors
508 if this happens. If you specify this option to an integer N,
511 to only issue expunges on every Nth delete. An argument of zero
512 suppresses expunges entirely (so no expunges at all will be done until
513 the end of run). This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
514 .SS Authentication Options
516 .B \-u <name> | \-\-username <name>
517 (Keyword: user[name])
518 Specifies the user identification to be used when logging in to the mailserver.
519 The appropriate user identification is both server and user-dependent.
520 The default is your login name on the client machine that is running
522 See USER AUTHENTICATION below for a complete description.
524 .B \-I <specification> | \-\-interface <specification>
526 Require that a specific interface device be up and have a specific local
527 or remote IP address (or range) before polling. Frequently
529 is used over a transient point-to-point TCP/IP link established directly
530 to a mailserver via SLIP or PPP. That is a relatively secure channel.
531 But when other TCP/IP routes to the mailserver exist (e.g. when the link
532 is connected to an alternate ISP), your username and password may be
533 vulnerable to snooping (especially when daemon mode automatically polls
534 for mail, shipping a clear password over the net at predictable
535 intervals). The --interface option may be used to prevent this. When
536 the specified link is not up or is not connected to a matching IP
537 address, polling will be skipped. The format is:
540 interface/iii.iii.iii.iii/mmm.mmm.mmm.mmm
543 The field before the first slash is the interface name (i.e. sl0, ppp0
544 etc.). The field before the second slash is the acceptable IP address.
545 The field after the second slash is a mask which specifies a range of
546 IP addresses to accept. If no mask is present 255.255.255.255 is
547 assumed (i.e. an exact match). This option is currently only supported
548 under Linux and FreeBSD. Please see the
550 section for below for FreeBSD specific information.
552 .B \-M <interface> | --monitor <interface>
554 Daemon mode can cause transient links which are automatically taken down
555 after a period of inactivity (e.g. PPP links) to remain up
556 indefinitely. This option identifies a system TCP/IP interface to be
557 monitored for activity. After each poll interval, if the link is up but
558 no other activity has occurred on the link, then the poll will be
559 skipped. However, when fetchmail is woken up by a signal, the
560 monitor check is skipped and the poll goes through unconditionally.
561 This option is currently only supported under Linux and FreeBSD.
566 options to work for non root users under FreeBSD, the fetchmail binary
567 must be installed SGID kmem. This would be a security hole, but
568 fetchmail runs with the effective GID set to that of the kmem group
570 when interface data is being collected.
573 (Keyword: auth[enticate])
574 This option permits you to specify an authentication type (see USER
575 AUTHENTICATION below for details). The possible values are \fBany\fR,
576 \&`\fBpassword\fR', `\fBkerberos_v5\fR' and `\fBkerberos\fR' (or, for
577 excruciating exactness, `\fBkerberos_v4\fR'), \fRgssapi\fR,
578 \fIcram-md5\fR, \fIotp\fR, \fIntlm\fR, and \fBssh\fR. When \fBany\fR (the
579 default) is specified, fetchmail tries first methods that don't
580 require a password (GSSAPI, KERBEROS_IV); then it looks for methods
581 that mask your password (CRAM-MD5, X-OTP, NTLM); and only if the server
582 doesn't support any of those will it ship your password en clair.
583 Other values may be used to force various authentication methods
584 (\fBssh\fR suppresses authentication). Any value other than
585 \fIpassword\fR, \fIcram-md5\fR, \fIntlm\fR or \fIotp\fR suppresses fetchmail's
586 normal inquiry for a password. Specify \fIssh\fR when you are using
587 an end-to-end secure connection such as an ssh tunnel; specify
588 \fRgssapi\fR or \fBkerberos_v4\fR if you are using a protocol variant
589 that employs GSSAPI or K4. Choosing KPOP protocol automatically
590 selects Kerberos authentication. This option does not work with ETRN.
591 .SS Miscellaneous Options
593 .B \-f <pathname> | \-\-fetchmailrc <pathname>
594 Specify a non-default name for the
596 run control file. The pathname argument must be either "-" (a single
597 dash, meaning to read the configuration from standard input) or a
598 filename. Unless the --version option is also on, a named file
599 argument must have permissions no more open than 0600 (u=rw,g=,o=) or
602 .B \-i <pathname> | \-\-idfile <pathname>
604 Specify an alternate name for the .fetchids file used to save POP3
607 .B \-n | \-\-norewrite
608 (Keyword: no rewrite)
611 edits RFC-822 address headers (To, From, Cc, Bcc, and Reply-To) in
612 fetched mail so that any mail IDs local to the server are expanded to
613 full addresses (@ and the mailserver hostname are appended). This enables
614 replies on the client to get addressed correctly (otherwise your
615 mailer might think they should be addressed to local users on the
616 client machine!). This option disables the rewrite. (This option is
617 provided to pacify people who are paranoid about having an MTA edit
618 mail headers and want to know they can prevent it, but it is generally
619 not a good idea to actually turn off rewrite.)
620 When using ETRN or ODMR, the rewrite option is ineffective.
622 .B \-E <line> | \-\-envelope <line>
624 This option changes the header
626 assumes will carry a copy of the mail's envelope address. Normally
627 this is `X-Envelope-To' but as this header is not standard, practice
628 varies. See the discussion of multidrop address handling below. As a
629 special case, `envelope "Received"' enables parsing of sendmail-style
630 Received lines. This is the default, and it should not be necessary
631 unless you have globally disabled Received parsing with `no envelope'
632 in the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file.
634 .B \-Q <prefix> | \-\-qvirtual <prefix>
636 The string prefix assigned to this option will be removed from the user
637 name found in the header specified with the \fIenvelope\fR option
638 (\fIbefore\fR doing multidrop name mapping or localdomain checking,
639 if either is applicable). This option is useful if you are using
641 to collect the mail for an entire domain and your ISP (or your mail
642 redirection provider) is using qmail.
643 One of the basic features of qmail is the
647 message header. Whenever qmail delivers a message to a local mailbox
648 it puts the username and hostname of the envelope recipient on this
649 line. The major reason for this is to prevent mail loops. To set up
650 qmail to batch mail for a disconnected site the ISP-mailhost will have
651 normally put that site in its `Virtualhosts' control file so it will
652 add a prefix to all mail addresses for this site. This results in mail
653 .\" The \&@\& tries to stop HTML converters from making a mailto URL here.
654 sent to 'username\&@\&userhost.userdom.dom.com' having a
655 \&`Delivered-To:' line of the form:
657 Delivered-To: mbox-userstr-username\&@\&userhost.userdom.dom.com
659 The ISP can make the 'mbox-userstr-' prefix anything they choose
660 but a string matching the user host name is likely.
661 By using the option `envelope Delivered-To:' you can make fetchmail reliably
662 identify the original envelope recipient, but you have to strip the
663 `mbox-userstr-' prefix to deliver to the correct user.
664 This is what this option is for.
669 file, interpret any command-line options specified, and dump a
670 configuration report to standard output. The configuration report is
671 a data structure assignment in the language Python. This option
672 is meant to be used with an interactive
678 .SH USER AUTHENTICATION AND ENCRYPTION
679 All modes except ETRN require authentication of the client to the server.
680 Normal user authentication in
682 is very much like the authentication mechanism of
684 The correct user-id and password depend upon the underlying security
685 system at the mailserver.
687 If the mailserver is a Unix machine on which you have an ordinary user
688 account, your regular login name and password are used with
690 If you use the same login name on both the server and the client machines,
691 you needn't worry about specifying a user-id with the
693 option \-\- the default behavior is to use your login name on the
694 client machine as the user-id on the server machine. If you use a
695 different login name on the server machine, specify that login name
698 option. e.g. if your login name is 'jsmith' on a machine named 'mailgrunt',
703 fetchmail -u jsmith mailgrunt
705 The default behavior of
707 is to prompt you for your mailserver password before the connection is
708 established. This is the safest way to use
710 and ensures that your password will not be compromised. You may also specify
711 your password in your
713 file. This is convenient when using
715 in daemon mode or with scripts.
717 If you do not specify a password, and
719 cannot extract one from your
721 file, it will look for a
723 file in your home directory before requesting one interactively; if an
724 entry matching the mailserver is found in that file, the password will
725 be used. Fetchmail first looks for a match on poll name; if it finds none,
726 it checks for a match on via name. See the
728 man page for details of the syntax of the
730 file. (This feature may allow you to avoid duplicating password
731 information in more than one file.)
733 On mailservers that do not provide ordinary user accounts, your user-id and
734 password are usually assigned by the server administrator when you apply for
735 a mailbox on the server. Contact your server administrator if you don't know
736 the correct user-id and password for your mailbox account.
738 Early versions of POP3 (RFC1081, RFC1225) supported a crude form of
739 independent authentication using the
741 file on the mailserver side. Under this RPOP variant, a fixed
742 per-user ID equivalent to a password was sent in clear over a link to
743 a reserved port, with the command RPOP rather than PASS to alert the
744 server that it should do special checking. RPOP is supported
747 (you can specify `protocol RPOP' to have the program send `RPOP'
748 rather than `PASS') but its use is strongly discouraged. This
749 facility was vulnerable to spoofing and was withdrawn in RFC1460.
751 RFC1460 introduced APOP authentication. In this variant of POP3,
752 you register an APOP password on your server host (the program
753 to do this with on the server is probably called \fIpopauth\fR(8)). You
754 put the same password in your
758 logs in, it sends a cryptographically secure hash of your password and
759 the server greeting time to the server, which can verify it by
760 checking its authorization database.
762 If your \fIfetchmail\fR was built with Kerberos support and you specify
763 Kerberos authentication (either with --auth or the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
764 option \fBauthenticate kerberos_v4\fR) it will try to get a Kerberos
765 ticket from the mailserver at the start of each query. Note: if
766 either the pollnane or via name is `hesiod', fetchmail will try to use
767 Hesiod to look up the mailserver.
769 If you use POP3 or IMAP with GSSAPI authentication, \fIfetchmail\fR will
770 expect the server to have RFC1731- or RFC1734-conformant GSSAPI
771 capability, and will use it. Currently this has only been tested over
772 Kerberos V, so you're expected to already have a ticket-granting
773 ticket. You may pass a username different from your principal name
774 using the standard \fB--user\fR command or by the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
777 If your IMAP daemon returns the PREAUTH response in its greeting line,
778 fetchmail will notice this and skip the normal authentication step.
779 This can be useful, e.g. if you start imapd explicitly using ssh.
780 In this case you can declare the authentication value `ssh' on that
781 site entry to stop \fI.fetchmail\fR from asking you for a password
784 If you are using POP3, and the server issues a one-time-password
785 challenge conforming to RFC1938, \fIfetchmail\fR will use your
786 password as a pass phrase to generate the required response. This
787 avoids sending secrets over the net unencrypted.
789 Compuserve's RPA authentication (similar to APOP) is supported. If you
790 compile in the support, \fIfetchmail\fR will try to perform an RPA pass-phrase
791 authentication instead of sending over the password en clair if it
792 detects "@compuserve.com" in the hostname.
794 If you are using IMAP, Microsoft's NTLM authentication (used by Microsoft
795 Exchange) is supported. If you compile in the support, \fIfetchmail\fR
796 will try to perform an NTLM authentication (instead of sending over the
797 password en clair) whenever the server returns AUTH=NTLM in its
798 capability response. Specify a user option value that looks like
799 `user@domain': the part to the left of the @ will be passed as the
800 username and the part to the right as the NTLM domain.
802 If you are using IPsec, the -T (--netsec) option can be used to pass
803 an IP security request to be used when outgoing IP connections are
804 initialized. You can also do this using the `netsec' server option
805 in the .fetchmailrc file. In either case, the option value is a
806 string in the format accepted by the net_security_strtorequest()
807 function of the inet6_apps library.
809 You can access SSL encrypted services by specifying the --ssl option.
810 You can also do this using the "ssl" server option in the .fetchmailrc
811 file. With SSL encryption enabled, queries are initiated over a connection
812 after negotiating an SSL session. Some services, such as POP3 and IMAP,
813 have different well known ports defined for the SSL encrypted services.
814 The encrypted ports will be selected automatically when SSL is enabled and
815 no explicit port is specified.
817 When connecting to an SSL encrypted server, the server presents a certificate
818 to the client for validation. The certificate is checked to verify that
819 the common name in the certificate matches the name of the server being
820 contacted and that the effective and expiration dates in the certificate
821 indicate that it is currently valid. If any of these checks fail, a warning
822 message is printed, but the connection continues. The server certificate
823 does not need to be signed by any specific Certifying Authority and may
824 be a "self-signed" certificate.
826 Some SSL encrypted servers may request a client side certificate. A client
827 side public SSL certificate and private SSL key may be specified. If
828 requested by the server, the client certificate is sent to the server for
829 validation. Some servers may require a valid client certificate and may
830 refuse connections if a certificate is not provided or if the certificate
831 is not valid. Some servers may require client side certificates be signed
832 by a recognized Certifying Authority. The format for the key files and
833 the certificate files is that required by the underlying SSL libraries
834 (OpenSSL in the general case).
836 A word of care about the use of SSL: While above mentioned
837 setup with self-signed server certificates retrieved over the wires
838 can protect you from a passive eavesdropper it doesn't help against an
839 active attacker. It's clearly an improvement over sending the
840 passwords in clear but you should be aware that a man-in-the-middle
841 attack is trivially possible (in particular with tools such as dsniff,
842 http://www.monkey.org/~dugsong/dsniff/). Use of an ssh tunnel (see
843 below for some examples) is preferable if you care seriously about the
844 security of your mailbox.
847 also supports authentication to the ESMTP server on the client side
848 according to RFC 2554. You can specify a name/password pair to be
849 used with the keywords `esmtpname' and `esmtppassword'; the former
850 defaults to the username of the calling user.
854 .B \-\-daemon <interval>
859 in daemon mode. You must specify a numeric argument which is a
860 polling interval in seconds.
864 puts itself in background and runs forever, querying each specified
865 host and then sleeping for the given polling interval.
871 will, therefore, poll all the hosts described in your
873 file (except those explicitly excluded with the `skip' verb) once
874 every fifteen minutes.
876 It is possible to set a polling interval
879 file by saying `set daemon <interval>', where <interval> is an
880 integer number of seconds. If you do this, fetchmail will always
881 start in daemon mode unless you override it with the command-line
882 option --daemon 0 or -d0.
884 Only one daemon process is permitted per user; in daemon mode,
886 makes a per-user lockfile to guarantee this.
888 Normally, calling fetchmail with a daemon in the background sends a
889 wakeup signal to the daemon, forcing it to poll mailservers
890 immediately. (The wakeup signal is SIGHUP if fetchmail is running as
891 root, SIGUSR1 otherwise.) The wakeup action also clears any `wedged'
892 flags indicating that connections have wedged due to failed
893 authentication or multiple timeouts.
897 will kill a running daemon process instead of waking it up (if there
900 notifies you). If the --quit option is the only command-line option,
901 that's all there is to it.
903 The quit option may also be mixed with other command-line options; its
904 effect is to kill any running daemon before doing what the other
905 options specify in combination with the rc file.
910 .B \-\-logfile <filename>
911 option (keyword: set logfile) allows you to redirect status messages
912 emitted while detached into a specified logfile (follow the
913 option with the logfile name). The logfile is opened for append, so
914 previous messages aren't deleted. This is primarily useful for
915 debugging configurations.
919 option (keyword: set syslog) allows you to redirect status and error
920 messages emitted to the
922 system daemon if available.
923 Messages are logged with an id of \fBfetchmail\fR, the facility \fBLOG_MAIL\fR,
924 and priorities \fBLOG_ERR\fR, \fBLOG_ALERT\fR or \fBLOG_INFO\fR.
925 This option is intended for logging status and error messages which
926 indicate the status of the daemon and the results while fetching mail
928 Error messages for command line options and parsing the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
929 file are still written to stderr, or to the specified log file.
932 option turns off use of
934 assuming it's turned on in the
939 .B \-\-logfile <file>
944 or --nodetach option suppresses backgrounding and detachment of the
945 daemon process from its control terminal. This is primarily useful
946 for debugging. Note that this also causes the logfile option to be
947 ignored (though perhaps it shouldn't).
949 Note that while running in daemon mode polling a POP2 or IMAP2bis server,
950 transient errors (such as DNS failures or sendmail delivery refusals)
951 may force the fetchall option on for the duration of the next polling
952 cycle. This is a robustness feature. It means that if a message is
953 fetched (and thus marked seen by the mailserver) but not delivered
954 locally due to some transient error, it will be re-fetched during the
955 next poll cycle. (The IMAP logic doesn't delete messages until
956 they're delivered, so this problem does not arise.)
958 If you touch or change the
960 file while fetchmail is running in daemon mode, this will be detected
961 at the beginning of the next poll cycle. When a changed
963 is detected, fetchmail rereads it and restarts from scratch (using
964 exec(2); no state information is retained in the new instance). Note also
965 that if you break the
967 file's syntax, the new instance will softly and silently vanish away
970 .SH ADMINISTRATIVE OPTIONS
973 .B \-\-postmaster <name>
974 option (keyword: set postmaster) specifies the last-resort username to
975 which multidrop mail is to be forwarded if no matching local recipient
976 can be found. Normally this is just the user who invoked
978 If the invoking user is root, then the default of this option is
979 the user `postmaster'. Setting postmaster to the empty string causes
980 such mail to be discarded.
984 option suppresses the normal action of bouncing errors back to the
985 sender in an RFC1894-conformant error message. If nobounce is on, the
986 message will go to the postmaster instead.
990 option (keyword: set invisible) tries to make fetchmail invisible.
991 Normally, fetchmail behaves like any other MTA would -- it generates a
992 Received header into each message describing its place in the chain of
993 transmission, and tells the MTA it forwards to that the mail came from
994 the machine fetchmail itself is running on. If the invisible option
995 is on, the Received header is suppressed and fetchmail tries to spoof
996 the MTA it forwards to into thinking it came directly from the
1001 option (keyword: set showdots) forces fetchmail to show progress dots
1002 even if the current tty is not stdout (for example logfiles).
1003 Starting with fetchmail version 5.3.0,
1004 progress dots are only shown on stdout by default.
1008 option, you can ask fetchmail to add information to the Received
1009 header on the form "polling {label} account {user}", where {label} is
1010 the account label (from the specified rcfile, normally ~/.fetchmailrc)
1011 and {user} is the username which is used to log on to the mail
1012 server. This header can be used to make filtering email where no
1013 useful header information is available and you want mail from
1014 different accounts sorted into different mailboxes (this could, for
1015 example, occur if you have an account on the same server running a
1016 mailing list, and are subscribed to the list using that account). The
1017 default is not adding any such header. In
1019 this is called `tracepolls'.
1021 .SH RETRIEVAL FAILURE MODES
1022 The protocols \fIfetchmail\fR uses to talk to mailservers are next to
1023 bulletproof. In normal operation forwarding to port 25, no message is
1024 ever deleted (or even marked for deletion) on the host until the SMTP
1025 listener on the client side has acknowledged to \fIfetchmail\fR that
1026 the message has been either accepted for delivery or rejected due to a
1029 When forwarding to an MDA, however, there is more possibility
1030 of error. Some MDAs are `safe' and reliably return a nonzero status
1031 on any delivery error, even one due to temporary resource limits.
1034 program is like this; so are most programs designed as mail transport
1039 These programs give back a reliable positive acknowledgement and
1040 can be used with the mda option with no risk of mail loss. Unsafe
1041 MDAs, though, may return 0 even on delivery failure. If this
1042 happens, you will lose mail.
1044 The normal mode of \fIfetchmail\fR is to try to download only `new'
1045 messages, leaving untouched (and undeleted) messages you have already
1046 read directly on the server (or fetched with a previous \fIfetchmail
1047 --keep\fR). But you may find that messages you've already read on the
1048 server are being fetched (and deleted) even when you don't specify
1049 --all. There are several reasons this can happen.
1051 One could be that you're using POP2. The POP2 protocol includes no
1052 representation of `new' or `old' state in messages, so \fIfetchmail\fR
1053 must treat all messages as new all the time. But POP2 is obsolete, so
1056 Under POP3, blame RFC1725. That version of the POP3 protocol
1057 specification removed the LAST command, and some POP servers follow it
1058 (you can verify this by invoking \fIfetchmail -v\fR to the mailserver
1059 and watching the response to LAST early in the query). The
1060 \fIfetchmail\fR code tries to compensate by using POP3's UID feature,
1061 storing the identifiers of messages seen in each session until the
1062 next session, in the \fI.fetchids\fR file. But this doesn't track
1063 messages seen with other clients, or read directly with a mailer on
1064 the host but not deleted afterward. A better solution would be to
1067 Another potential POP3 problem might be servers that insert messages
1068 in the middle of mailboxes (some VMS implementations of mail are
1069 rumored to do this). The \fIfetchmail\fR code assumes that new
1070 messages are appended to the end of the mailbox; when this is not true
1071 it may treat some old messages as new and vice versa. The only
1072 real fix for this problem is to switch to IMAP.
1074 Yet another POP3 problem is that if they can't make tempfiles in the
1075 user's home directory, some POP3 servers will hand back an
1076 undocumented response that causes fetchmail to spuriously report "No
1079 The IMAP code uses the presence or absence of the server flag \eSeen
1080 to decide whether or not a message is new. Under Unix, it counts on
1081 your IMAP server to notice the BSD-style Status flags set by mail user
1082 agents and set the \eSeen flag from them when appropriate. All Unix
1083 IMAP servers we know of do this, though it's not specified by the IMAP
1084 RFCs. If you ever trip over a server that doesn't, the symptom will
1085 be that messages you have already read on your host will look new to
1086 the server. In this (unlikely) case, only messages you fetched with
1087 \fIfetchmail --keep\fR will be both undeleted and marked old.
1089 In ETRN and ODMR modes, \fIfetchmail\fR does not actually retrieve messages;
1090 instead, it asks the server's SMTP listener to start a queue flush
1091 to the client via SMTP. Therefore it sends only undelivered messages.
1094 Many SMTP listeners allow administrators to set up `spam filters' that
1095 block unsolicited email from specified domains. A MAIL FROM or DATA line that
1096 triggers this feature will elicit an SMTP response which
1097 (unfortunately) varies according to the listener.
1101 return an error code of 571. This return value
1102 is blessed by RFC1893 as "Delivery not authorized, message refused".
1104 According to RFC2821, the correct thing to return in this situation is
1105 550 "Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable" (the draft adds
1106 "[E.g., mailbox not found, no access, or command rejected for policy
1109 Older versions of the
1111 MTA return 501 "Syntax error in parameters or arguments".
1115 MTA runs 554 as an antispam response.
1118 may reject code with a 500 response (followed by an enhanced status
1119 code that contains more information).
1123 treats as antispam responses and discards
1124 the message can be set with the `antispam' option. This is one of the
1126 three circumstance under which fetchmail ever discards mail (the others
1127 are the 552 and 553 errors described below, and the suppression of
1128 multidropped messages with a message-ID already seen).
1132 is fetching from an IMAP server, the antispam response will be detected and
1133 the message rejected immediately after the headers have been fetched,
1134 without reading the message body. Thus, you won't pay for downloading
1135 spam message bodies.
1137 By default, the list of antispam responses is empty.
1139 If the \fIspambounce\fR option is on, mail that is spam-blocked
1140 triggers an RFC1892 bounce message informing the originator that we do
1141 not accept mail from it.
1143 .SH SMTP/ESMTP ERROR HANDLING
1144 Besides the spam-blocking described above, fetchmail takes special
1145 actions on the following SMTP/ESMTP error responses
1147 452 (insufficient system storage)
1148 Leave the message in the server mailbox for later retrieval.
1150 552 (message exceeds fixed maximum message size)
1151 Delete the message from the server. Send bounce-mail to the
1154 553 (invalid sending domain)
1155 Delete the message from the server. Don't even try to send
1156 bounce-mail to the originator.
1158 Other errors trigger bounce mail back to the originator.
1160 .SH THE RUN CONTROL FILE
1161 The preferred way to set up fetchmail is to write a
1162 \&\fI.fetchmailrc\fR file in your home directory (you may do this
1163 directly, with a text editor, or indirectly via \fIfetchmailconf\fR).
1164 When there is a conflict between the command-line arguments and the
1165 arguments in this file, the command-line arguments take precedence.
1167 To protect the security of your passwords, when --version is not on
1168 your \fI~/.fetchmailrc\fR may not have more than 0600 (u=rw,g=,o=) permissions;
1170 will complain and exit otherwise.
1172 You may read the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file as a list of commands to
1175 is called with no arguments.
1176 .SS Run Control Syntax
1178 Comments begin with a '#' and extend through the end of the line.
1179 Otherwise the file consists of a series of server entries or global
1180 option statements in a free-format, token-oriented syntax.
1182 There are four kinds of tokens: grammar keywords, numbers
1183 (i.e. decimal digit sequences), unquoted strings, and quoted strings.
1184 A quoted string is bounded by double quotes and may contain
1185 whitespace (and quoted digits are treated as a string). An unquoted
1186 string is any whitespace-delimited token that is neither numeric, string
1187 quoted nor contains the special characters `,', `;', `:', or `='.
1189 Any amount of whitespace separates tokens in server entries, but is
1190 otherwise ignored. You may use standard C-style escapes (\en, \et,
1191 \eb, octal, and hex) to embed non-printable characters or string
1192 delimiters in strings.
1194 Each server entry consists of one of the keywords `poll' or `skip',
1195 followed by a server name, followed by server options, followed by any
1196 number of user descriptions. Note: the most common cause of syntax
1197 errors is mixing up user and server options.
1199 For backward compatibility, the word `server' is a synonym for `poll'.
1201 You can use the noise keywords `and', `with',
1202 \&`has', `wants', and `options' anywhere in an entry to make
1203 it resemble English. They're ignored, but but can make entries much
1204 easier to read at a glance. The punctuation characters ':', ';' and
1205 \&',' are also ignored.
1208 The `poll' verb tells fetchmail to query this host when it is run with
1209 no arguments. The `skip' verb tells
1211 not to poll this host unless it is explicitly named on the command
1212 line. (The `skip' verb allows you to experiment with test entries
1213 safely, or easily disable entries for hosts that are temporarily down.)
1215 .SS Keyword/Option Summary
1216 Here are the legal options. Keyword suffixes enclosed in
1217 square brackets are optional. Those corresponding to command-line
1218 options are followed by `-' and the appropriate option letter.
1220 Here are the legal global options:
1224 Keyword Opt Function
1227 Set a background poll interval in seconds
1229 set postmaster \& T{
1230 Give the name of the last-resort mail recipient
1232 set no bouncemail \& T{
1233 Direct error mail to postmaster rather than sender
1235 set no spambounce \& T{
1239 Name of a file to dump error and status messages to
1242 Name of the file to store UID lists in
1245 Do error logging through syslog(3).
1248 Turn off error logging through syslog(3).
1250 set properties \& T{
1251 String value is ignored by fetchmail (may be used by extension scripts)
1255 Here are the legal server options:
1259 Keyword Opt Function
1262 Specify DNS name of mailserver, overriding poll name
1265 Specify protocol (case insensitive):
1266 POP2, POP3, IMAP, APOP, KPOP
1268 local[domains] \& T{
1269 Specify domain(s) to be regarded as local
1272 Specify TCP/IP service port
1274 auth[enticate] \& T{
1275 Set authentication type (default `any')
1278 Server inactivity timeout in seconds (default 300)
1281 Specify envelope-address header name
1284 Disable looking for envelope address
1287 Qmail virtual domain prefix to remove from user name
1290 Specify alternate DNS names of mailserver
1293 specify IP interface(s) that must be up for server poll to take place
1296 Specify IP address to monitor for activity
1299 Specify command through which to make server connections.
1302 Specify command through which to make listener connections.
1305 Enable DNS lookup for multidrop (default)
1308 Disable DNS lookup for multidrop
1311 Do comparison by IP address for multidrop
1314 Do comparison by name for multidrop (default)
1317 Force POP3 to use client-side UIDLs
1320 Turn off POP3 use of client-side UIDLs (default)
1323 Only check this site every N poll cycles; N is a numeric argument.
1326 Add poll tracing information to the Received header
1329 Pass in IPsec security option request.
1332 Set Kerberos principal (only useful with imap and kerberos)
1335 Set name for RFC2554 authentication to the ESMTP server.
1338 Set password for RFC2554 authentication to the ESMTP server.
1342 Here are the legal user options:
1346 Keyword Opt Function
1349 Set remote user name
1350 (local user name if name followed by `here')
1353 Connect local and remote user names
1356 Connect local and remote user names
1359 Specify remote account password
1362 Connect to server over the specified base protocol using SSL encryption
1365 Specify file for client side public SSL certificate
1368 Specify file for client side private SSL key
1371 Force ssl protocol for connection
1374 Specify remote folder to query
1377 Specify smtp host(s) to forward to
1380 Specify domains for which mail should be fetched
1383 Specify the domain to be put in RCPT TO lines
1386 Specify the user and domain to be put in RCPT TO lines
1389 Specify what SMTP returns are interpreted as spam-policy blocks
1392 Specify MDA for local delivery
1395 Specify BSMTP batch file to append to
1398 Command to be executed before each connection
1401 Command to be executed after each connection
1404 Don't delete seen messages from server
1407 Flush all seen messages before querying
1410 Fetch all messages whether seen or not
1413 Rewrite destination addresses for reply (default)
1416 Strip carriage returns from ends of lines
1419 Force carriage returns at ends of lines
1422 Force BODY=8BITMIME to ESMTP listener
1425 Strip Status and X-Mozilla-Status lines out of incoming mail
1428 Strip Delivered-To lines out of incoming mail
1431 Convert quoted-printable to 8-bit in MIME messages
1434 Idle waiting for new messages after each poll (IMAP only)
1437 Delete seen messages from server (default)
1440 Don't flush all seen messages before querying (default)
1443 Retrieve only new messages (default)
1446 Don't rewrite headers
1449 Don't strip carriage returns (default)
1452 Don't force carriage returns at EOL (default)
1455 Don't force BODY=8BITMIME to ESMTP listener (default)
1458 Don't drop Status headers (default)
1460 no dropdelivered \& T{
1461 Don't drop Delivered-To headers (default)
1464 Don't convert quoted-printable to 8-bit in MIME messages (default)
1467 Don't idle waiting for new messages after each poll (IMAP only)
1470 Set message size limit
1473 Set message size warning interval
1476 Max # messages to forward in single connect
1479 Max # messages to fetch in single connect
1482 Perform an expunge on every #th message (IMAP and POP3 only)
1485 String value is ignored by fetchmail (may be used by extension scripts)
1489 Remember that all user options must \fIfollow\fR all server options.
1491 In the .fetchmailrc file, the `envelope' string argument may be
1492 preceded by a whitespace-separated number. This number, if specified,
1493 is the number of such headers to skip (that is, an argument of 1
1494 selects the second header of the given type). This is sometime useful
1495 for ignoring bogus Received headers created by an ISP's local delivery
1497 .SS Keywords Not Corresponding To Option Switches
1499 The `folder' and `smtphost' options (unlike their command-line
1500 equivalents) can take a space- or comma-separated list of names
1503 All options correspond to the obvious command-line arguments, except
1504 the following: `via', `interval', `aka', `is', `to', `dns'/`no dns',
1505 `checkalias'/`no checkalias', `password', `preconnect', `postconnect',
1506 `localdomains', `stripcr'/`no stripcr', `forcecr'/`no forcecr',
1507 `pass8bits'/`no pass8bits' `dropstatus/no dropstatus',
1508 `dropdelivered/no dropdelivered', `mimedecode/no mimedecode', `idle/no
1509 idle', and `no envelope'.
1511 The `via' option is for if you want to have more
1512 than one configuration pointing at the same site. If it is present,
1513 the string argument will be taken as the actual DNS name of the
1514 mailserver host to query.
1515 This will override the argument of poll, which can then simply be a
1516 distinct label for the configuration (e.g. what you would give on the
1517 command line to explicitly query this host).
1519 The `interval' option (which takes a numeric argument) allows you to poll a
1520 server less frequently than the basic poll interval. If you say
1521 \&`interval N' the server this option is attached to will only be
1522 queried every N poll intervals.
1524 The `is' or `to' keywords associate the following local (client)
1525 name(s) (or server-name to client-name mappings separated by =) with
1526 the mailserver user name in the entry. If an is/to list has `*' as
1527 its last name, unrecognized names are simply passed through.
1529 A single local name can be used to support redirecting your mail when
1530 your username on the client machine is different from your name on the
1531 mailserver. When there is only a single local name, mail is forwarded
1532 to that local username regardless of the message's Received, To, Cc,
1533 and Bcc headers. In this case
1535 never does DNS lookups.
1537 When there is more than one local name (or name mapping) the
1538 \fIfetchmail\fR code does look at the Received, To, Cc, and Bcc
1539 headers of retrieved mail (this is `multidrop mode'). It looks for
1540 addresses with hostname parts that match your poll name or your `via',
1541 `aka' or `localdomains' options, and usually also for hostname parts
1542 which DNS tells it are aliases of the mailserver. See the discussion
1543 of `dns', `checkalias', `localdomains', and `aka' for details on how
1544 matching addresses are handled.
1546 If \fIfetchmail\fR cannot match any mailserver usernames or
1547 localdomain addresses, the mail will be bounced.
1548 Normally it will be bounced to the sender, but if `nobounce' is on
1549 it will go to the postmaster (which in turn defaults to being the
1552 The `dns' option (normally on) controls the way addresses from
1553 multidrop mailboxes are checked. On, it enables logic to check each
1554 host address that doesn't match an `aka' or `localdomains' declaration
1555 by looking it up with DNS. When a mailserver username is recognized
1556 attached to a matching hostname part, its local mapping is added to
1557 the list of local recipients.
1559 The `checkalias' option (normally off) extends the lookups performed
1560 by the `dns' keyword in multidrop mode, providing a way to cope with
1561 remote MTAs that identify themselves using their canonical name, while
1562 they're polled using an alias.
1563 When such a server is polled, checks to extract the envelope address
1566 reverts to delivery using the To/Cc/Bcc headers (See below
1567 `Header vs. Envelope addresses').
1568 Specifying this option instructs
1570 to retrieve all the IP addresses associated with both the poll name
1571 and the name used by the remote MTA and to do a comparison of the IP
1572 addresses. This comes in handy in situations where the remote server
1573 undergoes frequent canonical name changes, that would otherwise
1574 require modifications to the rcfile. `checkalias' has no effect if
1575 `no dns' is specified in the rcfile.
1577 The `aka' option is for use with multidrop mailboxes. It allows you
1578 to pre-declare a list of DNS aliases for a server. This is an
1579 optimization hack that allows you to trade space for speed. When
1581 while processing a multidrop mailbox, grovels through message headers
1582 looking for names of the mailserver, pre-declaring common ones can
1583 save it from having to do DNS lookups. Note: the names you give
1584 as arguments to `aka' are matched as suffixes -- if you specify
1585 (say) `aka netaxs.com', this will match not just a hostnamed
1586 netaxs.com, but any hostname that ends with `.netaxs.com'; such as
1587 (say) pop3.netaxs.com and mail.netaxs.com.
1589 The `localdomains' option allows you to declare a list of domains
1590 which fetchmail should consider local. When fetchmail is parsing
1591 address lines in multidrop modes, and a trailing segment of a host
1592 name matches a declared local domain, that address is passed through
1593 to the listener or MDA unaltered (local-name mappings are \fInot\fR
1596 If you are using `localdomains', you may also need to specify \&`no
1597 envelope', which disables \fIfetchmail\fR's normal attempt to deduce
1598 an envelope address from the Received line or X-Envelope-To header or
1599 whatever header has been previously set by `envelope'. If you set `no
1600 envelope' in the defaults entry it is possible to undo that in
1601 individual entries by using `envelope <string>'. As a special case,
1602 \&`envelope "Received"' restores the default parsing of
1605 The \fBpassword\fR option requires a string argument, which is the password
1606 to be used with the entry's server.
1608 The `preconnect' keyword allows you to specify a shell command to be
1609 executed just before each time
1611 establishes a mailserver connection. This may be useful if you are
1612 attempting to set up secure POP connections with the aid of
1614 If the command returns a nonzero status, the poll of that mailserver
1617 Similarly, the `postconnect' keyword similarly allows you to specify a
1618 shell command to be executed just after each time a mailserver
1619 connection is taken down.
1621 The `forcecr' option controls whether lines terminated by LF only are
1622 given CRLF termination before forwarding. Strictly speaking RFC821
1623 requires this, but few MTAs enforce the requirement it so this option
1624 is normally off (only one such MTA, qmail, is in significant use at
1627 The `stripcr' option controls whether carriage returns are stripped
1628 out of retrieved mail before it is forwarded. It is normally not
1629 necessary to set this, because it defaults to `on' (CR stripping
1630 enabled) when there is an MDA declared but `off' (CR stripping
1631 disabled) when forwarding is via SMTP. If `stripcr' and `forcecr' are
1632 both on, `stripcr' will override.
1634 The `pass8bits' option exists to cope with Microsoft mail programs that
1635 stupidly slap a "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit" on everything. With
1636 this option off (the default) and such a header present,
1638 declares BODY=7BIT to an ESMTP-capable listener; this causes problems for
1639 messages actually using 8-bit ISO or KOI-8 character sets, which will
1640 be garbled by having the high bits of all characters stripped. If
1641 \&`pass8bits' is on,
1643 is forced to declare BODY=8BITMIME to any ESMTP-capable listener. If
1644 the listener is 8-bit-clean (as all the major ones now are) the right
1645 thing will probably result.
1647 The `dropstatus' option controls whether nonempty Status and
1648 X-Mozilla-Status lines are retained in fetched mail (the default) or
1649 discarded. Retaining them allows your MUA to see what messages (if
1650 any) were marked seen on the server. On the other hand, it can
1651 confuse some new-mail notifiers, which assume that anything with a
1652 Status line in it has been seen. (Note: the empty Status lines
1653 inserted by some buggy POP servers are unconditionally discarded.)
1655 The `dropdelivered' option controls wether Delivered-To headers will
1656 be kept in fetched mail (the default) or discarded. These headers are
1657 added by Qmail and Postfix mailservers in order to avoid mail loops but
1658 may get in your way if you try to "mirror" a mailserver within the same
1659 domain. Use with caution.
1661 The `mimedecode' option controls whether MIME messages using the
1662 quoted-printable encoding are automatically converted into pure 8-bit
1663 data. If you are delivering mail to an ESMTP-capable, 8-bit-clean
1664 listener (that includes all of the major MTAs like sendmail), then
1665 this will automatically convert quoted-printable message headers and
1666 data into 8-bit data, making it easier to understand when reading
1667 mail. If your e-mail programs know how to deal with MIME messages,
1668 then this option is not needed. The mimedecode option is off by
1669 default, because doing RFC2047 conversion on headers throws away
1670 character-set information and can lead to bad results if the encoding
1671 of the headers differs from the body encoding.
1673 The `idle' option is usable only with IMAP servers supporting the
1674 RFC2177 IDLE command extension. If it is enabled, and fetchmail
1675 detects that IDLE is supported, an IDLE will be issued at the end
1676 of each poll. This will tell the IMAP server to hold the connection
1677 open and notify the client when new mail is available. If you need to
1678 poll a link frequently, IDLE can save bandwidth by eliminating TCP/IP
1679 connects and LOGIN/LOGOUT sequences. On the other hand, an IDLE
1680 connection will eat almost all of your fetchmail's time, because it
1681 will never drop the connection and allow other pools to occur unless
1682 the server times out the IDLE. It also doesn't work with multiple
1683 folders; only the first folder will ever be polled.
1685 The `properties' option is an extension mechanism. It takes a string
1686 argument, which is ignored by fetchmail itself. The string argument may be
1687 used to store configuration information for scripts which require it.
1688 In particular, the output of `--configdump' option will make properties
1689 associated with a user entry readily available to a Python script.
1691 .SS Miscellaneous Run Control Options
1692 The words `here' and `there' have useful English-like
1693 significance. Normally `user eric is esr' would mean that
1694 mail for the remote user `eric' is to be delivered to `esr',
1695 but you can make this clearer by saying `user eric there is esr here',
1696 or reverse it by saying `user esr here is eric there'
1698 Legal protocol identifiers for use with the `protocol' keyword are:
1711 Legal authentication types are `any', `password', `kerberos', 'kereberos_v5'
1712 and `gssapi', `cram-md5', `otp', `ntlm', `ssh`.
1713 The `password' type specifies authentication by normal transmission of a
1714 password (the password may be plaintext or subject to
1715 protocol-specific encryption as in APOP); `kerberos' tells
1716 \fIfetchmail\fR to try to get a Kerberos ticket at the start of each
1717 query instead, and send an arbitrary string as the password; and
1718 `gssapi' tells fetchmail to use GSSAPI authentication. See the description
1719 of the `auth' keyword for more.
1721 Specifying `kpop' sets POP3 protocol over port 1109 with Kerberos V4
1722 authentication. These defaults may be overridden by later options.
1724 There are currently four global option statements; `set logfile'
1725 followed by a string sets the same global specified by --logfile. A
1726 command-line --logfile option will override this. Also, `set daemon'
1727 sets the poll interval as --daemon does. This can be overridden by a
1728 command-line --daemon option; in particular --daemon 0 can be used to
1729 force foreground operation. The `set postmaster' statement sets the
1730 address to which multidrop mail defaults if there are no local
1731 matches. Finally, `set syslog' sends log messages to syslogd(8).
1733 .SH INTERACTION WITH RFC 822
1734 When trying to determine the originating address of a message,
1735 fetchmail looks through headers in the following order:
1739 Resent-Sender: (ignored if it doesn't contain an @ or !)
1740 Sender: (ignored if it doesn't contain an @ or !)
1747 The originating address is used for logging, and to set the MAIL FROM
1748 address when forwarding to SMTP. This order is intended to cope
1749 gracefully with receiving mailing list messages in multidrop mode. The
1750 intent is that if a local address doesn't exist, the bounce message
1751 won't be returned blindly to the author or to the list itself, but
1752 rather to the list manager (which is less annoying).
1754 In multidrop mode, destination headers are processed as follows:
1755 First, fetchmail looks for the Received: header (or whichever one is
1756 specified by the `envelope' option) to determine the local
1757 recipient address. If the mail is addressed to more than one recipient,
1758 the Received line won't contain any information regarding recipient addresses.
1760 Then fetchmail looks for the Resent-To:, Resent-Cc:, and Resent-Bcc:
1761 lines. If they exists, they should contain the final recipients and
1762 have precedence over their To:/Cc:/Bcc: counterparts. If the Resent-*
1763 lines doesn't exist, the To:, Cc:, Bcc: and Apparently-To: lines are
1764 looked for. (The presence of a Resent-To: is taken to imply that the
1765 person referred by the To: address has already received the original
1768 .SH CONFIGURATION EXAMPLES
1769 Note that although there are password declarations in a good many
1770 of the examples below, this is mainly for illustrative purposes.
1771 We recommend stashing account/password pairs in your $HOME/.netrc
1772 file, where they can be used not just by fetchmail but by ftp(1) and
1778 poll SERVERNAME protocol PROTOCOL username NAME password PASSWORD
1784 poll pop.provider.net protocol pop3 username "jsmith" password "secret1"
1787 Or, using some abbreviations:
1790 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" password "secret1"
1793 Multiple servers may be listed:
1796 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" pass "secret1"
1797 poll other.provider.net proto pop2 user "John.Smith" pass "My^Hat"
1800 Here's a version of those two with more whitespace and some noise words:
1803 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3
1804 user "jsmith", with password secret1, is "jsmith" here;
1805 poll other.provider.net proto pop2:
1806 user "John.Smith", with password "My^Hat", is "John.Smith" here;
1809 This version is much easier to read and doesn't cost significantly
1810 more (parsing is done only once, at startup time).
1813 If you need to include whitespace in a parameter string, enclose the
1814 string in double quotes. Thus:
1817 poll mail.provider.net with proto pop3:
1818 user "jsmith" there has password "u can't krak this"
1819 is jws here and wants mda "/bin/mail"
1822 You may have an initial server description headed by the keyword
1823 `defaults' instead of `poll' followed by a name. Such a record
1824 is interpreted as defaults for all queries to use. It may be overwritten
1825 by individual server descriptions. So, you could write:
1830 poll pop.provider.net
1832 poll mail.provider.net
1833 user "jjsmith" there has password "secret2"
1836 It's possible to specify more than one user per server (this is only
1837 likely to be useful when running fetchmail in daemon mode as root).
1838 The `user' keyword leads off a user description, and every user specification
1839 in a multi-user entry must include it. Here's an example:
1842 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 port 3111
1843 user "jsmith" with pass "secret1" is "smith" here
1844 user jones with pass "secret2" is "jjones" here keep
1847 This associates the local username `smith' with the pop.provider.net
1848 username `jsmith' and the local username `jjones' with the
1849 pop.provider.net username `jones'. Mail for `jones' is kept on the
1850 server after download.
1852 Here's what a simple retrieval configuration for a multi-drop mailbox
1856 poll pop.provider.net:
1857 user maildrop with pass secret1 to golux 'hurkle'='happy' snark here
1860 This says that the mailbox of account `maildrop' on the server is a
1861 multi-drop box, and that messages in it should be parsed for the
1862 server user names `golux', `hurkle', and `snark'. It further
1863 specifies that `golux' and `snark' have the same name on the
1864 client as on the server, but mail for server user `hurkle' should be
1865 delivered to client user `happy'.
1867 Here's an example of another kind of multidrop connection:
1870 poll pop.provider.net localdomains loonytoons.org toons.org:
1871 user maildrop with pass secret1 to * here
1874 This also says that the mailbox of account `maildrop' on the server is
1875 a multi-drop box. It tells fetchmail that any address in the
1876 loonytoons.org or toons.org domains (including subdomain addresses like
1877 `joe@daffy.loonytoons.org') should be passed through to the local SMTP
1878 listener without modification. Be careful of mail loops if you do this!
1880 Here's an example configuration using ssh and the plugin option. The
1881 queries are made directly on the stdin and stdout of imapd via ssh.
1882 Note that in this setup, IMAP authentication can be skipped.
1885 poll mailhost.net with proto imap:
1886 plugin "ssh %h /usr/sbin/imapd" auth ssh;
1887 user esr is esr here
1890 .SH THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP MAILBOXES
1891 Use the multiple-local-recipients feature with caution -- it can bite.
1892 All multidrop features are ineffective in ETRN and ODMR modes.
1894 Also, note that in multidrop mode duplicate mails are suppressed. A
1895 piece of mail is considered duplicate if it has the same message-ID as
1896 the message immediately preceding and more than one addressee. Such
1897 runs of messages may be generated when copies of a message addressed
1898 to multiple users are delivered to a multidrop box.
1900 .SS Header vs. Envelope addresses
1901 The fundamental problem is that by having your mailserver toss several
1902 peoples' mail in a single maildrop box, you may have thrown away
1903 potentially vital information about who each piece of mail was
1904 actually addressed to (the `envelope address', as opposed to the
1905 header addresses in the RFC822 To/Cc/Bcc headers). This `envelope
1906 address' is the address you need in order to reroute mail properly.
1910 can deduce the envelope address. If the mailserver MTA is
1912 and the item of mail had just one recipient, the MTA will have written
1913 a `by/for' clause that gives the envelope addressee into its Received
1914 header. But this doesn't work reliably for other MTAs, nor if there is
1915 more than one recipient. By default, \fIfetchmail\fR looks for
1916 envelope addresses in these lines; you can restore this default with
1917 -E "Received" or \&`envelope Received'.
1919 Alternatively, some SMTP listeners and/or mail servers insert a header
1920 in each message containing a copy of the envelope addresses. This
1921 header (when it exists) is often `X-Envelope-To'. Fetchmail's
1922 assumption about this can be changed with the -E or `envelope' option.
1923 Note that writing an envelope header of this kind exposes the names of
1924 recipients (including blind-copy recipients) to all receivers of the
1925 messages; it is therefore regarded by some administrators as a
1926 security/privacy problem.
1928 A slight variation of the `X-Envelope-To' header is the `Delivered-To' put
1929 by qmail to avoid mail loops. It will probably prefix the user name with a
1930 string that normally matches the user's domain. To remove this prefix you
1931 can use the -Q or `qvirtual' option.
1933 Sometimes, unfortunately, neither of these methods works. When they
1934 all fail, fetchmail must fall back on the contents of To/Cc/Bcc
1935 headers to try to determine recipient addressees -- and these are not
1936 reliable. In particular, mailing-list software often ships mail with
1937 only the list broadcast address in the To header.
1941 cannot deduce a recipient address that is local, and the intended
1942 recipient address was anyone other than fetchmail's invoking user,
1943 mail will get lost. This is what makes the multidrop feature risky.
1945 A related problem is that when you blind-copy a mail message, the Bcc
1946 information is carried \fIonly\fR as envelope address (it's not put
1947 in the headers fetchmail can see unless there is an X-Envelope
1948 header). Thus, blind-copying to someone who gets mail over a
1949 fetchmail link will fail unless the the mailserver host routinely
1950 writes X-Envelope or an equivalent header into messages in your maildrop.
1952 .SS Good Ways To Use Multidrop Mailboxes
1953 Multiple local names can be used to administer a mailing list from the
1954 client side of a \fIfetchmail\fR collection. Suppose your name is
1955 \&`esr', and you want to both pick up your own mail and maintain a mailing
1956 list called (say) "fetchmail-friends", and you want to keep the alias
1957 list on your client machine.
1959 On your server, you can alias \&`fetchmail-friends' to `esr'; then, in
1960 your \fI.fetchmailrc\fR, declare \&`to esr fetchmail-friends here'.
1961 Then, when mail including `fetchmail-friends' as a local address
1962 gets fetched, the list name will be appended to the list of
1963 recipients your SMTP listener sees. Therefore it will undergo alias
1964 expansion locally. Be sure to include `esr' in the local alias
1965 expansion of fetchmail-friends, or you'll never see mail sent only to
1966 the list. Also be sure that your listener has the "me-too" option set
1967 (sendmail's -oXm command-line option or OXm declaration) so your name
1968 isn't removed from alias expansions in messages you send.
1970 This trick is not without its problems, however. You'll begin to see
1971 this when a message comes in that is addressed only to a mailing list
1972 you do \fInot\fR have declared as a local name. Each such message
1973 will feature an `X-Fetchmail-Warning' header which is generated
1974 because fetchmail cannot find a valid local name in the recipient
1975 addresses. Such messages default (as was described above) to being
1976 sent to the local user running
1978 but the program has no way to know that that's actually the right thing.
1980 .SS Bad Ways To Abuse Multidrop Mailboxes
1981 Multidrop mailboxes and
1983 serving multiple users in daemon mode do not mix. The problem, again, is
1984 mail from mailing lists, which typically does not have an individual
1985 recipient address on it. Unless
1987 can deduce an envelope address, such mail will only go to the account
1988 running fetchmail (probably root). Also, blind-copied users are very
1989 likely never to see their mail at all.
1991 If you're tempted to use
1993 to retrieve mail for multiple users from a single mail drop via POP or
1994 IMAP, think again (and reread the section on header and envelope
1995 addresses above). It would be smarter to just let the mail sit in the
1996 mailserver's queue and use fetchmail's ETRN or ODMR modes to trigger
1997 SMTP sends periodically (of course, this means you have to poll more
1998 frequently than the mailserver's expiry period). If you can't arrange
1999 this, try setting up a UUCP feed.
2001 If you absolutely \fImust\fR use multidrop for this purpose, make sure
2002 your mailserver writes an envelope-address header that fetchmail can
2003 see. Otherwise you \fIwill\fR lose mail and it \fIwill\fR come back
2006 .SS Speeding Up Multidrop Checking
2007 Normally, when multiple users are declared
2009 extracts recipient addresses as described above and checks each host
2010 part with DNS to see if it's an alias of the mailserver. If so, the
2011 name mappings described in the to ... here declaration are done and
2012 the mail locally delivered.
2014 This is the safest but also slowest method. To speed it up,
2015 pre-declare mailserver aliases with `aka'; these are checked before
2016 DNS lookups are done. If you're certain your aka list contains
2018 DNS aliases of the mailserver (and all MX names pointing at it)
2019 you can declare `no dns' to suppress DNS lookups entirely and
2020 \fIonly\fR match against the aka list.
2023 To facilitate the use of
2025 in shell scripts, an exit code is returned to give an indication
2026 of what occurred during a given connection.
2028 The exit codes returned by
2032 One or more messages were successfully retrieved (or, if the -c option
2033 was selected, were found waiting but not retrieved).
2035 There was no mail awaiting retrieval. (There may have been old mail still
2036 on the server but not selected for retrieval.)
2038 An error was encountered when attempting to open a socket to retrieve
2039 mail. If you don't know what a socket is, don't worry about it --
2040 just treat this as an 'unrecoverable error'. This error can also be
2041 because a protocol fetchmail wants to use is not listed in /etc/services.
2043 The user authentication step failed. This usually means that a bad
2044 user-id, password, or APOP id was specified. Or it may mean that you
2045 tried to run fetchmail under circumstances where it did not have
2046 standard input attached to a terminal and could not prompt for a
2049 Some sort of fatal protocol error was detected.
2051 There was a syntax error in the arguments to
2054 The run control file had bad permissions.
2056 There was an error condition reported by the server. Can also
2059 timed out while waiting for the server.
2061 Client-side exclusion error. This means
2063 either found another copy of itself already running, or failed in such
2064 a way that it isn't sure whether another copy is running.
2066 The user authentication step failed because the server responded "lock
2067 busy". Try again after a brief pause! This error is not implemented
2068 for all protocols, nor for all servers. If not implemented for your
2069 server, "3" will be returned instead, see above. May be returned when
2070 talking to qpopper or other servers that can respond with "lock busy"
2071 or some similar text containing the word "lock".
2075 run failed while trying to do an SMTP port open or transaction.
2077 Fatal DNS error. Fetchmail encountered an error while performing
2078 a DNS lookup at startup and could not proceed.
2080 BSMTP batch file could not be opened.
2082 Poll terminated by a fetch limit (see the --fetchlimit option).
2084 Server busy indication.
2086 Server timed out during an IMAP IDLE.
2088 Internal error. You should see a message on standard error with
2093 queries more than one host, return status is 0 if \fIany\fR query
2094 successfully retrieved mail. Otherwise the returned error status is
2095 that of the last host queried.
2100 default run control file
2103 default location of file associating hosts with last message IDs seen
2104 (used only with newer RFC1725-compliant POP3 servers supporting the
2108 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (non-root mode).
2111 your FTP run control file, which (if present) will be searched for
2112 passwords as a last resort before prompting for one interactively.
2114 /var/run/fetchmail.pid
2115 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, Linux systems).
2118 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, systems without /var/run).
2121 If the FETCHMAILUSER variable is set, it is used as the name of the
2122 calling user (default local name) for purposes such as mailing error
2123 notifications. Otherwise, if either the LOGNAME or USER variable is
2124 correctly set (e.g. the corresponding UID matches the session user ID)
2125 then that name is used as the default local name. Otherwise
2126 \fBgetpwuid\fR(3) must be able to retrieve a password entry for the
2127 session ID (this elaborate logic is designed to handle the case of
2128 multiple names per userid gracefully).
2130 If the environment variable FETCHMAILHOME is set to a valid and
2131 existing directory name, the .fetchmailrc and .fetchids and
2132 \&.fetchmail.pid files are put there instead of in the invoking user's
2133 home directory (and lose the leading dots on their names). The
2134 \&.netrc file is looked for in the the invoking user's home directory
2135 regardless of FETCHMAILHOME's setting.
2140 daemon is running as root, SIGHUP wakes it up from its sleep phase and
2141 forces a poll of all non-skipped servers (this is in accordance with
2142 the usual conventions for system daemons).
2146 is running in daemon mode as non-root, use SIGUSR1 to wake it (this is
2147 so SIGHUP due to logout can retain the default action of killing it).
2151 in foreground while a background fetchmail is running will do
2152 whichever of these is appropriate to wake it up.
2154 .SH BUGS AND KNOWN PROBLEMS
2155 The mda and plugin options interact badly. In order to collect error
2156 status from the MDA, fetchmail has to change its normal signal
2157 handling so that dead plugin processes don't get reaped until the end
2158 of the poll cycle. This can cause resource starvation if too many
2159 zombies accumulate. So either don't deliver to a MDA using plugins or
2160 risk being overrun by an army of undead.
2162 The RFC822 address parser used in multidrop mode chokes on some
2163 @-addresses that are technically legal but bizarre. Strange uses of
2164 quoting and embedded comments are likely to confuse it.
2166 In a message with multiple envelope headers, only the last one
2167 processed will be visible to fetchmail. To get around this, use a
2168 mailserver-side filter that consolidates the contents of all envelope
2169 headers into a single one (procmail, mailagent, or maildrop can be
2170 programmed to do this fairly easily).
2172 Use of some of these protocols requires that the program send
2173 unencrypted passwords over the TCP/IP connection to the mailserver.
2174 This creates a risk that name/password pairs might be snaffled with a
2175 packet sniffer or more sophisticated monitoring software. Under Linux
2176 and FreeBSD, the --interface option can be used to restrict polling to
2177 availability of a specific interface device with a specific local or
2178 remote IP address, but snooping is still possible if (a) either host
2179 has a network device that can be opened in promiscuous mode, or (b)
2180 the intervening network link can be tapped. We recommend the use of
2182 tunnelling to not only shroud your passwords but encrypt the entire
2185 Use of the %F or %T escapes in an mda option could open a security
2186 hole, because they pass text manipulable by an attacker to a shell
2187 command. Potential shell characters are replaced by `_' before
2188 execution. The hole is further reduced by the fact that fetchmail
2189 temporarily discards any suid privileges it may have while running the
2190 MDA. For maximum safety, however, don't use an mda command containing
2191 %F or %T when fetchmail is run from the root account itself.
2193 Fetchmail's method of sending bouncemail and spam bounces requires that
2194 port 25 of localhost be available for sending mail via SMTP.
2198 while a background instance is running and break the syntax, the
2199 background instance will die silently. Unfortunately, it can't
2200 die noisily because we don't yet know whether syslog should be enabled.
2201 On some systems, fetchmail dies quietly even if there is no syntax
2202 error; this seems to have something to do with buggy terminal ioctl
2205 The -f - option (reading a configuration from stdin) is incompatible
2206 with the plugin option.
2208 The UIDL code is generally flaky and tends to lose its state on errors
2209 and line drops (so that old messages are re-seen). If this happens to
2210 you, switch to IMAP4.
2212 The `principal' option only handles Kerberos IV, not V.
2214 Send comments, bug reports, gripes, and the like to the
2215 fetchmail-friends list <fetchmail-friends@lists.ccil.org>. An HTML FAQ is
2216 available at the fetchmail home page; surf to
2217 http://www.catb.org/~esr/fetchmail or do a WWW search for pages with
2218 `fetchmail' in their titles.
2221 Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>. Too many other people to
2222 name here have contributed code and patches.
2223 This program is descended from and replaces
2225 by Carl Harris <ceharris@mal.com>; the internals have become quite different,
2226 but some of its interface design is directly traceable to that
2230 mutt(1), elm(1), mail(1), sendmail(8), popd(8), imapd(8), netrc(5)
2231 .SH APPLICABLE STANDARDS
2234 RFC 821, RFC2821, RFC 1869, RFC 1652, RFC 1870, RFC 1983, RFC 1985,
2238 RFC 822, RFC2822, RFC 1123, RFC 1892, RFC 1894.
2244 RFC 1081, RFC 1225, RFC 1460, RFC 1725, RFC1734, RFC 1939, RFC 1957,
2248 RFC 1460, RFC 1725, RFC 1939.
2257 RFC 1730, RFC 1731, RFC 1732, RFC 2060, RFC 2061, RFC 2195, RFC 2177,
projects / ~andy / fetchmail / blob