2 .\" ** The above line should force tbl to be used as a preprocessor **
4 .\" Manual page in man(7) format with tbl(1) macros for fetchmail
6 .\" For license terms, see the file COPYING in this directory.
8 .TH fetchmail 1 "fetchmail 6.3.5" "fetchmail" "fetchmail reference manual"
10 fetchmail \- fetch mail from a POP, IMAP, ETRN, or ODMR-capable server
13 \fBfetchmail\fR [\fIoption...\fR] [\fImailserver...\fR]
19 is a mail-retrieval and forwarding utility; it fetches mail from
20 remote mailservers and forwards it to your local (client) machine's
21 delivery system. You can then handle the retrieved mail using normal
22 mail user agents such as \fImutt\fR(1), \fIelm\fR(1) or \fIMail\fR(1).
23 The \fIfetchmail\fR utility can be run in a daemon mode to repeatedly
24 poll one or more systems at a specified interval.
28 program can gather mail from servers supporting any of the common
29 mail-retrieval protocols: POP2 (legacy, to be removed from future
30 release), POP3, IMAP2bis, IMAP4, and IMAP4rev1.
31 It can also use the ESMTP ETRN extension and ODMR. (The RFCs describing all
32 these protocols are listed at the end of this manual page.)
36 is primarily intended to be used over on-demand TCP/IP links (such as
37 SLIP or PPP connections), it may also be useful as a message transfer
38 agent for sites which refuse for security reasons to permit
39 (sender-initiated) SMTP transactions with sendmail.
43 is used with a POP or an IMAP server, it has two fundamental modes of
44 operation for each user account from which it retrieves mail:
45 \fIsingledrop\fR- and \fImultidrop\fR-mode. In singledrop-mode,
47 assumes that all messages in the user's account are intended for a single
48 recipient. An individual mail message will not be inspected for recipient
49 information, rather, the identity of the recipient will either default to
50 the local user currently executing \fIfetchmail\fR,
51 or else will need to be explicitly specified in the configuration file.
52 Singledrop-mode is used when the fetchmailrc configuration contains at
53 most a single local user specification for a given server account.
57 is not able to assume that there is only a single recipient, but rather
58 that the mail server account actually contains mail intended for any
59 number of different recipients. Therefore,
61 must attempt to deduce the proper "envelope recipient" from the mail
62 headers of each message. In this mode of operation
64 almost resembles an MTA, however it is important to note that neither
65 the POP nor IMAP protocols were intended for use in this fashion, and
66 hence envelope information is not directly available. Instead,
68 must resort to a process of informed guess-work in an attempt to
69 discover the true envelope recipient of a message. Even if this
70 information is present in the headers, the process can
71 be error-prone and is dependent upon the specific mail server used
72 for mail retrieval. Multidrop-mode is used when more than one local
73 user is specified for a particular server account in the configuration
74 file. Note that the forgoing discussion of singledrop- and
75 multidrop-modes does not apply to the ESMTP ETRN or ODMR retrieval
76 methods, since they are based upon the SMTP protocol which
77 specifically provides the envelope recipient to \fIfetchmail\fR.
79 As each message is retrieved \fIfetchmail\fR normally delivers it via SMTP to
80 port 25 on the machine it is running on (localhost), just as though it
81 were being passed in over a normal TCP/IP link. \fIfetchmail\fR provides
82 the SMTP server with an envelope recipient derived in the manner described
83 previously. The mail will then be
84 delivered locally via your system's MDA (Mail Delivery Agent, usually
85 \fIsendmail\fR(8) but your system may use a different one such
86 as \fIsmail\fR, \fImmdf\fR, \fIexim\fR, \fIpostfix\fR, or \fIqmail\fR). All the
87 delivery-control mechanisms (such as \fI.forward\fR files) normally
88 available through your system MDA and local delivery agents will
89 therefore work automatically.
91 If no port 25 listener is available, but your fetchmail configuration
92 was told about a reliable local MDA, it will use that MDA for local
97 is available, it will assist you in setting up and editing a
98 fetchmailrc configuration. It runs under the X window system and
99 requires that the language Python and the Tk toolkit be present on your
100 system. If you are first setting up fetchmail for single-user mode, it
101 is recommended that you use Novice mode. Expert mode provides complete
102 control of fetchmail configuration, including the multidrop features.
103 In either case, the 'Autoprobe' button will tell you the most capable
104 protocol a given mailserver supports, and warn you of potential problems
107 .SH GENERAL OPERATION
110 is controlled by command-line options and a run control file,
111 .IR ~/.fetchmailrc\fR ,
112 the syntax of which we describe in a later section (this file is what
113 the \fIfetchmailconf\fR program edits). Command-line options override
117 Each server name that you specify following the options on the
118 command line will be queried. If you don't specify any servers
119 on the command line, each 'poll' entry in your
121 file will be queried.
123 To facilitate the use of
125 in scripts and pipelines, it returns an appropriate exit code upon
126 termination -- see EXIT CODES below.
128 The following options modify the behavior of \fIfetchmail\fR. It is
129 seldom necessary to specify any of these once you have a
130 working \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file set up.
132 Almost all options have a corresponding keyword which can be used to
137 Some special options are not covered here, but are documented instead
138 in sections on AUTHENTICATION and DAEMON MODE which follow.
142 Displays the version information for your copy of
144 No mail fetch is performed.
145 Instead, for each server specified, all the option information
146 that would be computed if
148 were connecting to that server is displayed. Any non-printables in
149 passwords or other string names are shown as backslashed C-like
150 escape sequences. This option is useful for verifying that your
151 options are set the way you want them.
154 Return a status code to indicate whether there is mail waiting,
155 without actually fetching or deleting mail (see EXIT CODES below).
156 This option turns off daemon mode (in which it would be useless). It
157 doesn't play well with queries to multiple sites, and doesn't work
158 with ETRN or ODMR. It will return a false positive if you leave read but
159 undeleted mail in your server mailbox and your fetch protocol can't
160 tell kept messages from new ones. This means it will work with IMAP,
161 not work with POP2, and may occasionally flake out under POP3.
164 Silent mode. Suppresses all progress/status messages that are
165 normally echoed to standard output during a fetch (but does not
166 suppress actual error messages). The \-\-verbose option overrides this.
169 Verbose mode. All control messages passed between
171 and the mailserver are echoed to stdout. Overrides \-\-silent.
172 Doubling this option (\-v \-v) causes extra diagnostic information
176 .B \-a | \-\-all | (since v6.3.3) \-\-fetchall
177 (Keyword: fetchall, since v3.0)
178 Retrieve both old (seen) and new messages from the mailserver. The
179 default is to fetch only messages the server has not marked seen.
180 Under POP3, this option also forces the use of RETR rather than TOP.
181 Note that POP2 retrieval behaves as though \-\-all is always on (see
182 RETRIEVAL FAILURE MODES below) and this option does not work with ETRN
183 or ODMR. While the \-a and \-\-all command-line and fetchall rcfile
184 options have been supported for a long time, the \-\-fetchall
185 command-line option was added in v6.3.3.
189 Keep retrieved messages on the remote mailserver. Normally, messages
190 are deleted from the folder on the mailserver after they have been retrieved.
191 Specifying the \fBkeep\fR option causes retrieved messages to remain in
192 your folder on the mailserver. This option does not work with ETRN or
193 ODMR. If used with POP3, it is recommended to also specify the \-\-uidl
194 option or uidl keyword.
198 Delete retrieved messages from the remote mailserver. This
199 option forces retrieved mail to be deleted. It may be useful if
200 you have specified a default of \fBkeep\fR in your
201 \&\fI.fetchmailrc\fR. This option is forced on with ETRN and ODMR.
204 POP3/IMAP only. This is a dangerous option and can cause mail loss when
205 used improperly. It deletes old (seen) messages from the mailserver
206 before retrieving new messages. \fBWarning:\fR This can cause mail loss if
207 you check your mail with other clients than fetchmail, and cause
208 fetchmail to delete a message it had never fetched before. It can also
209 cause mail loss if the mail server marks the message seen after
210 retrieval (IMAP2 servers). You should probably not use this option in your
211 configuration file. If you use it with POP3, you must use the 'uidl'
212 option. What you probably want is the default setting: if you don't
213 specify '\-k', then fetchmail will automatically delete messages after
217 POP3/IMAP only, since version 6.3.0. Delete oversized messages from the
218 mailserver before retrieving new messages. The size limit should be
219 separately specified with the \-\-limit option. This option does not
220 work with ETRN or ODMR.
221 .SS Protocol and Query Options
223 .B \-p <proto> | \-\-proto <proto> | \-\-protocol <proto>
224 (Keyword: proto[col])
225 Specify the protocol to use when communicating with the remote
226 mailserver. If no protocol is specified, the default is AUTO.
228 may be one of the following:
231 Tries IMAP, POP3, and POP2 (skipping any of these for which support
232 has not been compiled in).
234 Post Office Protocol 2 (legacy, to be removed from future release)
236 Post Office Protocol 3
238 Use POP3 with old-fashioned MD5-challenge authentication.
240 Use POP3 with RPOP authentication.
242 Use POP3 with Kerberos V4 authentication on port 1109.
244 Use POP3 with Demon Internet's SDPS extensions.
246 IMAP2bis, IMAP4, or IMAP4rev1 (\fIfetchmail\fR automatically detects their capabilities).
248 Use the ESMTP ETRN option.
250 Use the the On-Demand Mail Relay ESMTP profile.
253 All these alternatives work in basically the same way (communicating
254 with standard server daemons to fetch mail already delivered to a
255 mailbox on the server) except ETRN and ODMR. The ETRN mode
256 allows you to ask a compliant ESMTP server (such as BSD sendmail at
257 release 8.8.0 or higher) to immediately open a sender-SMTP connection
258 to your client machine and begin forwarding any items addressed to
259 your client machine in the server's queue of undelivered mail. The
260 ODMR mode requires an ODMR-capable server and works similarly to
261 ETRN, except that it does not require the client machine to have
266 Force UIDL use (effective only with POP3). Force client-side tracking
267 of 'newness' of messages (UIDL stands for "unique ID listing" and is
268 described in RFC1939). Use with 'keep' to use a mailbox as a baby
269 news drop for a group of users. The fact that seen messages are skipped
270 is logged, unless error logging is done through syslog while running in
271 daemon mode. Note that fetchmail may automatically enable this option
272 depending on upstream server capabilities. Note also that this option
273 may be removed and forced enabled in a future fetchmail version. See
276 .B \-\-idle (since 6.3.3)
277 (Keyword: idle, since before 6.0.0)
278 Enable IDLE use (effective only with IMAP). Note that this works with
279 only one folder at a given time. While the idle rcfile keyword had been
280 supported for a long time, the \-\-idle command-line option was added in
281 version 6.3.3. IDLE use means that fetchmail tells the IMAP server to
282 send notice of new messages, so they can be retrieved sooner than would
283 be possible with regular polls.
285 .B \-P <portnumber> | \-\-service <servicename>
286 (Keyword: service) Since version 6.3.0.
287 The service option permits you to specify a service name to connect to.
288 You can specify a decimal port number here, if your services database
289 lacks the required service-port assignments. See the FAQ item R12 and
290 the \-\-ssl documentation for details. This replaces the older \-\-port
293 .B \-\-port <portnumber>
295 Obsolete version of \-\-service that does not take service names.
297 this option may be removed from a future version.
299 .B \-\-principal <principal>
301 The principal option permits you to specify a service principal for
302 mutual authentication. This is applicable to POP3 or IMAP with Kerberos
305 .B \-t <seconds> | \-\-timeout <seconds>
307 The timeout option allows you to set a server-nonresponse
308 timeout in seconds. If a mailserver does not send a greeting message
309 or respond to commands for the given number of seconds,
310 \fIfetchmail\fR will hang up on it. Without such a timeout
311 \fIfetchmail\fR might hang up indefinitely trying to fetch mail from a
312 down host. This would be particularly annoying for a \fIfetchmail\fR
313 running in background. There is a default timeout which fetchmail\~\-V
314 will report. If a given connection receives too many timeouts in
315 succession, fetchmail will consider it wedged and stop retrying,
316 the calling user will be notified by email if this happens.
318 .B \-\-plugin <command>
319 (Keyword: plugin) The plugin option allows you to use an external
320 program to establish the TCP connection. This is useful if you want
321 to use socks, SSL, ssh, or need some special firewalling setup. The
322 program will be looked up in $PATH and can optionally be passed the
323 hostname and port as arguments using "%h" and "%p" respectively (note
324 that the interpolation logic is rather primitive, and these token must
325 be bounded by whitespace or beginning of string or end of string).
326 Fetchmail will write to the plugin's stdin and read from the plugin's
329 .B \-\-plugout <command>
331 Identical to the plugin option above, but this one is used for the SMTP
332 connections (which will probably not need it, so it has been separated
335 .B \-r <name> | \-\-folder <name>
337 Causes a specified non-default mail folder on the mailserver (or
338 comma-separated list of folders) to be retrieved. The syntax of the
339 folder name is server-dependent. This option is not available under
343 (Keyword: tracepolls)
344 Tell fetchmail to poll trace information in the form 'polling %s
345 account %s' and 'folder %s' to the Received line it generates,
346 where the %s parts are replaced by the user's remote name, the poll
347 label, and the folder (mailbox) where available (the Received header
348 also normally includes the server's true name). This can be used to
349 facilitate mail filtering based on the account it is being received
350 from. The folder information is written only since version 6.3.4.
354 Causes the connection to the mail server to be encrypted via SSL. Connect
355 to the server using the specified base protocol over a connection secured
356 by SSL. SSL support must be present at the server.
358 Note that fetchmail may still try to negotiate TLS even if this option
359 is not given. You can use the \-\-sslproto option to defeat this
360 behavior or tell fetchmail to negotiate a particular SSL protocol.
362 If no port is specified, the connection is attempted to the well known
363 port of the SSL version of the base protocol. This is generally a
364 different port than the port used by the base protocol. For IMAP, this
365 is port 143 for the clear protocol and port 993 for the SSL secured
366 protocol, for POP3, it is port 110 for the clear text and port 995 for
367 the encrypted variant.
369 If your system lacks the corresponding entries from /etc/services, see
370 the \-\-service option and specify the numeric port number as given in
371 the previous paragraph (unless your ISP had directed you to different
372 ports, which is uncommon however).
374 .B \-\-sslcert <name>
376 Specifies the file name of the client side public SSL certificate. Some
377 SSL encrypted servers may require client side keys and certificates for
378 authentication. In most cases, this is optional. This specifies
379 the location of the public key certificate to be presented to the server
380 at the time the SSL session is established. It is not required (but may
381 be provided) if the server does not require it. Some servers may
382 require it, some servers may request it but not require it, and some
383 servers may not request it at all. It may be the same file
384 as the private key (combined key and certificate file) but this is not
389 Specifies the file name of the client side private SSL key. Some SSL
390 encrypted servers may require client side keys and certificates for
391 authentication. In most cases, this is optional. This specifies
392 the location of the private key used to sign transactions with the server
393 at the time the SSL session is established. It is not required (but may
394 be provided) if the server does not require it. Some servers may
395 require it, some servers may request it but not require it, and some
396 servers may not request it at all. It may be the same file
397 as the public key (combined key and certificate file) but this is not
398 recommended. If a password is required to unlock the key, it will be
399 prompted for at the time just prior to establishing the session to the
400 server. This can cause some complications in daemon mode.
402 .B \-\-sslproto <name>
404 Forces an SSL or TLS protocol. Possible values are '\fBssl2\fR',
405 \&'\fBssl3\fR', '\fBssl23\fR', and '\fBtls1\fR'. Try this if the default
406 handshake does not work for your server. To defeat automatic TLSv1
407 negotiation when the server advertises STARTTLS or STLS, use \fB''\fR or
408 \&'\fBssl23\fR'. This option, even if the argument is the empty string,
409 will also suppress the diagnostic 'SERVER: opportunistic upgrade to
410 TLS.' message in verbose mode. The default is to try appropriate
411 protocols depending on context.
415 Causes fetchmail to strictly check the server certificate against a set of
416 local trusted certificates (see the \fBsslcertpath\fR option). If the server
417 certificate is not signed by one of the trusted ones (directly or indirectly),
418 the SSL connection will fail, regardless of the \fBsslfingerprint\fR
419 option. This checking should prevent man-in-the-middle attacks against
420 the SSL connection. Note that CRLs are seemingly not currently supported
421 by OpenSSL in certificate verification! Your system clock should be
422 reasonably accurate when using this option.
424 Note that this optional behavior may become default behavior in future
427 .B \-\-sslcertpath <directory>
428 (Keyword: sslcertpath)
429 Sets the directory fetchmail uses to look up local certificates. The default
430 is your OpenSSL default one. The directory must be hashed as OpenSSL expects
431 it - every time you add or modify a certificate in the directory, you need
432 to use the \fBc_rehash\fR tool (which comes with OpenSSL in the tools/
435 .B \-\-sslfingerprint <fingerprint>
436 (Keyword: sslfingerprint)
437 Specify the fingerprint of the server key (an MD5 hash of the key) in
438 hexadecimal notation with colons separating groups of two digits. The letter
439 hex digits must be in upper case. This is the default format OpenSSL uses,
440 and the one fetchmail uses to report the fingerprint when an SSL connection
441 is established. When this is specified, fetchmail will compare the server key
442 fingerprint with the given one, and the connection will fail if they do not
443 match regardless of the \fBsslcertck\fR setting.
444 This can be used to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, but the finger
445 print from the server needs to be obtained or verified over a secure
446 channel, and certainly not over the same Internet connection that
449 Using this option will prevent printing certificate verification errors
450 as long as \-\-sslcertck is unset.
452 To obtain the fingerprint of a certificate stored in the file cert.pem,
456 openssl x509 \-in cert.pem \-noout \-md5 \-fingerprint
461 .SS Delivery Control Options
463 .B \-S <hosts> | \-\-smtphost <hosts>
464 (Keyword: smtp[host])
465 Specify a hunt list of hosts to forward mail to (one or more
466 hostnames, comma-separated). Hosts are tried in list order; the first
467 one that is up becomes the forwarding target for the current run. If
468 this option is not specified, 'localhost' is used as the default.
469 Each hostname may have a port number following the host name. The
470 port number is separated from the host name by a slash; the default
471 port is "smtp". If you specify an absolute path name (beginning with
472 a /), it will be interpreted as the name of a UNIX socket accepting
473 LMTP connections (such as is supported by the Cyrus IMAP daemon)
477 \-\-smtphost server1,server2/2525,server3,/var/imap/socket/lmtp
480 This option can be used with ODMR, and will make fetchmail a relay
481 between the ODMR server and SMTP or LMTP receiver.
483 .B \-\-fetchdomains <hosts>
484 (Keyword: fetchdomains)
485 In ETRN or ODMR mode, this option specifies the list of domains the
486 server should ship mail for once the connection is turned around. The
487 default is the FQDN of the machine running
490 .B \-D <domain> | \-\-smtpaddress <domain>
491 (Keyword: smtpaddress) Specify the domain to be appended to addresses
492 in RCPT TO lines shipped to SMTP. When this is not specified, the name
493 of the SMTP server (as specified by \-\-smtphost) is used for SMTP/LMTP
494 and 'localhost' is used for UNIX socket/BSMTP.
496 .B \-\-smtpname <user@domain>
498 Specify the domain and user to be put in RCPT TO lines shipped to SMTP.
499 The default user is the current local user.
501 .B \-Z <nnn> | \-\-antispam <nnn[, nnn]...>
503 Specifies the list of numeric SMTP errors that are to be interpreted
504 as a spam-block response from the listener. A value of \-1 disables
505 this option. For the command-line option, the list values should
508 .B \-m <command> | \-\-mda <command>
509 (Keyword: mda) You can force mail to be passed to an MDA directly
510 (rather than forwarded to port 25) with the \-\-mda or \-m option. To
511 avoid losing mail, use this option only with MDAs like maildrop or
512 MTAs like sendmail that return a nonzero status on disk-full and other
513 resource-exhaustion errors; the nonzero status tells fetchmail that
514 delivery failed and prevents the message from being deleted off the
515 server. If \fIfetchmail\fR is running as root, it sets its user id to
516 that of the target user while delivering mail through an MDA. Some
517 possible MDAs are "/usr/sbin/sendmail \-i \-f %F \-\- %T" (\fBNote:\fR
518 some several older or vendor sendmail versions mistake \-\- for an
519 address, rather than an indicator to mark the end of the option arguments),
520 "/usr/bin/deliver" and "/usr/bin/maildrop \-d %T". Local delivery
521 addresses will be inserted into the MDA command wherever you place a
522 %T; the mail message's From address will be inserted where you place
523 an %F. \fBDO NOT ENCLOSE THE %F OR %T STRING IN SINGLE QUOTES!\fR For
524 both %T and %F, fetchmail encloses the addresses in single quotes ('),
525 after removing any single quotes they may contain, before the MDA
526 command is passed to the shell. Do \fINOT\fR use an MDA invocation
527 like "sendmail \-i \-t" that dispatches on the contents of To/Cc/Bcc, it
528 will create mail loops and bring the just wrath of many postmasters
529 down upon your head. Also, do \fInot\fR try to combine multidrop
530 mode with an MDA such as maildrop or procmail that can only accept one
531 address; you will lose mail.
533 A word of warning: the well-known
535 package is very hard to configure properly, it has a very nasty "fall
536 through to the next rule" behavior on delivery errors (even temporary
537 ones, such as out of disk space if another user's mail daemon copies the
538 mailbox around to purge old messages), so your mail will end up in the
539 wrong mailbox sooner or later. The proper procmail configuration is
540 outside the scope of this document though. Using
542 is usually much easier, and many users find the filter syntax used by
543 maildrop easier to understand.
548 Cause delivery via LMTP (Local Mail Transfer Protocol). A service
549 host and port \fBmust\fR be explicitly specified on each host in the
550 smtphost hunt list (see above) if this option is selected; the default
551 port 25 will (in accordance with RFC 2033) not be accepted.
553 .B \-\-bsmtp <filename>
555 Append fetched mail to a BSMTP file. This simply contains the SMTP
556 commands that would normally be generated by fetchmail when passing
557 mail to an SMTP listener daemon. An argument of '\-' causes the mail
558 to be written to standard output. Note that fetchmail's
559 reconstruction of MAIL FROM and RCPT TO lines is not guaranteed
560 correct; the caveats discussed under THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP
561 MAILBOXES below apply.
562 .SS Resource Limit Control Options
564 .B \-l <maxbytes> | \-\-limit <maxbytes>
565 (Keyword: limit) Takes a maximum octet size argument. Messages larger
566 than this size will not be fetched and will be left on the server (in
567 foreground sessions, the progress messages will note that they are
568 "oversized"). If the fetch protocol permits (in particular, under
569 IMAP or POP3 without the fetchall option) the message will not be
572 An explicit \-\-limit of 0 overrides any limits set in your
573 run control file. This option is intended for those needing to
574 strictly control fetch time due to expensive and variable phone rates.
576 Combined with \-\-limitflush, it can be used to delete oversized
577 messages waiting on a server. In daemon mode, oversize notifications
578 are mailed to the calling user (see the \-\-warnings option). This
579 option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
581 .B \-w <interval> | \-\-warnings <interval>
583 Takes an interval in seconds. When you call
585 with a 'limit' option in daemon mode, this controls the interval at
586 which warnings about oversized messages are mailed to the calling user
587 (or the user specified by the 'postmaster' option). One such
588 notification is always mailed at the end of the the first poll that
589 the oversized message is detected. Thereafter, re-notification is
590 suppressed until after the warning interval elapses (it will take
591 place at the end of the first following poll).
593 .B \-b <count> | \-\-batchlimit <count>
594 (Keyword: batchlimit)
595 Specify the maximum number of messages that will be shipped to an SMTP
596 listener before the connection is deliberately torn down and rebuilt
597 (defaults to 0, meaning no limit). An explicit \-\-batchlimit of 0
598 overrides any limits set in your run control file. While
599 \fBsendmail\fR(8) normally initiates delivery of a message immediately
600 after receiving the message terminator, some SMTP listeners are not so
601 prompt. MTAs like \fIsmail\fR(8) may wait till the
602 delivery socket is shut down to deliver. This may produce annoying
603 delays when \fIfetchmail\fR is processing very large batches. Setting
604 the batch limit to some nonzero size will prevent these delays. This
605 option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
607 .B \-B <number> | \-\-fetchlimit <number>
608 (Keyword: fetchlimit)
609 Limit the number of messages accepted from a given server in a single
610 poll. By default there is no limit. An explicit \-\-fetchlimit of 0
611 overrides any limits set in your run control file.
612 This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
614 .B \-\-fetchsizelimit <number>
615 (Keyword: fetchsizelimit)
616 Limit the number of sizes of messages accepted from a given server in
617 a single transaction. This option is useful in reducing the delay in
618 downloading the first mail when there are too many mails in the
619 mailbox. By default, the limit is 100. If set to 0, sizes of all
620 messages are downloaded at the start.
621 This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR. For POP3, the only valid
624 .B \-\-fastuidl <number>
626 Do a binary instead of linear search for the first unseen UID. Binary
627 search avoids downloading the UIDs of all mails. This saves time
628 (especially in daemon mode) where downloading the same set of UIDs in
629 each poll is a waste of bandwidth. The number 'n' indicates how rarely
630 a linear search should be done. In daemon mode, linear search is used
631 once followed by binary searches in 'n-1' polls if 'n' is greater than
632 1; binary search is always used if 'n' is 1; linear search is always
633 used if 'n' is 0. In non-daemon mode, binary search is used if 'n' is
634 1; otherwise linear search is used. The default value of 'n' is 4.
635 This option works with POP3 only.
637 .B \-e <count> | \-\-expunge <count>
639 Arrange for deletions to be made final after a given number of
640 messages. Under POP2 or POP3, fetchmail cannot make deletions final
641 without sending QUIT and ending the session -- with this option on,
642 fetchmail will break a long mail retrieval session into multiple
643 sub-sessions, sending QUIT after each sub-session. This is a good
644 defense against line drops on POP3 servers that do not do the
645 equivalent of a QUIT on hangup. Under IMAP,
647 normally issues an EXPUNGE command after each deletion in order to
648 force the deletion to be done immediately. This is safest when your
649 connection to the server is flaky and expensive, as it avoids
650 resending duplicate mail after a line hit. However, on large
651 mailboxes the overhead of re-indexing after every message can slam the
652 server pretty hard, so if your connection is reliable it is good to do
653 expunges less frequently. Also note that some servers enforce a delay
654 of a few seconds after each quit, so fetchmail may not be able to get
655 back in immediately after an expunge -- you may see "lock busy" errors
656 if this happens. If you specify this option to an integer N,
659 to only issue expunges on every Nth delete. An argument of zero
660 suppresses expunges entirely (so no expunges at all will be done until
661 the end of run). This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
662 .SS Authentication Options
664 .B \-u <name> | \-\-user <name> | \-\-username <name>
665 (Keyword: user[name])
666 Specifies the user identification to be used when logging in to the mailserver.
667 The appropriate user identification is both server and user-dependent.
668 The default is your login name on the client machine that is running
670 See USER AUTHENTICATION below for a complete description.
672 .B \-I <specification> | \-\-interface <specification>
674 Require that a specific interface device be up and have a specific local
675 or remote IPv4 (IPv6 is not supported by this option yet) address (or
676 range) before polling. Frequently \fIfetchmail\fP
677 is used over a transient point-to-point TCP/IP link established directly
678 to a mailserver via SLIP or PPP. That is a relatively secure channel.
679 But when other TCP/IP routes to the mailserver exist (e.g. when the link
680 is connected to an alternate ISP), your username and password may be
681 vulnerable to snooping (especially when daemon mode automatically polls
682 for mail, shipping a clear password over the net at predictable
683 intervals). The \-\-interface option may be used to prevent this. When
684 the specified link is not up or is not connected to a matching IP
685 address, polling will be skipped. The format is:
688 interface/iii.iii.iii.iii[/mmm.mmm.mmm.mmm]
691 The field before the first slash is the interface name (i.e. sl0, ppp0
692 etc.). The field before the second slash is the acceptable IP address.
693 The field after the second slash is a mask which specifies a range of
694 IP addresses to accept. If no mask is present 255.255.255.255 is
695 assumed (i.e. an exact match). This option is currently only supported
696 under Linux and FreeBSD. Please see the
698 section for below for FreeBSD specific information.
700 Note that this option may be removed from a future fetchmail version.
702 .B \-M <interface> | \-\-monitor <interface>
704 Daemon mode can cause transient links which are automatically taken down
705 after a period of inactivity (e.g. PPP links) to remain up
706 indefinitely. This option identifies a system TCP/IP interface to be
707 monitored for activity. After each poll interval, if the link is up but
708 no other activity has occurred on the link, then the poll will be
709 skipped. However, when fetchmail is woken up by a signal, the
710 monitor check is skipped and the poll goes through unconditionally.
711 This option is currently only supported under Linux and FreeBSD.
716 options to work for non root users under FreeBSD, the fetchmail binary
717 must be installed SGID kmem. This would be a security hole, but
718 fetchmail runs with the effective GID set to that of the kmem group
720 when interface data is being collected.
722 Note that this option may be removed from a future fetchmail version.
725 (Keyword: auth[enticate])
726 This option permits you to specify an authentication type (see USER
727 AUTHENTICATION below for details). The possible values are \fBany\fR,
728 \&\fBpassword\fR, \fBkerberos_v5\fR, \fBkerberos\fR (or, for
729 excruciating exactness, \fBkerberos_v4\fR), \fBgssapi\fR,
730 \fBcram\-md5\fR, \fBotp\fR, \fBntlm\fR, \fBmsn\fR (only for POP3) and
731 \fBssh\fR. When \fBany\fR (the default) is specified, fetchmail tries
732 first methods that don't require a password (GSSAPI, KERBEROS\ IV,
733 KERBEROS\ 5); then it looks for methods that mask your password
734 (CRAM-MD5, X\-OTP - note that NTLM and MSN are not autoprobed for POP3
735 and MSN is only supported for POP3); and only if the server doesn't
736 support any of those will it ship your password en clair. Other values
737 may be used to force various authentication methods
738 (\fBssh\fR suppresses authentication and is thus good for IMAP PREAUTH).
739 Any value other than \fBpassword\fR, \fBcram\-md5\fR, \fBntlm\fR,
740 \&\fBmsn\fR or \fBotp\fR suppresses fetchmail's normal inquiry for a
741 password. Specify \fBssh\fR when you are using an end-to-end secure
742 connection such as an ssh tunnel; specify \fBgssapi\fR or
743 \&\fBkerberos_v4\fR if you are using a protocol variant that employs
744 GSSAPI or K4. Choosing KPOP protocol automatically selects Kerberos
745 authentication. This option does not work with ETRN.
746 .SS Miscellaneous Options
748 .B \-f <pathname> | \-\-fetchmailrc <pathname>
749 Specify a non-default name for the
751 run control file. The pathname argument must be either "-" (a single
752 dash, meaning to read the configuration from standard input) or a
753 filename. Unless the \-\-version option is also on, a named file
754 argument must have permissions no more open than 0600 (u=rw,g=,o=) or
757 .B \-i <pathname> | \-\-idfile <pathname>
759 Specify an alternate name for the .fetchids file used to save POP3
760 UIDs. NOTE: since fetchmail 6.3.0, write access to the directory
761 containing the idfile is required, as fetchmail writes a temporary file
762 and renames it into the place of the real idfile only if the temporary
763 file has been written successfully. This avoids the truncation of
764 idfiles when running out of disk space.
766 .B \--pidfile <pathname>
767 (Keyword: pidfile; since fetchmail v6.3.4)
768 Override the default location of the PID file. Default: see
771 .B \-n | \-\-norewrite
772 (Keyword: no rewrite)
775 edits RFC-822 address headers (To, From, Cc, Bcc, and Reply\-To) in
776 fetched mail so that any mail IDs local to the server are expanded to
777 full addresses (@ and the mailserver hostname are appended). This enables
778 replies on the client to get addressed correctly (otherwise your
779 mailer might think they should be addressed to local users on the
780 client machine!). This option disables the rewrite. (This option is
781 provided to pacify people who are paranoid about having an MTA edit
782 mail headers and want to know they can prevent it, but it is generally
783 not a good idea to actually turn off rewrite.)
784 When using ETRN or ODMR, the rewrite option is ineffective.
786 .B \-E <line> | \-\-envelope <line>
787 (Keyword: envelope; Multidrop only)
789 In the configuration file, an enhanced syntax is used:
791 .B envelope [<count>] <line>
793 This option changes the header
795 assumes will carry a copy of the mail's envelope address. Normally
796 this is 'X\-Envelope\-To', but as this header is not standard, practice
797 varies. See the discussion of multidrop address handling below. As a
798 special case, 'envelope "Received"' enables parsing of sendmail-style
799 Received lines. This is the default, and it should not be necessary
800 unless you have globally disabled Received parsing with 'no envelope'
801 in the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file.
803 The optional count argument (only available in the configuration file)
804 determines how many header lines of this kind are skipped. A count of 1
805 means: skip the first, take the second. A count of 2 means: skip the
806 first and second, take the third, and so on.
808 .B \-Q <prefix> | \-\-qvirtual <prefix>
809 (Keyword: qvirtual; Multidrop only)
810 The string prefix assigned to this option will be removed from the user
811 name found in the header specified with the \fIenvelope\fR option
812 (\fIbefore\fR doing multidrop name mapping or localdomain checking,
813 if either is applicable). This option is useful if you are using
815 to collect the mail for an entire domain and your ISP (or your mail
816 redirection provider) is using qmail.
817 One of the basic features of qmail is the
821 message header. Whenever qmail delivers a message to a local mailbox
822 it puts the username and hostname of the envelope recipient on this
823 line. The major reason for this is to prevent mail loops. To set up
824 qmail to batch mail for a disconnected site the ISP-mailhost will have
825 normally put that site in its 'Virtualhosts' control file so it will
826 add a prefix to all mail addresses for this site. This results in mail
827 .\" The \&@\& tries to stop HTML converters from making a mailto URL here.
828 sent to 'username\&@\&userhost.userdom.dom.com' having a
829 \&'Delivered\-To:' line of the form:
831 Delivered\-To: mbox\-userstr\-username\&@\&userhost.example.com
833 The ISP can make the 'mbox\-userstr\-' prefix anything they choose
834 but a string matching the user host name is likely.
835 By using the option 'envelope Delivered\-To:' you can make fetchmail reliably
836 identify the original envelope recipient, but you have to strip the
837 \&'mbox\-userstr\-' prefix to deliver to the correct user.
838 This is what this option is for.
843 file, interpret any command-line options specified, and dump a
844 configuration report to standard output. The configuration report is
845 a data structure assignment in the language Python. This option
846 is meant to be used with an interactive
854 Removed before version 6.3.0, the required underlying inet6_apps library
855 had been discontinued and is no longer available.
857 .SH USER AUTHENTICATION AND ENCRYPTION
858 All modes except ETRN require authentication of the client to the server.
859 Normal user authentication in
861 is very much like the authentication mechanism of
863 The correct user-id and password depend upon the underlying security
864 system at the mailserver.
866 If the mailserver is a Unix machine on which you have an ordinary user
867 account, your regular login name and password are used with
869 If you use the same login name on both the server and the client machines,
870 you needn't worry about specifying a user-id with the
872 option -- the default behavior is to use your login name on the
873 client machine as the user-id on the server machine. If you use a
874 different login name on the server machine, specify that login name
877 option. e.g. if your login name is 'jsmith' on a machine named 'mailgrunt',
882 fetchmail \-u jsmith mailgrunt
884 The default behavior of
886 is to prompt you for your mailserver password before the connection is
887 established. This is the safest way to use
889 and ensures that your password will not be compromised. You may also specify
890 your password in your
892 file. This is convenient when using
894 in daemon mode or with scripts.
895 .SS Using netrc files
897 If you do not specify a password, and
899 cannot extract one from your
901 file, it will look for a
903 file in your home directory before requesting one interactively; if an
904 entry matching the mailserver is found in that file, the password will
905 be used. Fetchmail first looks for a match on poll name; if it finds none,
906 it checks for a match on via name. See the
908 man page for details of the syntax of the
910 file. To show a practical example, a .netrc might look like
914 machine hermes.example.org
919 You can repeat this block with different user information if you need to
920 provide more than one password.
922 This feature may allow you to avoid duplicating password
923 information in more than one file.
925 On mailservers that do not provide ordinary user accounts, your user-id and
926 password are usually assigned by the server administrator when you apply for
927 a mailbox on the server. Contact your server administrator if you don't know
928 the correct user-id and password for your mailbox account.
931 Early versions of POP3 (RFC1081, RFC1225) supported a crude form of
932 independent authentication using the
934 file on the mailserver side. Under this RPOP variant, a fixed
935 per-user ID equivalent to a password was sent in clear over a link to
936 a reserved port, with the command RPOP rather than PASS to alert the
937 server that it should do special checking. RPOP is supported
940 (you can specify 'protocol RPOP' to have the program send 'RPOP'
941 rather than 'PASS') but its use is strongly discouraged, and support
942 will be removed from a future fetchmail version. This
943 facility was vulnerable to spoofing and was withdrawn in RFC1460.
945 RFC1460 introduced APOP authentication. In this variant of POP3,
946 you register an APOP password on your server host (the program
947 to do this with on the server is probably called \fIpopauth\fR(8)). You
948 put the same password in your
952 logs in, it sends a cryptographically secure hash of your password and
953 the server greeting time to the server, which can verify it by
954 checking its authorization database.
957 makes some efforts to make the server believe messages had not been
958 retrieved, by using the TOP command with a large number of lines when
959 possible. TOP is a command that retrieves the full header and
960 a \fIfetchmail\fP-specified amount of body lines. It is optional and
961 therefore not implemented by all servers, and some are known to
962 implement it improperly. On many servers however, the RETR command which
963 retrieves the full message with header and body, sets the "seen" flag
964 (for instance, in a web interface), whereas the TOP command does not do
968 will always use the RETR command if "fetchall" is set.
970 will also use the RETR command if "keep" is set and "uidl" is unset.
973 will use the RETR command on Maillennium POP3/PROXY
974 servers (used by Comcast) to avoid a deliberate TOP misinterpretation in
975 this server that causes message corruption.
979 will use the TOP command. This implies that in "keep" setups, "uidl"
980 must be set if "TOP" is desired.
983 that this description is true for the current version of fetchmail, but
984 the behavior may change in future versions. In particular, fetchmail may
985 prefer the RETR command because the TOP command causes much grief on
986 some servers and is only optional.
987 .SH ALTERNATE AUTHENTICATION FORMS
989 If your \fIfetchmail\fR was built with Kerberos support and you specify
990 Kerberos authentication (either with \-\-auth or the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
991 option \fBauthenticate kerberos_v4\fR) it will try to get a Kerberos
992 ticket from the mailserver at the start of each query. Note: if
993 either the pollname or via name is 'hesiod', fetchmail will try to use
994 Hesiod to look up the mailserver.
996 If you use POP3 or IMAP with GSSAPI authentication, \fIfetchmail\fR will
997 expect the server to have RFC1731- or RFC1734-conforming GSSAPI
998 capability, and will use it. Currently this has only been tested over
999 Kerberos V, so you're expected to already have a ticket-granting
1000 ticket. You may pass a username different from your principal name
1001 using the standard \fB\-\-user\fR command or by the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
1004 If your IMAP daemon returns the PREAUTH response in its greeting line,
1005 fetchmail will notice this and skip the normal authentication step.
1006 This can be useful, e.g. if you start imapd explicitly using ssh.
1007 In this case you can declare the authentication value 'ssh' on that
1008 site entry to stop \fI.fetchmail\fR from asking you for a password
1011 If you are using POP3, and the server issues a one-time-password
1012 challenge conforming to RFC1938, \fIfetchmail\fR will use your
1013 password as a pass phrase to generate the required response. This
1014 avoids sending secrets over the net unencrypted.
1016 Compuserve's RPA authentication (similar to APOP) is supported. If you
1017 compile in the support, \fIfetchmail\fR will try to perform an RPA pass-phrase
1018 authentication instead of sending over the password en clair if it
1019 detects "@compuserve.com" in the hostname.
1021 If you are using IMAP, Microsoft's NTLM authentication (used by Microsoft
1022 Exchange) is supported. If you compile in the support, \fIfetchmail\fR
1023 will try to perform an NTLM authentication (instead of sending over the
1024 password en clair) whenever the server returns AUTH=NTLM in its
1025 capability response. Specify a user option value that looks like
1026 \&'user@domain': the part to the left of the @ will be passed as the
1027 username and the part to the right as the NTLM domain.
1028 .SS Secure Socket Layers (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS)
1030 You can access SSL encrypted services by specifying the \-\-ssl option.
1031 You can also do this using the "ssl" user option in the .fetchmailrc
1032 file. With SSL encryption enabled, queries are initiated over a connection
1033 after negotiating an SSL session. Some services, such as POP3 and IMAP,
1034 have different well known ports defined for the SSL encrypted services.
1035 The encrypted ports will be selected automatically when SSL is enabled and
1036 no explicit port is specified.
1038 When connecting to an SSL encrypted server, the server presents a certificate
1039 to the client for validation. The certificate is checked to verify that
1040 the common name in the certificate matches the name of the server being
1041 contacted and that the effective and expiration dates in the certificate
1042 indicate that it is currently valid. If any of these checks fail, a warning
1043 message is printed, but the connection continues. The server certificate
1044 does not need to be signed by any specific Certifying Authority and may
1045 be a "self-signed" certificate.
1047 Some SSL encrypted servers may request a client side certificate. A client
1048 side public SSL certificate and private SSL key may be specified. If
1049 requested by the server, the client certificate is sent to the server for
1050 validation. Some servers may require a valid client certificate and may
1051 refuse connections if a certificate is not provided or if the certificate
1052 is not valid. Some servers may require client side certificates be signed
1053 by a recognized Certifying Authority. The format for the key files and
1054 the certificate files is that required by the underlying SSL libraries
1055 (OpenSSL in the general case).
1057 A word of care about the use of SSL: While above mentioned
1058 setup with self-signed server certificates retrieved over the wires
1059 can protect you from a passive eavesdropper it doesn't help against an
1060 active attacker. It's clearly an improvement over sending the
1061 passwords in clear but you should be aware that a man-in-the-middle
1062 attack is trivially possible (in particular with tools such as dsniff,
1063 http://monkey.org/~dugsong/dsniff/). Use of an ssh tunnel (see
1064 below for some examples) is preferable if you care seriously about the
1065 security of your mailbox.
1069 also supports authentication to the ESMTP server on the client side
1070 according to RFC 2554. You can specify a name/password pair to be
1071 used with the keywords 'esmtpname' and 'esmtppassword'; the former
1072 defaults to the username of the calling user.
1075 .SS Introducing the daemon mode
1078 puts itself into the background and runs forever, querying each
1079 specified host and then sleeping for a given polling interval.
1080 .SS Starting the daemon mode
1081 There are several ways to make fetchmail work in daemon mode. On the
1082 command line, \fB\-\-daemon\ <interval>\fR or \fB\-d\ <interval>\fR
1083 option runs \fIfetchmail\fR in daemon mode. You must specify a numeric
1084 argument which is a polling interval in seconds.
1086 Example: simply invoking
1090 will, therefore, poll all the hosts described in your
1092 file (except those explicitly excluded with the 'skip' verb) once
1095 It is also possible to set a polling interval
1096 in your \fI~/.fetchmailrc\fR file by saying 'set\ daemon\ <interval>',
1097 where <interval> is an integer number of seconds. If you do this,
1098 fetchmail will always start in daemon mode unless you override it with
1099 the command-line option \-\-daemon 0 or \-d0.
1101 Only one daemon process is permitted per user; in daemon mode,
1102 \fIfetchmail\fR sets up a per-user lockfile to guarantee this.
1103 (You can however cheat and set the FETCHMAILHOME environment variable to
1104 overcome this setting, but in that case, it is your responsibility to
1105 make sure you aren't polling the same server with two processes at the
1107 .SS Awakening the background daemon
1109 Normally, calling fetchmail with a daemon in the background sends a
1110 wake-up signal to the daemon and quits without output. The background
1111 daemon then starts its next poll cycle immediately. The wake-up signal,
1112 SIGUSR1, can also be sent manually. The wake-up action also clears any
1113 'wedged' flags indicating that connections have wedged due to failed
1114 authentication or multiple timeouts.
1115 .SS Terminating the background daemon
1119 will kill a running daemon process instead of waking it up (if there
1120 is no such process, \fIfetchmail\fP will notify you.
1121 If the \-\-quit option appears last on the command line, \fIfetchmail\fP
1122 will kill the running daemon process and then quit. Otherwise,
1123 \fIfetchmail\fP will first kill a running daemon process and then
1124 continue running with the other options.
1125 .SS Useful options for daemon mode
1130 .B \-\-logfile <filename>
1131 option (keyword: set logfile) is only effective when fetchmail is
1132 detached. This option allows you to redirect status messages
1133 into a specified logfile (follow the option with the logfile name). The
1134 logfile is opened for append, so previous messages aren't deleted. This
1135 is primarily useful for debugging configurations.
1139 option (keyword: set syslog) allows you to redirect status and error
1140 messages emitted to the
1142 system daemon if available.
1143 Messages are logged with an id of \fBfetchmail\fR, the facility \fBLOG_MAIL\fR,
1144 and priorities \fBLOG_ERR\fR, \fBLOG_ALERT\fR or \fBLOG_INFO\fR.
1145 This option is intended for logging status and error messages which
1146 indicate the status of the daemon and the results while fetching mail
1148 Error messages for command line options and parsing the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
1149 file are still written to stderr, or to the specified log file.
1152 option turns off use of
1154 assuming it's turned on in the
1159 .B \-\-logfile <file>
1166 option suppresses backgrounding and detachment of the
1167 daemon process from its control terminal. This is useful
1168 for debugging or when fetchmail runs as the child of a supervisor
1173 Note that this also causes the logfile option to be
1174 ignored (though perhaps it shouldn't).
1176 Note that while running in daemon mode polling a POP2 or IMAP2bis server,
1177 transient errors (such as DNS failures or sendmail delivery refusals)
1178 may force the fetchall option on for the duration of the next polling
1179 cycle. This is a robustness feature. It means that if a message is
1180 fetched (and thus marked seen by the mailserver) but not delivered
1181 locally due to some transient error, it will be re-fetched during the
1182 next poll cycle. (The IMAP logic doesn't delete messages until
1183 they're delivered, so this problem does not arise.)
1185 If you touch or change the
1187 file while fetchmail is running in daemon mode, this will be detected
1188 at the beginning of the next poll cycle. When a changed
1190 is detected, fetchmail rereads it and restarts from scratch (using
1191 exec(2); no state information is retained in the new instance).
1192 Note also that if you break the
1194 file's syntax, the new instance will softly and silently vanish away
1197 .SH ADMINISTRATIVE OPTIONS
1200 .B \-\-postmaster <name>
1201 option (keyword: set postmaster) specifies the last-resort username to
1202 which multidrop mail is to be forwarded if no matching local recipient
1203 can be found. It is also used as destination of undeliverable mail if
1204 the 'bouncemail' global option is off and additionally for spam-blocked
1205 mail if the 'bouncemail' global option is off and the 'spambounce'
1206 global option is on. This option defaults to the user who invoked
1208 If the invoking user is root, then the default of this option is
1209 the user 'postmaster'. Setting postmaster to the empty string causes
1210 such mail as described above to be discarded - this however is usually a
1212 See also the description of the 'FETCHMAILUSER' environment variable in
1213 the ENVIRONMENT section below.
1217 behaves like the "set no bouncemail" global option, which see.
1221 option (keyword: set invisible) tries to make fetchmail invisible.
1222 Normally, fetchmail behaves like any other MTA would -- it generates a
1223 Received header into each message describing its place in the chain of
1224 transmission, and tells the MTA it forwards to that the mail came from
1225 the machine fetchmail itself is running on. If the invisible option
1226 is on, the Received header is suppressed and fetchmail tries to spoof
1227 the MTA it forwards to into thinking it came directly from the
1232 option (keyword: set showdots) forces fetchmail to show progress dots
1233 even if the current tty is not stdout (for example logfiles).
1234 Fetchmail shows the dots by default when run in nodetach mode or when
1235 daemon mode is not enabled.
1239 option, you can ask fetchmail to add information to the Received
1240 header on the form "polling {label} account {user}", where {label} is
1241 the account label (from the specified rcfile, normally ~/.fetchmailrc)
1242 and {user} is the username which is used to log on to the mail
1243 server. This header can be used to make filtering email where no
1244 useful header information is available and you want mail from
1245 different accounts sorted into different mailboxes (this could, for
1246 example, occur if you have an account on the same server running a
1247 mailing list, and are subscribed to the list using that account). The
1248 default is not adding any such header. In
1250 this is called 'tracepolls'.
1252 .SH RETRIEVAL FAILURE MODES
1253 The protocols \fIfetchmail\fR uses to talk to mailservers are next to
1254 bulletproof. In normal operation forwarding to port 25, no message is
1255 ever deleted (or even marked for deletion) on the host until the SMTP
1256 listener on the client side has acknowledged to \fIfetchmail\fR that
1257 the message has been either accepted for delivery or rejected due to a
1260 When forwarding to an MDA, however, there is more possibility
1261 of error. Some MDAs are 'safe' and reliably return a nonzero status
1262 on any delivery error, even one due to temporary resource limits.
1265 program is like this; so are most programs designed as mail transport
1268 including the sendmail wrapper of Postfix and
1270 These programs give back a reliable positive acknowledgement and
1271 can be used with the mda option with no risk of mail loss. Unsafe
1272 MDAs, though, may return 0 even on delivery failure. If this
1273 happens, you will lose mail.
1275 The normal mode of \fIfetchmail\fR is to try to download only 'new'
1276 messages, leaving untouched (and undeleted) messages you have already
1277 read directly on the server (or fetched with a previous \fIfetchmail
1278 \-\-keep\fR). But you may find that messages you've already read on the
1279 server are being fetched (and deleted) even when you don't specify
1280 \-\-all. There are several reasons this can happen.
1282 One could be that you're using POP2. The POP2 protocol includes no
1283 representation of 'new' or 'old' state in messages, so \fIfetchmail\fR
1284 must treat all messages as new all the time. But POP2 is obsolete, so
1287 A potential POP3 problem might be servers that insert messages
1288 in the middle of mailboxes (some VMS implementations of mail are
1289 rumored to do this). The \fIfetchmail\fR code assumes that new
1290 messages are appended to the end of the mailbox; when this is not true
1291 it may treat some old messages as new and vice versa. Using UIDL whilst
1292 setting fastuidl 0 might fix this, otherwise, consider switching to IMAP.
1294 Yet another POP3 problem is that if they can't make tempfiles in the
1295 user's home directory, some POP3 servers will hand back an
1296 undocumented response that causes fetchmail to spuriously report "No
1299 The IMAP code uses the presence or absence of the server flag \eSeen
1300 to decide whether or not a message is new. This isn't the right thing
1301 to do, fetchmail should check the UIDVALIDITY and use UID, but it
1302 doesn't do that yet. Under Unix, it counts on your IMAP server to notice
1303 the BSD-style Status flags set by mail user agents and set the \eSeen
1304 flag from them when appropriate. All Unix IMAP servers we know of do
1305 this, though it's not specified by the IMAP RFCs. If you ever trip over
1306 a server that doesn't, the symptom will be that messages you have
1307 already read on your host will look new to the server. In this
1308 (unlikely) case, only messages you fetched with \fIfetchmail \-\-keep\fR
1309 will be both undeleted and marked old.
1311 In ETRN and ODMR modes, \fIfetchmail\fR does not actually retrieve messages;
1312 instead, it asks the server's SMTP listener to start a queue flush
1313 to the client via SMTP. Therefore it sends only undelivered messages.
1316 Many SMTP listeners allow administrators to set up 'spam filters' that
1317 block unsolicited email from specified domains. A MAIL FROM or DATA line that
1318 triggers this feature will elicit an SMTP response which
1319 (unfortunately) varies according to the listener.
1323 return an error code of 571.
1325 According to RFC2821, the correct thing to return in this situation is
1326 550 "Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable" (the draft adds
1327 "[E.g., mailbox not found, no access, or command rejected for policy
1330 Older versions of the
1332 MTA return 501 "Syntax error in parameters or arguments".
1336 MTA runs 554 as an antispam response.
1339 may reject code with a 500 response (followed by an enhanced status
1340 code that contains more information).
1344 treats as antispam responses and discards
1345 the message can be set with the 'antispam' option. This is one of the
1347 three circumstance under which fetchmail ever discards mail (the others
1348 are the 552 and 553 errors described below, and the suppression of
1349 multidropped messages with a message-ID already seen).
1353 is fetching from an IMAP server, the antispam response will be detected and
1354 the message rejected immediately after the headers have been fetched,
1355 without reading the message body. Thus, you won't pay for downloading
1356 spam message bodies.
1358 By default, the list of antispam responses is empty.
1360 If the \fIspambounce\fR global option is on, mail that is spam-blocked
1361 triggers an RFC1892/RFC1894 bounce message informing the originator that
1362 we do not accept mail from it. See also BUGS.
1364 .SH SMTP/ESMTP ERROR HANDLING
1365 Besides the spam-blocking described above, fetchmail takes special
1366 actions on the following SMTP/ESMTP error responses
1368 452 (insufficient system storage)
1369 Leave the message in the server mailbox for later retrieval.
1371 552 (message exceeds fixed maximum message size)
1372 Delete the message from the server. Send bounce-mail to the
1375 553 (invalid sending domain)
1376 Delete the message from the server. Don't even try to send
1377 bounce-mail to the originator.
1379 Other errors trigger bounce mail back to the originator. See also BUGS.
1381 .SH THE RUN CONTROL FILE
1382 The preferred way to set up fetchmail is to write a
1383 \&\fI.fetchmailrc\fR file in your home directory (you may do this
1384 directly, with a text editor, or indirectly via \fIfetchmailconf\fR).
1385 When there is a conflict between the command-line arguments and the
1386 arguments in this file, the command-line arguments take precedence.
1388 To protect the security of your passwords,
1389 your \fI~/.fetchmailrc\fR may not normally have more than 0600 (u=rw,g=,o=) permissions;
1391 will complain and exit otherwise (this check is suppressed when
1394 You may read the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file as a list of commands to
1397 is called with no arguments.
1398 .SS Run Control Syntax
1400 Comments begin with a '#' and extend through the end of the line.
1401 Otherwise the file consists of a series of server entries or global
1402 option statements in a free-format, token-oriented syntax.
1404 There are four kinds of tokens: grammar keywords, numbers
1405 (i.e. decimal digit sequences), unquoted strings, and quoted strings.
1406 A quoted string is bounded by double quotes and may contain
1407 whitespace (and quoted digits are treated as a string). Note that
1408 quoted strings will also contain line feed characters if they run across
1409 two or more lines, unless you use a backslash to join lines (see below).
1410 An unquoted string is any whitespace-delimited token that is neither
1411 numeric, string quoted nor contains the special characters ',', ';',
1414 Any amount of whitespace separates tokens in server entries, but is
1415 otherwise ignored. You may use backslash escape sequences (\en for LF,
1416 \&\et for HT, \eb for BS, \er for CR, \e\fInnn\fP for decimal (where
1417 nnn cannot start with a 0), \e0\fIooo\fP for octal, and \ex\fIhh\fP for
1418 hex) to embed non-printable characters or string delimiters in strings.
1419 In quoted strings, a backslash at the very end of a line will cause the
1420 backslash itself and the line feed (LF or NL, new line) character to be
1421 ignored, so that you can wrap long strings. Without the backslash at the
1422 line end, the line feed character would become part of the string.
1425 while these resemble C-style escape sequences, they are not the same.
1426 fetchmail only supports these eight styles. C supports more escape
1427 sequences that consist of backslash (\e) and a single character, but
1428 does not support decimal codes and does not require the leading 0 in
1429 octal notation. Example: fetchmail interprets \e233 the same as \exE9
1430 (Latin small letter e with acute), where C would interpret \e233 as
1431 octal 0233 = \ex9B (CSI, control sequence introducer).
1433 Each server entry consists of one of the keywords 'poll' or 'skip',
1434 followed by a server name, followed by server options, followed by any
1435 number of user descriptions. Note: the most common cause of syntax
1436 errors is mixing up user and server options.
1438 For backward compatibility, the word 'server' is a synonym for 'poll'.
1440 You can use the noise keywords 'and', 'with',
1441 \&'has', 'wants', and 'options' anywhere in an entry to make
1442 it resemble English. They're ignored, but but can make entries much
1443 easier to read at a glance. The punctuation characters ':', ';' and
1444 \&',' are also ignored.
1447 The 'poll' verb tells fetchmail to query this host when it is run with
1448 no arguments. The 'skip' verb tells
1450 not to poll this host unless it is explicitly named on the command
1451 line. (The 'skip' verb allows you to experiment with test entries
1452 safely, or easily disable entries for hosts that are temporarily down.)
1454 .SS Keyword/Option Summary
1455 Here are the legal options. Keyword suffixes enclosed in
1456 square brackets are optional. Those corresponding to short command-line
1457 options are followed by '\-' and the appropriate option letter. If
1458 option is only relevant to a single mode of operation, it is noted as
1459 \&'s' or 'm' for singledrop- or multidrop-mode, respectively.
1461 Here are the legal global options:
1465 Keyword Opt Mode Function
1467 set daemon \-d \& T{
1468 Set a background poll interval in seconds.
1470 set postmaster \& \& T{
1471 Give the name of the last-resort mail recipient (default: user running
1472 fetchmail, "postmaster" if run by the root user)
1474 set bouncemail \& \& T{
1475 Direct error mail to the sender (default)
1477 set no bouncemail \& \& T{
1478 Direct error mail to the local postmaster (as per the 'postmaster'
1479 global option above).
1481 set no spambounce \& \& T{
1482 Do not bounce spam-blocked mail (default).
1484 set spambounce \& \& T{
1485 Bounce blocked spam-blocked mail (as per the 'antispam' user option)
1486 back to the destination as indicated by the 'bouncemail' global option.
1487 Warning: Do not use this to bounce spam back to the sender - most spam
1488 is sent with false sender address and thus this option hurts innocent
1491 set logfile \-L \& T{
1492 Name of a file to append error and status messages to.
1494 set idfile \-i \& T{
1495 Name of the file to store UID lists in.
1498 Do error logging through syslog(3).
1500 set no syslog \& \& T{
1501 Turn off error logging through syslog(3). (default)
1503 set properties \& \& T{
1504 String value that is ignored by fetchmail (may be used by extension
1509 Here are the legal server options:
1513 Keyword Opt Mode Function
1516 Specify DNS name of mailserver, overriding poll name
1518 proto[col] \-p \& T{
1519 Specify protocol (case insensitive):
1520 POP2, POP3, IMAP, APOP, KPOP
1522 local[domains] \& m T{
1523 Specify domain(s) to be regarded as local
1526 Specify TCP/IP service port (obsolete, use 'service' instead).
1529 Specify service name (a numeric value is also allowed and
1530 considered a TCP/IP port number).
1532 auth[enticate] \& \& T{
1533 Set authentication type (default 'any')
1536 Server inactivity timeout in seconds (default 300)
1539 Specify envelope-address header name
1542 Disable looking for envelope address
1545 Qmail virtual domain prefix to remove from user name
1548 Specify alternate DNS names of mailserver
1551 specify IP interface(s) that must be up for server poll to take place
1554 Specify IP address to monitor for activity
1557 Specify command through which to make server connections.
1560 Specify command through which to make listener connections.
1563 Enable DNS lookup for multidrop (default)
1566 Disable DNS lookup for multidrop
1569 Do comparison by IP address for multidrop
1571 no checkalias \& m T{
1572 Do comparison by name for multidrop (default)
1575 Force POP3 to use client-side UIDLs (recommended)
1578 Turn off POP3 use of client-side UIDLs (default)
1581 Only check this site every N poll cycles; N is a numeric argument.
1584 Add poll tracing information to the Received header
1587 Set Kerberos principal (only useful with imap and kerberos)
1590 Set name for RFC2554 authentication to the ESMTP server.
1592 esmtppassword \& \& T{
1593 Set password for RFC2554 authentication to the ESMTP server.
1597 Here are the legal user options:
1601 Keyword Opt Mode Function
1603 user[name] \-u \& T{
1604 Set remote user name
1605 (local user name if name followed by 'here')
1608 Connect local and remote user names
1611 Connect local and remote user names
1614 Specify remote account password
1617 Connect to server over the specified base protocol using SSL encryption
1620 Specify file for client side public SSL certificate
1623 Specify file for client side private SSL key
1626 Force ssl protocol for connection
1629 Specify remote folder to query
1632 Specify smtp host(s) to forward to
1634 fetchdomains \& m T{
1635 Specify domains for which mail should be fetched
1637 smtpaddress \-D \& T{
1638 Specify the domain to be put in RCPT TO lines
1641 Specify the user and domain to be put in RCPT TO lines
1644 Specify what SMTP returns are interpreted as spam-policy blocks
1647 Specify MDA for local delivery
1650 Specify BSMTP batch file to append to
1653 Command to be executed before each connection
1655 postconnect \& \& T{
1656 Command to be executed after each connection
1659 Don't delete seen messages from server (for POP3, uidl is recommended)
1662 Flush all seen messages before querying (DANGEROUS)
1665 Flush all oversized messages before querying
1668 Fetch all messages whether seen or not
1671 Rewrite destination addresses for reply (default)
1674 Strip carriage returns from ends of lines
1677 Force carriage returns at ends of lines
1680 Force BODY=8BITMIME to ESMTP listener
1683 Strip Status and X-Mozilla-Status lines out of incoming mail
1685 dropdelivered \& \& T{
1686 Strip Delivered-To lines out of incoming mail
1689 Convert quoted-printable to 8-bit in MIME messages
1692 Idle waiting for new messages after each poll (IMAP only)
1695 Delete seen messages from server (default)
1698 Don't flush all seen messages before querying (default)
1700 no fetchall \& \& T{
1701 Retrieve only new messages (default)
1704 Don't rewrite headers
1707 Don't strip carriage returns (default)
1710 Don't force carriage returns at EOL (default)
1712 no pass8bits \& \& T{
1713 Don't force BODY=8BITMIME to ESMTP listener (default)
1715 no dropstatus \& \& T{
1716 Don't drop Status headers (default)
1718 no dropdelivered \& \& T{
1719 Don't drop Delivered\-To headers (default)
1721 no mimedecode \& \& T{
1722 Don't convert quoted-printable to 8-bit in MIME messages (default)
1725 Don't idle waiting for new messages after each poll (IMAP only)
1728 Set message size limit
1731 Set message size warning interval
1733 batchlimit \-b \& T{
1734 Max # messages to forward in single connect
1736 fetchlimit \-B \& T{
1737 Max # messages to fetch in single connect
1739 fetchsizelimit \& \& T{
1740 Max # message sizes to fetch in single transaction
1743 Use binary search for first unseen message (POP3 only)
1746 Perform an expunge on every #th message (IMAP and POP3 only)
1749 String value is ignored by fetchmail (may be used by extension scripts)
1753 Remember that all user options must \fIfollow\fR all server options.
1755 In the .fetchmailrc file, the 'envelope' string argument may be
1756 preceded by a whitespace-separated number. This number, if specified,
1757 is the number of such headers to skip over (that is, an argument of 1
1758 selects the second header of the given type). This is sometime useful
1759 for ignoring bogus envelope headers created by an ISP's local delivery
1760 agent or internal forwards (through mail inspection systems, for
1762 .SS Keywords Not Corresponding To Option Switches
1764 The 'folder' and 'smtphost' options (unlike their command-line
1765 equivalents) can take a space- or comma-separated list of names
1768 All options correspond to the obvious command-line arguments, except
1769 the following: 'via', 'interval', 'aka', 'is', 'to', 'dns'/'no dns',
1770 \&'checkalias'/'no checkalias', 'password', 'preconnect', 'postconnect',
1771 \&'localdomains', 'stripcr'/'no stripcr', 'forcecr'/'no forcecr',
1772 \&'pass8bits'/'no pass8bits' 'dropstatus/no dropstatus',
1773 \&'dropdelivered/no dropdelivered', 'mimedecode/no mimedecode', 'no idle',
1776 The 'via' option is for if you want to have more
1777 than one configuration pointing at the same site. If it is present,
1778 the string argument will be taken as the actual DNS name of the
1779 mailserver host to query.
1780 This will override the argument of poll, which can then simply be a
1781 distinct label for the configuration (e.g. what you would give on the
1782 command line to explicitly query this host).
1784 The 'interval' option (which takes a numeric argument) allows you to poll a
1785 server less frequently than the basic poll interval. If you say
1786 \&'interval N' the server this option is attached to will only be
1787 queried every N poll intervals.
1789 The 'is' or 'to' keywords associate the following local (client)
1790 name(s) (or server-name to client-name mappings separated by =) with
1791 the mailserver user name in the entry. If an is/to list has '*' as
1792 its last name, unrecognized names are simply passed through.
1794 A single local name can be used to support redirecting your mail when
1795 your username on the client machine is different from your name on the
1796 mailserver. When there is only a single local name, mail is forwarded
1797 to that local username regardless of the message's Received, To, Cc,
1798 and Bcc headers. In this case
1800 never does DNS lookups.
1802 When there is more than one local name (or name mapping) the
1803 \fIfetchmail\fR code does look at the Received, To, Cc, and Bcc
1804 headers of retrieved mail (this is 'multidrop mode'). It looks for
1805 addresses with hostname parts that match your poll name or your 'via',
1806 \&'aka' or 'localdomains' options, and usually also for hostname parts
1807 which DNS tells it are aliases of the mailserver. See the discussion
1808 of 'dns', 'checkalias', 'localdomains', and 'aka' for details on how
1809 matching addresses are handled.
1811 If \fIfetchmail\fR cannot match any mailserver usernames or
1812 localdomain addresses, the mail will be bounced.
1813 Normally it will be bounced to the sender, but if the 'bouncemail'
1814 global option is off, the mail will go to the local postmaster instead.
1815 (see the 'postmaster' global option). See also BUGS.
1817 The 'dns' option (normally on) controls the way addresses from
1818 multidrop mailboxes are checked. On, it enables logic to check each
1819 host address that does not match an 'aka' or 'localdomains' declaration
1820 by looking it up with DNS. When a mailserver username is recognized
1821 attached to a matching hostname part, its local mapping is added to
1822 the list of local recipients.
1824 The 'checkalias' option (normally off) extends the lookups performed
1825 by the 'dns' keyword in multidrop mode, providing a way to cope with
1826 remote MTAs that identify themselves using their canonical name, while
1827 they're polled using an alias.
1828 When such a server is polled, checks to extract the envelope address
1831 reverts to delivery using the To/Cc/Bcc headers (See below
1832 \&'Header vs. Envelope addresses').
1833 Specifying this option instructs
1835 to retrieve all the IP addresses associated with both the poll name
1836 and the name used by the remote MTA and to do a comparison of the IP
1837 addresses. This comes in handy in situations where the remote server
1838 undergoes frequent canonical name changes, that would otherwise
1839 require modifications to the rcfile. 'checkalias' has no effect if
1840 \&'no dns' is specified in the rcfile.
1842 The 'aka' option is for use with multidrop mailboxes. It allows you
1843 to pre-declare a list of DNS aliases for a server. This is an
1844 optimization hack that allows you to trade space for speed. When
1846 while processing a multidrop mailbox, grovels through message headers
1847 looking for names of the mailserver, pre-declaring common ones can
1848 save it from having to do DNS lookups. Note: the names you give
1849 as arguments to 'aka' are matched as suffixes -- if you specify
1850 (say) 'aka netaxs.com', this will match not just a hostname
1851 netaxs.com, but any hostname that ends with '.netaxs.com'; such as
1852 (say) pop3.netaxs.com and mail.netaxs.com.
1854 The 'localdomains' option allows you to declare a list of domains
1855 which fetchmail should consider local. When fetchmail is parsing
1856 address lines in multidrop modes, and a trailing segment of a host
1857 name matches a declared local domain, that address is passed through
1858 to the listener or MDA unaltered (local-name mappings are \fInot\fR
1861 If you are using 'localdomains', you may also need to specify 'no
1862 envelope', which disables \fIfetchmail\fR's normal attempt to deduce
1863 an envelope address from the Received line or X-Envelope-To header or
1864 whatever header has been previously set by 'envelope'. If you set 'no
1865 envelope' in the defaults entry it is possible to undo that in
1866 individual entries by using 'envelope <string>'. As a special case,
1867 \&'envelope "Received"' restores the default parsing of
1870 The \fBpassword\fR option requires a string argument, which is the password
1871 to be used with the entry's server.
1873 The 'preconnect' keyword allows you to specify a shell command to be
1874 executed just before each time
1876 establishes a mailserver connection. This may be useful if you are
1877 attempting to set up secure POP connections with the aid of
1879 If the command returns a nonzero status, the poll of that mailserver
1882 Similarly, the 'postconnect' keyword similarly allows you to specify a
1883 shell command to be executed just after each time a mailserver
1884 connection is taken down.
1886 The 'forcecr' option controls whether lines terminated by LF only are
1887 given CRLF termination before forwarding. Strictly speaking RFC821
1888 requires this, but few MTAs enforce the requirement it so this option
1889 is normally off (only one such MTA, qmail, is in significant use at
1892 The 'stripcr' option controls whether carriage returns are stripped
1893 out of retrieved mail before it is forwarded. It is normally not
1894 necessary to set this, because it defaults to 'on' (CR stripping
1895 enabled) when there is an MDA declared but 'off' (CR stripping
1896 disabled) when forwarding is via SMTP. If 'stripcr' and 'forcecr' are
1897 both on, 'stripcr' will override.
1899 The 'pass8bits' option exists to cope with Microsoft mail programs that
1900 stupidly slap a "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit" on everything. With
1901 this option off (the default) and such a header present,
1903 declares BODY=7BIT to an ESMTP-capable listener; this causes problems for
1904 messages actually using 8-bit ISO or KOI-8 character sets, which will
1905 be garbled by having the high bits of all characters stripped. If
1906 \&'pass8bits' is on,
1908 is forced to declare BODY=8BITMIME to any ESMTP-capable listener. If
1909 the listener is 8-bit-clean (as all the major ones now are) the right
1910 thing will probably result.
1912 The 'dropstatus' option controls whether nonempty Status and
1913 X-Mozilla-Status lines are retained in fetched mail (the default) or
1914 discarded. Retaining them allows your MUA to see what messages (if
1915 any) were marked seen on the server. On the other hand, it can
1916 confuse some new-mail notifiers, which assume that anything with a
1917 Status line in it has been seen. (Note: the empty Status lines
1918 inserted by some buggy POP servers are unconditionally discarded.)
1920 The 'dropdelivered' option controls whether Delivered\-To headers will
1921 be kept in fetched mail (the default) or discarded. These headers are
1922 added by Qmail and Postfix mailservers in order to avoid mail loops but
1923 may get in your way if you try to "mirror" a mailserver within the same
1924 domain. Use with caution.
1926 The 'mimedecode' option controls whether MIME messages using the
1927 quoted-printable encoding are automatically converted into pure 8-bit
1928 data. If you are delivering mail to an ESMTP-capable, 8-bit-clean
1929 listener (that includes all of the major MTAs like sendmail), then
1930 this will automatically convert quoted-printable message headers and
1931 data into 8-bit data, making it easier to understand when reading
1932 mail. If your e-mail programs know how to deal with MIME messages,
1933 then this option is not needed. The mimedecode option is off by
1934 default, because doing RFC2047 conversion on headers throws away
1935 character-set information and can lead to bad results if the encoding
1936 of the headers differs from the body encoding.
1938 The 'idle' option is intended to be used with IMAP servers supporting
1939 the RFC2177 IDLE command extension, but does not strictly require it.
1940 If it is enabled, and fetchmail detects that IDLE is supported, an
1941 IDLE will be issued at the end of each poll. This will tell the IMAP
1942 server to hold the connection open and notify the client when new mail
1943 is available. If IDLE is not supported, fetchmail will simulate it by
1944 periodically issuing NOOP. If you need to poll a link frequently, IDLE
1945 can save bandwidth by eliminating TCP/IP connects and LOGIN/LOGOUT
1946 sequences. On the other hand, an IDLE connection will eat almost all
1947 of your fetchmail's time, because it will never drop the connection
1948 and allow other polls to occur unless the server times out the IDLE.
1949 It also doesn't work with multiple folders; only the first folder will
1953 The 'properties' option is an extension mechanism. It takes a string
1954 argument, which is ignored by fetchmail itself. The string argument may be
1955 used to store configuration information for scripts which require it.
1956 In particular, the output of '\-\-configdump' option will make properties
1957 associated with a user entry readily available to a Python script.
1959 .SS Miscellaneous Run Control Options
1960 The words 'here' and 'there' have useful English-like
1961 significance. Normally 'user eric is esr' would mean that
1962 mail for the remote user 'eric' is to be delivered to 'esr',
1963 but you can make this clearer by saying 'user eric there is esr here',
1964 or reverse it by saying 'user esr here is eric there'
1966 Legal protocol identifiers for use with the 'protocol' keyword are:
1969 auto (or AUTO) (legacy, to be removed from future release)
1970 pop2 (or POP2) (legacy, to be removed from future release)
1979 Legal authentication types are 'any', 'password', 'kerberos',
1980 \&'kerberos_v4', 'kerberos_v5' and 'gssapi', 'cram\-md5', 'otp', 'msn'
1981 (only for POP3), 'ntlm', 'ssh'. The 'password' type specifies
1982 authentication by normal transmission of a password (the password may be
1983 plain text or subject to protocol-specific encryption as in APOP);
1984 \&'kerberos' tells \fIfetchmail\fR to try to get a Kerberos ticket at the
1985 start of each query instead, and send an arbitrary string as the
1986 password; and 'gssapi' tells fetchmail to use GSSAPI authentication.
1987 See the description of the 'auth' keyword for more.
1989 Specifying 'kpop' sets POP3 protocol over port 1109 with Kerberos V4
1990 authentication. These defaults may be overridden by later options.
1992 There are some global option statements: 'set logfile'
1993 followed by a string sets the same global specified by \-\-logfile. A
1994 command-line \-\-logfile option will override this. Note that \-\-logfile is
1995 only effective if fetchmail detaches itself from the terminal. Also,
1996 \&'set daemon' sets the poll interval as \-\-daemon does. This can be
1997 overridden by a command-line \-\-daemon option; in particular \-\-daemon\~0
1998 can be used to force foreground operation. The 'set postmaster'
1999 statement sets the address to which multidrop mail defaults if there are
2000 no local matches. Finally, 'set syslog' sends log messages to
2003 .SH DEBUGGING FETCHMAIL
2004 .SS Fetchmail crashing
2005 There are various ways in that fetchmail may "crash", i. e. stop
2006 operation suddenly and unexpectedly. A "crash" usually refers to an
2007 error condition that the software did not handle by itself. A well-known
2008 failure mode is the "segmentation fault" or "signal 11" or "SIGSEGV" or
2009 just "segfault" for short. These can be caused by hardware or by software
2010 problems. Software-induced segfaults can usually be reproduced easily
2011 and in the same place, whereas hardware-induced segfaults can go away if
2012 the computer is rebooted, or powered off for a few hours, and can happen
2013 in random locations even if you use the software the same way.
2015 For solving hardware-induced segfaults, find the faulty component and repair or
2016 replace it. <http://www.bitwizard.nl/sig11/> may help you with details.
2018 For solving software-induced segfaults, the developers may need a "stack
2021 .SS Enabling fetchmail core dumps
2022 By default, fetchmail suppresses core dumps as these might contain
2023 passwords and other sensitive information. For debugging fetchmail
2024 crashes, obtaining a "stack backtrace" from a core dump is often the
2025 quickest way to solve the problem, and when posting your problem on a
2026 mailing list, the developers may ask you for a "backtrace".
2028 1. To get useful backtraces, fetchmail needs to be installed without
2029 getting stripped of its compilation symbols. Unfortunately, most
2030 binary packages that are installed are stripped, and core files from
2031 symbol-stripped programs are worthless. So you may need to recompile
2032 fetchmail. On many systems, you can type
2035 file `which fetchmail`
2038 to find out if fetchmail was symbol-stripped or not. If yours was
2039 unstripped, fine, proceed, if it was stripped, you need to recompile the
2040 source code first. You do not usually need to install fetchmail in order
2043 2. The shell environment that starts fetchmail needs to enable core
2044 dumps. The key is the "maximum core (file) size" that can usually be
2045 configured with a tool named "limit" or "ulimit". See the documentation
2046 for your shell for details. In the popular bash shell, "ulimit \-Sc
2047 unlimited" will allow the core dump.
2049 3. You need to tell fetchmail, too, to allow core dumps. To do
2050 this, run fetchmail with the \fB\-d0 \-v\fP options. It is often easier
2051 to also add \fB\-\-nosyslog \-N\fR as well.
2053 Finally, you need to reproduce the crash. You can just start fetchmail
2054 from the directory where you compiled it by typing \fB./fetchmail\fR,
2055 so the complete command line will start with \fB./fetchmail \-Nvd0
2056 \&\-\-nosyslog\fR and perhaps list your other options.
2058 After the crash, run your debugger to obtain the core dump. The
2059 debugger will often be GNU GDB, you can then type (adjust paths as
2060 necessary) \fBgdb ./fetchmail fetchmail.core\fR and then, after GDB
2061 has started up and read all its files, type \fBbacktrace full\fR, save
2062 the output (copy & paste will do, the backtrace will be read by a human)
2063 and then type \fBquit\fR to leave gdb.
2065 on some systems, the core
2066 files have different names, they might contain a number instead of the
2067 program name, or number and name, but it will usually have "core" as
2070 .SH INTERACTION WITH RFC 822
2071 When trying to determine the originating address of a message,
2072 fetchmail looks through headers in the following order:
2076 Resent-Sender: (ignored if it doesn't contain an @ or !)
2077 Sender: (ignored if it doesn't contain an @ or !)
2084 The originating address is used for logging, and to set the MAIL FROM
2085 address when forwarding to SMTP. This order is intended to cope
2086 gracefully with receiving mailing list messages in multidrop mode. The
2087 intent is that if a local address doesn't exist, the bounce message
2088 won't be returned blindly to the author or to the list itself, but
2089 rather to the list manager (which is less annoying).
2091 In multidrop mode, destination headers are processed as follows:
2092 First, fetchmail looks for the Received: header (or whichever one is
2093 specified by the 'envelope' option) to determine the local
2094 recipient address. If the mail is addressed to more than one recipient,
2095 the Received line won't contain any information regarding recipient addresses.
2097 Then fetchmail looks for the Resent-To:, Resent-Cc:, and Resent-Bcc:
2098 lines. If they exist, they should contain the final recipients and
2099 have precedence over their To:/Cc:/Bcc: counterparts. If the Resent\-*
2100 lines don't exist, the To:, Cc:, Bcc: and Apparently-To: lines are
2101 looked for. (The presence of a Resent\-To: is taken to imply that the
2102 person referred by the To: address has already received the original
2105 .SH CONFIGURATION EXAMPLES
2106 Note that although there are password declarations in a good many
2107 of the examples below, this is mainly for illustrative purposes.
2108 We recommend stashing account/password pairs in your $HOME/.netrc
2109 file, where they can be used not just by fetchmail but by ftp(1) and
2115 poll SERVERNAME protocol PROTOCOL username NAME password PASSWORD
2121 poll pop.provider.net protocol pop3 username "jsmith" password "secret1"
2124 Or, using some abbreviations:
2127 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" password "secret1"
2130 Multiple servers may be listed:
2133 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" pass "secret1"
2134 poll other.provider.net proto pop2 user "John.Smith" pass "My^Hat"
2137 Here's a version of those two with more whitespace and some noise words:
2140 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3
2141 user "jsmith", with password secret1, is "jsmith" here;
2142 poll other.provider.net proto pop2:
2143 user "John.Smith", with password "My^Hat", is "John.Smith" here;
2146 This version is much easier to read and doesn't cost significantly
2147 more (parsing is done only once, at startup time).
2150 If you need to include whitespace in a parameter string, enclose the
2151 string in double quotes. Thus:
2154 poll mail.provider.net with proto pop3:
2155 user "jsmith" there has password "u can't krak this"
2156 is jws here and wants mda "/bin/mail"
2159 You may have an initial server description headed by the keyword
2160 \&'defaults' instead of 'poll' followed by a name. Such a record
2161 is interpreted as defaults for all queries to use. It may be overwritten
2162 by individual server descriptions. So, you could write:
2167 poll pop.provider.net
2169 poll mail.provider.net
2170 user "jjsmith" there has password "secret2"
2173 It's possible to specify more than one user per server (this is only
2174 likely to be useful when running fetchmail in daemon mode as root).
2175 The 'user' keyword leads off a user description, and every user specification
2176 in a multi-user entry must include it. Here's an example:
2179 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 port 3111
2180 user "jsmith" with pass "secret1" is "smith" here
2181 user jones with pass "secret2" is "jjones" here keep
2184 This associates the local username 'smith' with the pop.provider.net
2185 username 'jsmith' and the local username 'jjones' with the
2186 pop.provider.net username 'jones'. Mail for 'jones' is kept on the
2187 server after download.
2189 Here's what a simple retrieval configuration for a multi-drop mailbox
2193 poll pop.provider.net:
2194 user maildrop with pass secret1 to golux 'hurkle'='happy' snark here
2197 This says that the mailbox of account 'maildrop' on the server is a
2198 multi-drop box, and that messages in it should be parsed for the
2199 server user names 'golux', 'hurkle', and 'snark'. It further
2200 specifies that 'golux' and 'snark' have the same name on the
2201 client as on the server, but mail for server user 'hurkle' should be
2202 delivered to client user 'happy'.
2204 Here's an example of another kind of multidrop connection:
2207 poll pop.provider.net localdomains loonytoons.org toons.org:
2208 user maildrop with pass secret1 to * here
2211 This also says that the mailbox of account 'maildrop' on the server is
2212 a multi-drop box. It tells fetchmail that any address in the
2213 loonytoons.org or toons.org domains (including sub-domain addresses like
2214 \&'joe@daffy.loonytoons.org') should be passed through to the local SMTP
2215 listener without modification. Be careful of mail loops if you do this!
2217 Here's an example configuration using ssh and the plugin option. The
2218 queries are made directly on the stdin and stdout of imapd via ssh.
2219 Note that in this setup, IMAP authentication can be skipped.
2222 poll mailhost.net with proto imap:
2223 plugin "ssh %h /usr/sbin/imapd" auth ssh;
2224 user esr is esr here
2227 .SH THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP MAILBOXES
2228 Use the multiple-local-recipients feature with caution -- it can bite.
2229 All multidrop features are ineffective in ETRN and ODMR modes.
2231 Also, note that in multidrop mode duplicate mails are suppressed. A
2232 piece of mail is considered duplicate if it has the same message-ID as
2233 the message immediately preceding and more than one addressee. Such
2234 runs of messages may be generated when copies of a message addressed
2235 to multiple users are delivered to a multidrop box.
2237 .SS Header vs. Envelope addresses
2238 The fundamental problem is that by having your mailserver toss several
2239 peoples' mail in a single maildrop box, you may have thrown away
2240 potentially vital information about who each piece of mail was
2241 actually addressed to (the 'envelope address', as opposed to the
2242 header addresses in the RFC822 To/Cc headers - the Bcc is not available
2243 at the receiving end). This 'envelope address' is the address you need
2244 in order to reroute mail properly.
2248 can deduce the envelope address. If the mailserver MTA is
2250 and the item of mail had just one recipient, the MTA will have written
2251 a 'by/for' clause that gives the envelope addressee into its Received
2252 header. But this doesn't work reliably for other MTAs, nor if there is
2253 more than one recipient. By default, \fIfetchmail\fR looks for
2254 envelope addresses in these lines; you can restore this default with
2255 \&\-E "Received" or 'envelope Received'.
2257 .B As a better alternative,
2258 some SMTP listeners and/or mail servers insert a header
2259 in each message containing a copy of the envelope addresses. This
2260 header (when it exists) is often 'X\-Original\-To', 'Delivered\-To' or
2261 \&'X\-Envelope\-To'. Fetchmail's assumption about this can be changed with
2262 the \-E or 'envelope' option. Note that writing an envelope header of
2263 this kind exposes the names of recipients (including blind-copy
2264 recipients) to all receivers of the messages, so the upstream must store
2265 one copy of the message per recipient to avoid becoming a privacy problem.
2267 Postfix, since version 2.0, writes an X\-Original\-To: header which
2268 contains a copy of the envelope as it was received.
2270 Qmail and Postfix generally write a 'Delivered\-To' header upon
2271 delivering the message to the mail spool and use it to avoid mail loops.
2272 Qmail virtual domains however will prefix the user name with a string
2273 that normally matches the user's domain. To remove this prefix you can
2274 use the \-Q or 'qvirtual' option.
2276 Sometimes, unfortunately, neither of these methods works. That is the
2277 point when you should contact your ISP and ask them to provide such an
2278 envelope header, and you should not use multidrop in this situation.
2279 When they all fail, fetchmail must fall back on the contents of To/Cc
2280 headers (Bcc headers are not available - see below) to try to determine
2281 recipient addressees -- and these are unreliable.
2282 In particular, mailing-list software often ships mail with only
2283 the list broadcast address in the To header.
2285 .B Note that a future version of fetchmail may remove To/Cc parsing!
2289 cannot deduce a recipient address that is local, and the intended
2290 recipient address was anyone other than fetchmail's invoking user,
2291 .B mail will get lost.
2292 This is what makes the multidrop feature risky without proper envelope
2295 A related problem is that when you blind-copy a mail message, the Bcc
2296 information is carried \fIonly\fR as envelope address (it's removed from
2297 the headers by the sending mail server, so fetchmail can see it only if
2298 there is an X-\Envelope\-To header). Thus, blind-copying to someone who
2299 gets mail over a fetchmail multidrop link will fail unless the the
2300 mailserver host routinely writes X\-Envelope\-To or an equivalent header
2301 into messages in your maildrop.
2303 \fBIn conclusion, mailing lists and Bcc'd mail can only work if the
2304 server you're fetching from (1) stores one copy of the message per
2305 recipient in \fIyour\fP domain and (2) records the envelope
2306 information in a special header (X\-Original\-To, Delivered\-To,
2307 X\-Envelope\-To).\fR
2309 .SS Good Ways To Use Multidrop Mailboxes
2310 Multiple local names can be used to administer a mailing list from the
2311 client side of a \fIfetchmail\fR collection. Suppose your name is
2312 \&'esr', and you want to both pick up your own mail and maintain a mailing
2313 list called (say) "fetchmail-friends", and you want to keep the alias
2314 list on your client machine.
2316 On your server, you can alias 'fetchmail\-friends' to 'esr'; then, in
2317 your \fI.fetchmailrc\fR, declare 'to esr fetchmail\-friends here'.
2318 Then, when mail including 'fetchmail\-friends' as a local address
2319 gets fetched, the list name will be appended to the list of
2320 recipients your SMTP listener sees. Therefore it will undergo alias
2321 expansion locally. Be sure to include 'esr' in the local alias
2322 expansion of fetchmail\-friends, or you'll never see mail sent only to
2323 the list. Also be sure that your listener has the "me-too" option set
2324 (sendmail's \-oXm command-line option or OXm declaration) so your name
2325 isn't removed from alias expansions in messages you send.
2327 This trick is not without its problems, however. You'll begin to see
2328 this when a message comes in that is addressed only to a mailing list
2329 you do \fInot\fR have declared as a local name. Each such message
2330 will feature an 'X\-Fetchmail\-Warning' header which is generated
2331 because fetchmail cannot find a valid local name in the recipient
2332 addresses. Such messages default (as was described above) to being
2333 sent to the local user running
2335 but the program has no way to know that that's actually the right thing.
2337 .SS Bad Ways To Abuse Multidrop Mailboxes
2338 Multidrop mailboxes and
2340 serving multiple users in daemon mode do not mix. The problem, again, is
2341 mail from mailing lists, which typically does not have an individual
2342 recipient address on it. Unless
2344 can deduce an envelope address, such mail will only go to the account
2345 running fetchmail (probably root). Also, blind-copied users are very
2346 likely never to see their mail at all.
2348 If you're tempted to use
2350 to retrieve mail for multiple users from a single mail drop via POP or
2351 IMAP, think again (and reread the section on header and envelope
2352 addresses above). It would be smarter to just let the mail sit in the
2353 mailserver's queue and use fetchmail's ETRN or ODMR modes to trigger
2354 SMTP sends periodically (of course, this means you have to poll more
2355 frequently than the mailserver's expiry period). If you can't arrange
2356 this, try setting up a UUCP feed.
2358 If you absolutely \fImust\fR use multidrop for this purpose, make sure
2359 your mailserver writes an envelope-address header that fetchmail can
2360 see. Otherwise you \fIwill\fR lose mail and it \fIwill\fR come back
2363 .SS Speeding Up Multidrop Checking
2364 Normally, when multiple users are declared
2366 extracts recipient addresses as described above and checks each host
2367 part with DNS to see if it's an alias of the mailserver. If so, the
2368 name mappings described in the "to ... here" declaration are done and
2369 the mail locally delivered.
2371 This is a convenient but also slow method. To speed
2372 it up, pre-declare mailserver aliases with 'aka'; these are checked
2373 before DNS lookups are done. If you're certain your aka list contains
2375 DNS aliases of the mailserver (and all MX names pointing at it - note
2376 this may change in a future version)
2377 you can declare 'no dns' to suppress DNS lookups entirely and
2378 \fIonly\fR match against the aka list.
2381 To facilitate the use of
2383 in shell scripts, an exit\ status code is returned to give an indication
2384 of what occurred during a given connection.
2386 The exit codes returned by
2390 One or more messages were successfully retrieved (or, if the \-c option
2391 was selected, were found waiting but not retrieved).
2393 There was no mail awaiting retrieval. (There may have been old mail still
2394 on the server but not selected for retrieval.)
2396 An error was encountered when attempting to open a socket to retrieve
2397 mail. If you don't know what a socket is, don't worry about it --
2398 just treat this as an 'unrecoverable error'. This error can also be
2399 because a protocol fetchmail wants to use is not listed in /etc/services.
2401 The user authentication step failed. This usually means that a bad
2402 user-id, password, or APOP id was specified. Or it may mean that you
2403 tried to run fetchmail under circumstances where it did not have
2404 standard input attached to a terminal and could not prompt for a
2407 Some sort of fatal protocol error was detected.
2409 There was a syntax error in the arguments to
2412 The run control file had bad permissions.
2414 There was an error condition reported by the server. Can also
2417 timed out while waiting for the server.
2419 Client-side exclusion error. This means
2421 either found another copy of itself already running, or failed in such
2422 a way that it isn't sure whether another copy is running.
2424 The user authentication step failed because the server responded "lock
2425 busy". Try again after a brief pause! This error is not implemented
2426 for all protocols, nor for all servers. If not implemented for your
2427 server, "3" will be returned instead, see above. May be returned when
2428 talking to qpopper or other servers that can respond with "lock busy"
2429 or some similar text containing the word "lock".
2433 run failed while trying to do an SMTP port open or transaction.
2435 Fatal DNS error. Fetchmail encountered an error while performing
2436 a DNS lookup at startup and could not proceed.
2438 BSMTP batch file could not be opened.
2440 Poll terminated by a fetch limit (see the \-\-fetchlimit option).
2442 Server busy indication.
2444 Server timed out during an IMAP IDLE.
2446 Internal error. You should see a message on standard error with
2451 queries more than one host, return status is 0 if \fIany\fR query
2452 successfully retrieved mail. Otherwise the returned error status is
2453 that of the last host queried.
2458 default run control file
2461 default location of file associating hosts with last message IDs seen
2462 (used only with newer RFC1939-compliant POP3 servers supporting the
2466 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (non-root mode).
2469 your FTP run control file, which (if present) will be searched for
2470 passwords as a last resort before prompting for one interactively.
2472 /var/run/fetchmail.pid
2473 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, Linux systems).
2476 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, systems without /var/run).
2479 If the FETCHMAILUSER variable is set, it is used as the name of the
2480 calling user (default local name) for purposes such as mailing error
2481 notifications. Otherwise, if either the LOGNAME or USER variable is
2482 correctly set (e.g. the corresponding UID matches the session user ID)
2483 then that name is used as the default local name. Otherwise
2484 \fBgetpwuid\fR(3) must be able to retrieve a password entry for the
2485 session ID (this elaborate logic is designed to handle the case of
2486 multiple names per userid gracefully).
2488 If the environment variable FETCHMAILHOME is set to a valid and
2489 existing directory name, fetchmail will read $FETCHMAILHOME/fetchmailrc
2490 (the dot is missing in this case), $FETCHMAILHOME/.fetchids and
2491 $FETCHMAILHOME/.fetchmail.pid rather than from the user's home
2492 directory. The .netrc file is always looked for in the the invoking
2493 user's home directory regardless of FETCHMAILHOME's setting.
2495 If the HOME_ETC variable is set, fetchmail will read
2496 $HOME_ETC/.fetchmailrc instead of ~/.fetchmailrc.
2498 If HOME_ETC and FETCHMAILHOME are set, HOME_ETC will be ignored.
2503 daemon is running as root, SIGUSR1 wakes it up from its sleep phase and
2504 forces a poll of all non-skipped servers. For compatibility reasons,
2505 SIGHUP can also be used in 6.3.X but may not be available in future
2510 is running in daemon mode as non-root, use SIGUSR1 to wake it (this is
2511 so SIGHUP due to logout can retain the default action of killing it).
2515 in foreground while a background fetchmail is running will do
2516 whichever of these is appropriate to wake it up.
2518 .SH BUGS AND KNOWN PROBLEMS
2520 Fetchmail cannot handle user names that contain blanks after a "@"
2521 character, for instance "demonstr@ti on". These are rather uncommon and
2522 only hurt when using UID-based \-\-keep setups, so the 6.3.X versions of
2523 fetchmail won't be fixed.
2525 Please check the \fBNEWS\fP file that shipped with fetchmail for more
2526 known bugs than those listed here.
2528 The assumptions that the DNS and in particular the checkalias options
2529 make are not often sustainable. For instance, it has become uncommon for
2530 an MX server to be a POP3 or IMAP server at the same time. Therefore the
2531 MX lookups may go away in a future release.
2533 The mda and plugin options interact badly. In order to collect error
2534 status from the MDA, fetchmail has to change its normal signal
2535 handling so that dead plugin processes don't get reaped until the end
2536 of the poll cycle. This can cause resource starvation if too many
2537 zombies accumulate. So either don't deliver to a MDA using plugins or
2538 risk being overrun by an army of undead.
2540 The \-\-interface option does not support IPv6 and it is doubtful if it
2541 ever will, since there is no portable way to query interface IPv6
2544 The RFC822 address parser used in multidrop mode chokes on some
2545 @-addresses that are technically legal but bizarre. Strange uses of
2546 quoting and embedded comments are likely to confuse it.
2548 In a message with multiple envelope headers, only the last one
2549 processed will be visible to fetchmail.
2551 Use of some of these protocols requires that the program send
2552 unencrypted passwords over the TCP/IP connection to the mailserver.
2553 This creates a risk that name/password pairs might be snaffled with a
2554 packet sniffer or more sophisticated monitoring software. Under Linux
2555 and FreeBSD, the \-\-interface option can be used to restrict polling to
2556 availability of a specific interface device with a specific local or
2557 remote IP address, but snooping is still possible if (a) either host
2558 has a network device that can be opened in promiscuous mode, or (b)
2559 the intervening network link can be tapped. We recommend the use of
2561 tunnelling to not only shroud your passwords but encrypt the entire
2564 Use of the %F or %T escapes in an mda option could open a security
2565 hole, because they pass text manipulable by an attacker to a shell
2566 command. Potential shell characters are replaced by '_' before
2567 execution. The hole is further reduced by the fact that fetchmail
2568 temporarily discards any suid privileges it may have while running the
2569 MDA. For maximum safety, however, don't use an mda command containing
2570 %F or %T when fetchmail is run from the root account itself.
2572 Fetchmail's method of sending bounces due to errors or spam-blocking and
2573 spam bounces requires that port 25 of localhost be available for sending
2578 while a background instance is running and break the syntax, the
2579 background instance will die silently. Unfortunately, it can't
2580 die noisily because we don't yet know whether syslog should be enabled.
2581 On some systems, fetchmail dies quietly even if there is no syntax
2582 error; this seems to have something to do with buggy terminal ioctl
2585 The \-f\~\- option (reading a configuration from stdin) is incompatible
2586 with the plugin option.
2588 The 'principal' option only handles Kerberos IV, not V.
2590 Interactively entered passwords are truncated after 63 characters. If
2591 you really need to use a longer password, you will have to use a
2594 A backslash as the last character of a configuration file will be
2595 flagged as a syntax error rather than ignored.
2597 Send comments, bug reports, gripes, and the like to the
2598 fetchmail\-devel list <fetchmail\-devel@lists.berlios.de>. An HTML FAQ is
2599 available at the fetchmail home page; surf to
2600 http://fetchmail.berlios.de/ or do a WWW search for pages with
2601 \&'fetchmail' in their titles.
2604 Fetchmail is currently maintained by Matthias Andree and Rob Funk with
2605 major assistance from Sunil Shetye (for code) and Rob MacGregor (for the
2608 Most of the code is from Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>. Too
2609 many other people to name here have contributed code and patches.
2611 This program is descended from and replaces
2613 by Carl Harris <ceharris@mal.com>; the internals have become quite different,
2614 but some of its interface design is directly traceable to that
2617 This manual page has been improved by R.\ Hannes Beinert and H\['e]ctor
2621 mutt(1), elm(1), mail(1), sendmail(8), popd(8), imapd(8), netrc(5)
2623 The fetchmail home page: <http://fetchmail.berlios.de/>
2625 The maildrop home page: <http://www.courier-mta.org/maildrop/>
2626 .SH APPLICABLE STANDARDS
2628 Note that this list is just a collection of references and not a
2629 statement as to the actual protocol conformance or requirements in
2633 RFC 821, RFC 2821, RFC 1869, RFC 1652, RFC 1870, RFC 1983, RFC 1985,
2637 RFC 822, RFC 2822, RFC 1123, RFC 1892, RFC 1894.
2643 RFC 1081, RFC 1225, RFC 1460, RFC 1725, RFC 1734, RFC 1939, RFC 1957,
2647 RFC 1460, RFC 1725, RFC 1939.
2656 RFC 1730, RFC 1731, RFC 1732, RFC 2060, RFC 2061, RFC 2195, RFC 2177,
projects / ~andy / fetchmail / blob