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 6.3.8" "fetchmail" "fetchmail reference manual"
10 fetchmail \- fetch mail from a POP, IMAP, ETRN, or ODMR-capable server
13 \fBfetchmail\fR [\fIoption...\fR] [\fImailserver...\fR]
19 is a mail-retrieval and forwarding utility; it fetches mail from
20 remote mailservers and forwards it to your local (client) machine's
21 delivery system. You can then handle the retrieved mail using normal
22 mail user agents such as \fImutt\fR(1), \fIelm\fR(1) or \fIMail\fR(1).
23 The \fIfetchmail\fR utility can be run in a daemon mode to repeatedly
24 poll one or more systems at a specified interval.
28 program can gather mail from servers supporting any of the common
29 mail-retrieval protocols: POP2 (legacy, to be removed from future
30 release), POP3, IMAP2bis, IMAP4, and IMAP4rev1.
31 It can also use the ESMTP ETRN extension and ODMR. (The RFCs describing all
32 these protocols are listed at the end of this manual page.)
36 is primarily intended to be used over on-demand TCP/IP links (such as
37 SLIP or PPP connections), it may also be useful as a message transfer
38 agent for sites which refuse for security reasons to permit
39 (sender-initiated) SMTP transactions with sendmail.
43 is used with a POP or an IMAP server, it has two fundamental modes of
44 operation for each user account from which it retrieves mail:
45 \fIsingledrop\fR- and \fImultidrop\fR-mode. In singledrop-mode,
47 assumes that all messages in the user's account are intended for a single
48 recipient. An individual mail message will not be inspected for recipient
49 information, rather, the identity of the recipient will either default to
50 the local user currently executing \fIfetchmail\fR,
51 or else will need to be explicitly specified in the configuration file.
52 Singledrop-mode is used when the fetchmailrc configuration contains at
53 most a single local user specification for a given server account.
57 is not able to assume that there is only a single recipient, but rather
58 that the mail server account actually contains mail intended for any
59 number of different recipients. Therefore,
61 must attempt to deduce the proper "envelope recipient" from the mail
62 headers of each message. In this mode of operation,
64 almost resembles an MTA, however it is important to note that neither
65 the POP nor IMAP protocols were intended for use in this fashion, and
66 hence envelope information is often not directly available. Instead,
68 must resort to a process of informed guess-work in an attempt to
69 discover the true envelope recipient of a message, unless the ISP stores
70 the envelope information in some header (not all do). Even if this
71 information is present in the headers, the process can
72 be error-prone and is dependent upon the specific mail server used
73 for mail retrieval. Multidrop-mode is used when more than one local
74 user is specified for a particular server account in the configuration
75 file. Note that the forgoing discussion of singledrop- and
76 multidrop-modes does not apply to the ESMTP ETRN or ODMR retrieval
77 methods, since they are based upon the SMTP protocol which
78 specifically provides the envelope recipient to \fIfetchmail\fR.
80 As each message is retrieved, \fIfetchmail\fR normally delivers it via SMTP to
81 port 25 on the machine it is running on (localhost), just as though it
82 were being passed in over a normal TCP/IP link. \fIfetchmail\fR provides
83 the SMTP server with an envelope recipient derived in the manner described
84 previously. The mail will then be
85 delivered locally via your system's MDA (Mail Delivery Agent, usually
86 \fIsendmail\fR(8) but your system may use a different one such
87 as \fIsmail\fR, \fImmdf\fR, \fIexim\fR, \fIpostfix\fR, or \fIqmail\fR). All the
88 delivery-control mechanisms (such as \fI.forward\fR files) normally
89 available through your system MDA and local delivery agents will
90 therefore work automatically.
92 If no port 25 listener is available, but your fetchmail configuration
93 was told about a reliable local MDA, it will use that MDA for local
98 is available, it will assist you in setting up and editing a
99 fetchmailrc configuration. It runs under the X window system and
100 requires that the language Python and the Tk toolkit be present on your
101 system. If you are first setting up fetchmail for single-user mode, it
102 is recommended that you use Novice mode. Expert mode provides complete
103 control of fetchmail configuration, including the multidrop features.
104 In either case, the 'Autoprobe' button will tell you the most capable
105 protocol a given mailserver supports, and warn you of potential problems
108 .SH GENERAL OPERATION
111 is controlled by command-line options and a run control file,
112 .IR ~/.fetchmailrc\fR ,
113 the syntax of which we describe in a later section (this file is what
114 the \fIfetchmailconf\fR program edits). Command-line options override
118 Each server name that you specify following the options on the
119 command line will be queried. If you don't specify any servers
120 on the command line, each 'poll' entry in your
122 file will be queried.
124 To facilitate the use of
126 in scripts and pipelines, it returns an appropriate exit code upon
127 termination -- see EXIT CODES below.
129 The following options modify the behavior of \fIfetchmail\fR. It is
130 seldom necessary to specify any of these once you have a
131 working \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file set up.
133 Almost all options have a corresponding keyword which can be used to
138 Some special options are not covered here, but are documented instead
139 in sections on AUTHENTICATION and DAEMON MODE which follow.
143 Displays the version information for your copy of
145 No mail fetch is performed.
146 Instead, for each server specified, all the option information
147 that would be computed if
149 were connecting to that server is displayed. Any non-printables in
150 passwords or other string names are shown as backslashed C-like
151 escape sequences. This option is useful for verifying that your
152 options are set the way you want them.
155 Return a status code to indicate whether there is mail waiting,
156 without actually fetching or deleting mail (see EXIT CODES below).
157 This option turns off daemon mode (in which it would be useless). It
158 doesn't play well with queries to multiple sites, and doesn't work
159 with ETRN or ODMR. It will return a false positive if you leave read but
160 undeleted mail in your server mailbox and your fetch protocol can't
161 tell kept messages from new ones. This means it will work with IMAP,
162 not work with POP2, and may occasionally flake out under POP3.
165 Silent mode. Suppresses all progress/status messages that are
166 normally echoed to standard output during a fetch (but does not
167 suppress actual error messages). The \-\-verbose option overrides this.
170 Verbose mode. All control messages passed between
172 and the mailserver are echoed to stdout. Overrides \-\-silent.
173 Doubling this option (\-v \-v) causes extra diagnostic information
177 .B \-a | \-\-all | (since v6.3.3) \-\-fetchall
178 (Keyword: fetchall, since v3.0)
179 Retrieve both old (seen) and new messages from the mailserver. The
180 default is to fetch only messages the server has not marked seen.
181 Under POP3, this option also forces the use of RETR rather than TOP.
182 Note that POP2 retrieval behaves as though \-\-all is always on (see
183 RETRIEVAL FAILURE MODES below) and this option does not work with ETRN
184 or ODMR. While the \-a and \-\-all command-line and fetchall rcfile
185 options have been supported for a long time, the \-\-fetchall
186 command-line option was added in v6.3.3.
190 Keep retrieved messages on the remote mailserver. Normally, messages
191 are deleted from the folder on the mailserver after they have been retrieved.
192 Specifying the \fBkeep\fR option causes retrieved messages to remain in
193 your folder on the mailserver. This option does not work with ETRN or
194 ODMR. If used with POP3, it is recommended to also specify the \-\-uidl
195 option or uidl keyword.
199 Delete retrieved messages from the remote mailserver. This
200 option forces retrieved mail to be deleted. It may be useful if
201 you have specified a default of \fBkeep\fR in your
202 \&\fI.fetchmailrc\fR. This option is forced on with ETRN and ODMR.
205 POP3/IMAP only. This is a dangerous option and can cause mail loss when
206 used improperly. It deletes old (seen) messages from the mailserver
207 before retrieving new messages. \fBWarning:\fR This can cause mail loss if
208 you check your mail with other clients than fetchmail, and cause
209 fetchmail to delete a message it had never fetched before. It can also
210 cause mail loss if the mail server marks the message seen after
211 retrieval (IMAP2 servers). You should probably not use this option in your
212 configuration file. If you use it with POP3, you must use the 'uidl'
213 option. What you probably want is the default setting: if you don't
214 specify '\-k', then fetchmail will automatically delete messages after
218 POP3/IMAP only, since version 6.3.0. Delete oversized messages from the
219 mailserver before retrieving new messages. The size limit should be
220 separately specified with the \-\-limit option. This option does not
221 work with ETRN or ODMR.
222 .SS Protocol and Query Options
224 .B \-p <proto> | \-\-proto <proto> | \-\-protocol <proto>
225 (Keyword: proto[col])
226 Specify the protocol to use when communicating with the remote
227 mailserver. If no protocol is specified, the default is AUTO.
229 may be one of the following:
232 Tries IMAP, POP3, and POP2 (skipping any of these for which support
233 has not been compiled in).
235 Post Office Protocol 2 (legacy, to be removed from future release)
237 Post Office Protocol 3
239 Use POP3 with old-fashioned MD5-challenge authentication.
240 Considered not resistant to man-in-the-middle attacks.
242 Use POP3 with RPOP authentication.
244 Use POP3 with Kerberos V4 authentication on port 1109.
246 Use POP3 with Demon Internet's SDPS extensions.
248 IMAP2bis, IMAP4, or IMAP4rev1 (\fIfetchmail\fR automatically detects their capabilities).
250 Use the ESMTP ETRN option.
252 Use the the On-Demand Mail Relay ESMTP profile.
255 All these alternatives work in basically the same way (communicating
256 with standard server daemons to fetch mail already delivered to a
257 mailbox on the server) except ETRN and ODMR. The ETRN mode
258 allows you to ask a compliant ESMTP server (such as BSD sendmail at
259 release 8.8.0 or higher) to immediately open a sender-SMTP connection
260 to your client machine and begin forwarding any items addressed to
261 your client machine in the server's queue of undelivered mail. The
262 ODMR mode requires an ODMR-capable server and works similarly to
263 ETRN, except that it does not require the client machine to have
268 Force UIDL use (effective only with POP3). Force client-side tracking
269 of 'newness' of messages (UIDL stands for "unique ID listing" and is
270 described in RFC1939). Use with 'keep' to use a mailbox as a baby
271 news drop for a group of users. The fact that seen messages are skipped
272 is logged, unless error logging is done through syslog while running in
273 daemon mode. Note that fetchmail may automatically enable this option
274 depending on upstream server capabilities. Note also that this option
275 may be removed and forced enabled in a future fetchmail version. See
278 .B \-\-idle (since 6.3.3)
279 (Keyword: idle, since before 6.0.0)
280 Enable IDLE use (effective only with IMAP). Note that this works with
281 only one folder at a given time. While the idle rcfile keyword had been
282 supported for a long time, the \-\-idle command-line option was added in
283 version 6.3.3. IDLE use means that fetchmail tells the IMAP server to
284 send notice of new messages, so they can be retrieved sooner than would
285 be possible with regular polls.
287 .B \-P <portnumber> | \-\-service <servicename>
288 (Keyword: service) Since version 6.3.0.
289 The service option permits you to specify a service name to connect to.
290 You can specify a decimal port number here, if your services database
291 lacks the required service-port assignments. See the FAQ item R12 and
292 the \-\-ssl documentation for details. This replaces the older \-\-port
295 .B \-\-port <portnumber>
297 Obsolete version of \-\-service that does not take service names.
299 this option may be removed from a future version.
301 .B \-\-principal <principal>
303 The principal option permits you to specify a service principal for
304 mutual authentication. This is applicable to POP3 or IMAP with Kerberos
307 .B \-t <seconds> | \-\-timeout <seconds>
309 The timeout option allows you to set a server-nonresponse
310 timeout in seconds. If a mailserver does not send a greeting message
311 or respond to commands for the given number of seconds,
312 \fIfetchmail\fR will hang up on it. Without such a timeout
313 \fIfetchmail\fR might hang indefinitely trying to fetch mail from a
314 down host. This would be particularly annoying for a \fIfetchmail\fR
315 running in the background. There is a default timeout which fetchmail\~\-V
316 will report. If a given connection receives too many timeouts in
317 succession, fetchmail will consider it wedged and stop retrying.
318 The calling user will be notified by email if this happens.
320 .B \-\-plugin <command>
321 (Keyword: plugin) The plugin option allows you to use an external
322 program to establish the TCP connection. This is useful if you want
323 to use SSL, ssh, or need some special firewalling setup. The
324 program will be looked up in $PATH and can optionally be passed the
325 hostname and port as arguments using "%h" and "%p" respectively (note
326 that the interpolation logic is rather primitive, and these token must
327 be bounded by whitespace or beginning of string or end of string).
328 Fetchmail will write to the plugin's stdin and read from the plugin's
331 .B \-\-plugout <command>
333 Identical to the plugin option above, but this one is used for the SMTP
334 connections (which will probably not need it, so it has been separated
337 .B \-r <name> | \-\-folder <name>
339 Causes a specified non-default mail folder on the mailserver (or
340 comma-separated list of folders) to be retrieved. The syntax of the
341 folder name is server-dependent. This option is not available under
345 (Keyword: tracepolls)
346 Tell fetchmail to poll trace information in the form 'polling %s
347 account %s' and 'folder %s' to the Received line it generates,
348 where the %s parts are replaced by the user's remote name, the poll
349 label, and the folder (mailbox) where available (the Received header
350 also normally includes the server's true name). This can be used to
351 facilitate mail filtering based on the account it is being received
352 from. The folder information is written only since version 6.3.4.
356 Causes the connection to the mail server to be encrypted via SSL. Connect
357 to the server using the specified base protocol over a connection secured
358 by SSL. This option defeats TLS negotiation. Use \-\-sslcertck to
359 validate the certificates presented by the server.
361 Note that fetchmail may still try to negotiate TLS even if this option
362 is not given. You can use the \-\-sslproto option to defeat this
363 behavior or tell fetchmail to negotiate a particular SSL protocol.
365 If no port is specified, the connection is attempted to the well known
366 port of the SSL version of the base protocol. This is generally a
367 different port than the port used by the base protocol. For IMAP, this
368 is port 143 for the clear protocol and port 993 for the SSL secured
369 protocol, for POP3, it is port 110 for the clear text and port 995 for
370 the encrypted variant.
372 If your system lacks the corresponding entries from /etc/services, see
373 the \-\-service option and specify the numeric port number as given in
374 the previous paragraph (unless your ISP had directed you to different
375 ports, which is uncommon however).
377 .B \-\-sslcert <name>
379 Specifies the file name of the client side public SSL certificate. Some
380 SSL encrypted servers may require client side keys and certificates for
381 authentication. In most cases, this is optional. This specifies
382 the location of the public key certificate to be presented to the server
383 at the time the SSL session is established. It is not required (but may
384 be provided) if the server does not require it. Some servers may
385 require it, some servers may request it but not require it, and some
386 servers may not request it at all. It may be the same file
387 as the private key (combined key and certificate file) but this is not
391 If you use client authentication, the user name is fetched from the
392 certificate's CommonName and overrides the name set with \-\-user.
396 Specifies the file name of the client side private SSL key. Some SSL
397 encrypted servers may require client side keys and certificates for
398 authentication. In most cases, this is optional. This specifies
399 the location of the private key used to sign transactions with the server
400 at the time the SSL session is established. It is not required (but may
401 be provided) if the server does not require it. Some servers may
402 require it, some servers may request it but not require it, and some
403 servers may not request it at all. It may be the same file
404 as the public key (combined key and certificate file) but this is not
405 recommended. If a password is required to unlock the key, it will be
406 prompted for at the time just prior to establishing the session to the
407 server. This can cause some complications in daemon mode.
409 .B \-\-sslproto <name>
411 Forces an SSL or TLS protocol. Possible values are '\fBSSL2\fR',
412 \&'\fBSSL3\fR', '\fBSSL23\fR', and '\fBTLS1\fR'. Try this if the default
413 handshake does not work for your server. Use this option with
414 \&'\fBTLS1\fR' to enforce a TLS connection. To defeat opportunistic TLSv1
415 negotiation when the server advertises STARTTLS or STLS, use \fB''\fR.
416 This option, even if the argument is the empty string, will also
417 suppress the diagnostic 'SERVER: opportunistic upgrade to TLS.' message
418 in verbose mode. The default is to try appropriate protocols depending
423 Causes fetchmail to strictly check the server certificate against a set of
424 local trusted certificates (see the \fBsslcertpath\fR option). If the server
425 certificate cannot be obtained or is not signed by one of the trusted ones
426 (directly or indirectly), the SSL connection will fail, regardless of
427 the \fBsslfingerprint\fR option.
428 Note that CRL are only supported in OpenSSL 0.9.7 and newer! Your system
429 clock should also be reasonably accurate when using this option.
431 Note that this optional behavior may become default behavior in future
434 .B \-\-sslcertpath <directory>
435 (Keyword: sslcertpath)
436 Sets the directory fetchmail uses to look up local certificates. The default
437 is your OpenSSL default one. The directory must be hashed as OpenSSL expects
438 it - every time you add or modify a certificate in the directory, you need
439 to use the \fBc_rehash\fR tool (which comes with OpenSSL in the tools/
442 .B \-\-sslcommonname <common name>
443 (Keyword: sslcommonname)
444 Use of this option is discouraged. Before using it, contact your
445 upstream and ask for a proper SSL certificate to be used. If the
446 upstream is clueless, this option can be used to specify the name
447 (CommonName) that fetchmail expects on the server certificate. A
448 correctly configured server will have this set to the hostname by which
449 it is reached, and by default fetchmail will expect as much. Use this
450 option when the CommonName is set to some other value, to avoid the
451 "Server CommonName mismatch" warning, and only if the upstream can't be
452 made to use proper certificates.
454 .B \-\-sslfingerprint <fingerprint>
455 (Keyword: sslfingerprint)
456 Specify the fingerprint of the server key (an MD5 hash of the key) in
457 hexadecimal notation with colons separating groups of two digits. The letter
458 hex digits must be in upper case. This is the default format OpenSSL uses,
459 and the one fetchmail uses to report the fingerprint when an SSL connection
460 is established. When this is specified, fetchmail will compare the server key
461 fingerprint with the given one, and the connection will fail if they do not
462 match regardless of the \fBsslcertck\fR setting. The connection will
463 also fail if fetchmail cannot obtain an SSL certificate from the server.
464 This can be used to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, but the finger
465 print from the server needs to be obtained or verified over a secure
466 channel, and certainly not over the same Internet connection that
469 Using this option will prevent printing certificate verification errors
470 as long as \-\-sslcertck is unset.
472 To obtain the fingerprint of a certificate stored in the file cert.pem,
476 openssl x509 \-in cert.pem \-noout \-md5 \-fingerprint
481 .SS Delivery Control Options
483 .B \-S <hosts> | \-\-smtphost <hosts>
484 (Keyword: smtp[host])
485 Specify a hunt list of hosts to forward mail to (one or more
486 hostnames, comma-separated). Hosts are tried in list order; the first
487 one that is up becomes the forwarding target for the current run. If
488 this option is not specified, 'localhost' is used as the default.
489 Each hostname may have a port number following the host name. The
490 port number is separated from the host name by a slash; the default
491 port is "smtp". If you specify an absolute path name (beginning with
492 a /), it will be interpreted as the name of a UNIX socket accepting
493 LMTP connections (such as is supported by the Cyrus IMAP daemon)
497 \-\-smtphost server1,server2/2525,server3,/var/imap/socket/lmtp
500 This option can be used with ODMR, and will make fetchmail a relay
501 between the ODMR server and SMTP or LMTP receiver.
503 .B \-\-fetchdomains <hosts>
504 (Keyword: fetchdomains)
505 In ETRN or ODMR mode, this option specifies the list of domains the
506 server should ship mail for once the connection is turned around. The
507 default is the FQDN of the machine running
510 .B \-D <domain> | \-\-smtpaddress <domain>
511 (Keyword: smtpaddress) Specify the domain to be appended to addresses
512 in RCPT TO lines shipped to SMTP. When this is not specified, the name
513 of the SMTP server (as specified by \-\-smtphost) is used for SMTP/LMTP
514 and 'localhost' is used for UNIX socket/BSMTP.
516 .B \-\-smtpname <user@domain>
518 Specify the domain and user to be put in RCPT TO lines shipped to SMTP.
519 The default user is the current local user.
521 .B \-Z <nnn> | \-\-antispam <nnn[, nnn]...>
523 Specifies the list of numeric SMTP errors that are to be interpreted
524 as a spam-block response from the listener. A value of \-1 disables
525 this option. For the command-line option, the list values should
528 .B \-m <command> | \-\-mda <command>
529 (Keyword: mda) You can force mail to be passed to an MDA directly
530 (rather than forwarded to port 25) with the \-\-mda or \-m option.
533 avoid losing mail, use this option only with MDAs like maildrop or
534 MTAs like sendmail that return a nonzero status on disk-full and other
535 resource-exhaustion errors; the nonzero status tells fetchmail that
536 delivery failed and prevents the message from being deleted off the
539 If \fIfetchmail\fR is running as root, it sets its user id to
540 that of the target user while delivering mail through an MDA. Some
541 possible MDAs are "/usr/sbin/sendmail \-i \-f %F \-\- %T" (\fBNote:\fR
542 some several older or vendor sendmail versions mistake \-\- for an
543 address, rather than an indicator to mark the end of the option arguments),
544 "/usr/bin/deliver" and "/usr/bin/maildrop \-d %T". Local delivery
545 addresses will be inserted into the MDA command wherever you place a
546 %T; the mail message's From address will be inserted where you place
549 .B "DO NOT ENCLOSE THE %F OR %T STRING IN SINGLE QUOTES!"
550 For both %T and %F, fetchmail encloses the addresses in single quotes
551 ('), after removing any single quotes they may contain, before the MDA
552 command is passed to the shell.
554 \fRDo \fINOT\fP use an MDA invocation that dispatches on the contents of
555 To/Cc/Bcc,\fP like "sendmail \-i \-t" or "qmail-inject", it will create
556 mail loops and bring the just wrath of many postmasters down upon your
557 head. This is one of the most frequent configuration errors!
559 Also, do \fInot\fR try to combine multidrop mode with an MDA such
560 as maildrop that can only accept one address, unless your upstream
561 stores one copy of the message per recipient and transports the envelope
562 recipient in a header; you will lose mail.
566 package is very hard to configure properly, it has a very nasty "fall
567 through to the next rule" behavior on delivery errors (even temporary
568 ones, such as out of disk space if another user's mail daemon copies the
569 mailbox around to purge old messages), so your mail will end up in the
570 wrong mailbox sooner or later. The proper procmail configuration is
571 outside the scope of this document. Using
573 is usually much easier, and many users find the filter syntax used by
574 maildrop easier to understand.
576 Finally, we strongly advise that you do
578 use qmail-inject. The command line interface is non-standard without
579 providing benefits for typical use, and fetchmail makes no attempts to
580 accomodate qmail-inject's deviations from the standard. Some of
581 qmail-inject's command-line and environment options are actually
582 dangerous and can cause broken threads, non-detected duplicate messages
583 and forwarding loops.
588 Cause delivery via LMTP (Local Mail Transfer Protocol). A service
589 host and port \fBmust\fR be explicitly specified on each host in the
590 smtphost hunt list (see above) if this option is selected; the default
591 port 25 will (in accordance with RFC 2033) not be accepted.
593 .B \-\-bsmtp <filename>
595 Append fetched mail to a BSMTP file. This simply contains the SMTP
596 commands that would normally be generated by fetchmail when passing
597 mail to an SMTP listener daemon. An argument of '\-' causes the mail
598 to be written to standard output. Note that fetchmail's
599 reconstruction of MAIL FROM and RCPT TO lines is not guaranteed
600 correct; the caveats discussed under THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP
601 MAILBOXES below apply.
602 .SS Resource Limit Control Options
604 .B \-l <maxbytes> | \-\-limit <maxbytes>
605 (Keyword: limit) Takes a maximum octet size argument, where 0 is the
606 default and also the special value designating "no limit".
607 If nonzero, messages larger than this size will not be fetched and will
608 be left on the server (in foreground sessions, the progress messages
609 will note that they are "oversized"). If the fetch protocol permits (in
610 particular, under IMAP or POP3 without the fetchall option) the message
611 will not be marked seen.
613 An explicit \-\-limit of 0 overrides any limits set in your
614 run control file. This option is intended for those needing to
615 strictly control fetch time due to expensive and variable phone rates.
617 Combined with \-\-limitflush, it can be used to delete oversized
618 messages waiting on a server. In daemon mode, oversize notifications
619 are mailed to the calling user (see the \-\-warnings option). This
620 option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
622 .B \-w <interval> | \-\-warnings <interval>
624 Takes an interval in seconds. When you call
626 with a 'limit' option in daemon mode, this controls the interval at
627 which warnings about oversized messages are mailed to the calling user
628 (or the user specified by the 'postmaster' option). One such
629 notification is always mailed at the end of the the first poll that
630 the oversized message is detected. Thereafter, re-notification is
631 suppressed until after the warning interval elapses (it will take
632 place at the end of the first following poll).
634 .B \-b <count> | \-\-batchlimit <count>
635 (Keyword: batchlimit)
636 Specify the maximum number of messages that will be shipped to an SMTP
637 listener before the connection is deliberately torn down and rebuilt
638 (defaults to 0, meaning no limit). An explicit \-\-batchlimit of 0
639 overrides any limits set in your run control file. While
640 \fBsendmail\fR(8) normally initiates delivery of a message immediately
641 after receiving the message terminator, some SMTP listeners are not so
642 prompt. MTAs like \fIsmail\fR(8) may wait till the
643 delivery socket is shut down to deliver. This may produce annoying
644 delays when \fIfetchmail\fR is processing very large batches. Setting
645 the batch limit to some nonzero size will prevent these delays. This
646 option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
648 .B \-B <number> | \-\-fetchlimit <number>
649 (Keyword: fetchlimit)
650 Limit the number of messages accepted from a given server in a single
651 poll. By default there is no limit. An explicit \-\-fetchlimit of 0
652 overrides any limits set in your run control file.
653 This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
655 .B \-\-fetchsizelimit <number>
656 (Keyword: fetchsizelimit)
657 Limit the number of sizes of messages accepted from a given server in
658 a single transaction. This option is useful in reducing the delay in
659 downloading the first mail when there are too many mails in the
660 mailbox. By default, the limit is 100. If set to 0, sizes of all
661 messages are downloaded at the start.
662 This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR. For POP3, the only valid
665 .B \-\-fastuidl <number>
667 Do a binary instead of linear search for the first unseen UID. Binary
668 search avoids downloading the UIDs of all mails. This saves time
669 (especially in daemon mode) where downloading the same set of UIDs in
670 each poll is a waste of bandwidth. The number 'n' indicates how rarely
671 a linear search should be done. In daemon mode, linear search is used
672 once followed by binary searches in 'n-1' polls if 'n' is greater than
673 1; binary search is always used if 'n' is 1; linear search is always
674 used if 'n' is 0. In non-daemon mode, binary search is used if 'n' is
675 1; otherwise linear search is used. The default value of 'n' is 4.
676 This option works with POP3 only.
678 .B \-e <count> | \-\-expunge <count>
680 Arrange for deletions to be made final after a given number of
681 messages. Under POP2 or POP3, fetchmail cannot make deletions final
682 without sending QUIT and ending the session -- with this option on,
683 fetchmail will break a long mail retrieval session into multiple
684 sub-sessions, sending QUIT after each sub-session. This is a good
685 defense against line drops on POP3 servers. Under IMAP,
687 normally issues an EXPUNGE command after each deletion in order to
688 force the deletion to be done immediately. This is safest when your
689 connection to the server is flaky and expensive, as it avoids
690 resending duplicate mail after a line hit. However, on large
691 mailboxes the overhead of re-indexing after every message can slam the
692 server pretty hard, so if your connection is reliable it is good to do
693 expunges less frequently. Also note that some servers enforce a delay
694 of a few seconds after each quit, so fetchmail may not be able to get
695 back in immediately after an expunge -- you may see "lock busy" errors
696 if this happens. If you specify this option to an integer N,
699 to only issue expunges on every Nth delete. An argument of zero
700 suppresses expunges entirely (so no expunges at all will be done until
701 the end of run). This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
702 .SS Authentication Options
704 .B \-u <name> | \-\-user <name> | \-\-username <name>
705 (Keyword: user[name])
706 Specifies the user identification to be used when logging in to the mailserver.
707 The appropriate user identification is both server and user-dependent.
708 The default is your login name on the client machine that is running
710 See USER AUTHENTICATION below for a complete description.
712 .B \-I <specification> | \-\-interface <specification>
714 Require that a specific interface device be up and have a specific local
715 or remote IPv4 (IPv6 is not supported by this option yet) address (or
716 range) before polling. Frequently \fIfetchmail\fP
717 is used over a transient point-to-point TCP/IP link established directly
718 to a mailserver via SLIP or PPP. That is a relatively secure channel.
719 But when other TCP/IP routes to the mailserver exist (e.g. when the link
720 is connected to an alternate ISP), your username and password may be
721 vulnerable to snooping (especially when daemon mode automatically polls
722 for mail, shipping a clear password over the net at predictable
723 intervals). The \-\-interface option may be used to prevent this. When
724 the specified link is not up or is not connected to a matching IP
725 address, polling will be skipped. The format is:
728 interface/iii.iii.iii.iii[/mmm.mmm.mmm.mmm]
731 The field before the first slash is the interface name (i.e. sl0, ppp0
732 etc.). The field before the second slash is the acceptable IP address.
733 The field after the second slash is a mask which specifies a range of
734 IP addresses to accept. If no mask is present 255.255.255.255 is
735 assumed (i.e. an exact match). This option is currently only supported
736 under Linux and FreeBSD. Please see the
738 section for below for FreeBSD specific information.
740 Note that this option may be removed from a future fetchmail version.
742 .B \-M <interface> | \-\-monitor <interface>
744 Daemon mode can cause transient links which are automatically taken down
745 after a period of inactivity (e.g. PPP links) to remain up
746 indefinitely. This option identifies a system TCP/IP interface to be
747 monitored for activity. After each poll interval, if the link is up but
748 no other activity has occurred on the link, then the poll will be
749 skipped. However, when fetchmail is woken up by a signal, the
750 monitor check is skipped and the poll goes through unconditionally.
751 This option is currently only supported under Linux and FreeBSD.
756 options to work for non root users under FreeBSD, the fetchmail binary
757 must be installed SGID kmem. This would be a security hole, but
758 fetchmail runs with the effective GID set to that of the kmem group
760 when interface data is being collected.
762 Note that this option may be removed from a future fetchmail version.
765 (Keyword: auth[enticate])
766 This option permits you to specify an authentication type (see USER
767 AUTHENTICATION below for details). The possible values are \fBany\fR,
768 \&\fBpassword\fR, \fBkerberos_v5\fR, \fBkerberos\fR (or, for
769 excruciating exactness, \fBkerberos_v4\fR), \fBgssapi\fR,
770 \fBcram\-md5\fR, \fBotp\fR, \fBntlm\fR, \fBmsn\fR (only for POP3),
771 \fBexternal\fR (only IMAP) and \fBssh\fR.
772 When \fBany\fR (the default) is specified, fetchmail tries
773 first methods that don't require a password (EXTERNAL, GSSAPI, KERBEROS\ IV,
774 KERBEROS\ 5); then it looks for methods that mask your password
775 (CRAM-MD5, X\-OTP - note that NTLM and MSN are not autoprobed for POP3
776 and MSN is only supported for POP3); and only if the server doesn't
777 support any of those will it ship your password en clair. Other values
778 may be used to force various authentication methods
779 (\fBssh\fR suppresses authentication and is thus useful for IMAP PREAUTH).
780 (\fBexternal\fR suppresses authentication and is thus useful for IMAP EXTERNAL).
781 Any value other than \fBpassword\fR, \fBcram\-md5\fR, \fBntlm\fR,
782 \&\fBmsn\fR or \fBotp\fR suppresses fetchmail's normal inquiry for a
783 password. Specify \fBssh\fR when you are using an end-to-end secure
784 connection such as an ssh tunnel; specify \fBexternal\fR when you use
785 TLS with client authentication and specify \fBgssapi\fR or
786 \&\fBkerberos_v4\fR if you are using a protocol variant that employs
787 GSSAPI or K4. Choosing KPOP protocol automatically selects Kerberos
788 authentication. This option does not work with ETRN.
789 .SS Miscellaneous Options
791 .B \-f <pathname> | \-\-fetchmailrc <pathname>
792 Specify a non-default name for the
794 run control file. The pathname argument must be either "-" (a single
795 dash, meaning to read the configuration from standard input) or a
796 filename. Unless the \-\-version option is also on, a named file
797 argument must have permissions no more open than 0600 (u=rw,g=,o=) or
800 .B \-i <pathname> | \-\-idfile <pathname>
802 Specify an alternate name for the .fetchids file used to save message
803 UIDs. NOTE: since fetchmail 6.3.0, write access to the directory
804 containing the idfile is required, as fetchmail writes a temporary file
805 and renames it into the place of the real idfile only if the temporary
806 file has been written successfully. This avoids the truncation of
807 idfiles when running out of disk space.
809 .B \--pidfile <pathname>
810 (Keyword: pidfile; since fetchmail v6.3.4)
811 Override the default location of the PID file. Default: see
814 .B \-n | \-\-norewrite
815 (Keyword: no rewrite)
818 edits RFC-822 address headers (To, From, Cc, Bcc, and Reply\-To) in
819 fetched mail so that any mail IDs local to the server are expanded to
820 full addresses (@ and the mailserver hostname are appended). This enables
821 replies on the client to get addressed correctly (otherwise your
822 mailer might think they should be addressed to local users on the
823 client machine!). This option disables the rewrite. (This option is
824 provided to pacify people who are paranoid about having an MTA edit
825 mail headers and want to know they can prevent it, but it is generally
826 not a good idea to actually turn off rewrite.)
827 When using ETRN or ODMR, the rewrite option is ineffective.
829 .B \-E <line> | \-\-envelope <line>
830 (Keyword: envelope; Multidrop only)
832 In the configuration file, an enhanced syntax is used:
834 .B envelope [<count>] <line>
836 This option changes the header
838 assumes will carry a copy of the mail's envelope address. Normally
839 this is 'X\-Envelope\-To'. Other typically found headers to carry envelope
840 information are 'X\-Original\-To' and 'Delivered\-To'. Now, since
841 these headers are not standardized, practice varies. See the discussion
842 of multidrop address handling below. As a special case, 'envelope
843 "Received"' enables parsing of sendmail-style Received lines. This is
844 the default, but discouraged because it is not fully reliable.
847 that fetchmail expects the Received-line to be in a specific
848 format: It must contain "by \fIhost\fP for \fIaddress\fR", where
849 \fIhost\fP must match one of the mailserver names that fetchmail
850 recognizes for the account in question.
852 The optional count argument (only available in the configuration file)
853 determines how many header lines of this kind are skipped. A count of 1
854 means: skip the first, take the second. A count of 2 means: skip the
855 first and second, take the third, and so on.
857 .B \-Q <prefix> | \-\-qvirtual <prefix>
858 (Keyword: qvirtual; Multidrop only)
859 The string prefix assigned to this option will be removed from the user
860 name found in the header specified with the \fIenvelope\fR option
861 (\fIbefore\fR doing multidrop name mapping or localdomain checking,
862 if either is applicable). This option is useful if you are using
864 to collect the mail for an entire domain and your ISP (or your mail
865 redirection provider) is using qmail.
866 One of the basic features of qmail is the
870 message header. Whenever qmail delivers a message to a local mailbox
871 it puts the username and hostname of the envelope recipient on this
872 line. The major reason for this is to prevent mail loops. To set up
873 qmail to batch mail for a disconnected site the ISP-mailhost will have
874 normally put that site in its 'Virtualhosts' control file so it will
875 add a prefix to all mail addresses for this site. This results in mail
876 .\" The \&@\& tries to stop HTML converters from making a mailto URL here.
877 sent to 'username\&@\&userhost.userdom.dom.com' having a
878 \&'Delivered\-To:' line of the form:
880 Delivered\-To: mbox\-userstr\-username\&@\&userhost.example.com
882 The ISP can make the 'mbox\-userstr\-' prefix anything they choose
883 but a string matching the user host name is likely.
884 By using the option 'envelope Delivered\-To:' you can make fetchmail reliably
885 identify the original envelope recipient, but you have to strip the
886 \&'mbox\-userstr\-' prefix to deliver to the correct user.
887 This is what this option is for.
892 file, interpret any command-line options specified, and dump a
893 configuration report to standard output. The configuration report is
894 a data structure assignment in the language Python. This option
895 is meant to be used with an interactive
903 Removed before version 6.3.0, the required underlying inet6_apps library
904 had been discontinued and is no longer available.
906 .SH USER AUTHENTICATION AND ENCRYPTION
907 All modes except ETRN require authentication of the client to the server.
908 Normal user authentication in
910 is very much like the authentication mechanism of
912 The correct user-id and password depend upon the underlying security
913 system at the mailserver.
915 If the mailserver is a Unix machine on which you have an ordinary user
916 account, your regular login name and password are used with
918 If you use the same login name on both the server and the client machines,
919 you needn't worry about specifying a user-id with the
921 option -- the default behavior is to use your login name on the
922 client machine as the user-id on the server machine. If you use a
923 different login name on the server machine, specify that login name
926 option. e.g. if your login name is 'jsmith' on a machine named 'mailgrunt',
931 fetchmail \-u jsmith mailgrunt
933 The default behavior of
935 is to prompt you for your mailserver password before the connection is
936 established. This is the safest way to use
938 and ensures that your password will not be compromised. You may also specify
939 your password in your
941 file. This is convenient when using
943 in daemon mode or with scripts.
944 .SS Using netrc files
946 If you do not specify a password, and
948 cannot extract one from your
950 file, it will look for a
952 file in your home directory before requesting one interactively; if an
953 entry matching the mailserver is found in that file, the password will
954 be used. Fetchmail first looks for a match on poll name; if it finds none,
955 it checks for a match on via name. See the
957 man page for details of the syntax of the
959 file. To show a practical example, a .netrc might look like
963 machine hermes.example.org
968 You can repeat this block with different user information if you need to
969 provide more than one password.
971 This feature may allow you to avoid duplicating password
972 information in more than one file.
974 On mailservers that do not provide ordinary user accounts, your user-id and
975 password are usually assigned by the server administrator when you apply for
976 a mailbox on the server. Contact your server administrator if you don't know
977 the correct user-id and password for your mailbox account.
980 Early versions of POP3 (RFC1081, RFC1225) supported a crude form of
981 independent authentication using the
983 file on the mailserver side. Under this RPOP variant, a fixed
984 per-user ID equivalent to a password was sent in clear over a link to
985 a reserved port, with the command RPOP rather than PASS to alert the
986 server that it should do special checking. RPOP is supported
989 (you can specify 'protocol RPOP' to have the program send 'RPOP'
990 rather than 'PASS') but its use is strongly discouraged, and support
991 will be removed from a future fetchmail version. This
992 facility was vulnerable to spoofing and was withdrawn in RFC1460.
994 RFC1460 introduced APOP authentication. In this variant of POP3,
995 you register an APOP password on your server host (on some servers, the
996 program to do this is called \fIpopauth\fR(8)). You put the same
997 password in your \fI~/.fetchmailrc\fP file. Each time \fIfetchmail\fP
998 logs in, it sends an MD5 hash of your password and the server greeting
999 time to the server, which can verify it by checking its authorization
1002 \fBNote that APOP is no longer considered resistant against
1003 man-in-the-middle attacks.\fP
1006 makes some efforts to make the server believe messages had not been
1007 retrieved, by using the TOP command with a large number of lines when
1008 possible. TOP is a command that retrieves the full header and
1009 a \fIfetchmail\fP-specified amount of body lines. It is optional and
1010 therefore not implemented by all servers, and some are known to
1011 implement it improperly. On many servers however, the RETR command which
1012 retrieves the full message with header and body, sets the "seen" flag
1013 (for instance, in a web interface), whereas the TOP command does not do
1017 will always use the RETR command if "fetchall" is set.
1019 will also use the RETR command if "keep" is set and "uidl" is unset.
1022 will use the RETR command on Maillennium POP3/PROXY
1023 servers (used by Comcast) to avoid a deliberate TOP misinterpretation in
1024 this server that causes message corruption.
1028 will use the TOP command. This implies that in "keep" setups, "uidl"
1029 must be set if "TOP" is desired.
1032 that this description is true for the current version of fetchmail, but
1033 the behavior may change in future versions. In particular, fetchmail may
1034 prefer the RETR command because the TOP command causes much grief on
1035 some servers and is only optional.
1036 .SH ALTERNATE AUTHENTICATION FORMS
1038 If your \fIfetchmail\fR was built with Kerberos support and you specify
1039 Kerberos authentication (either with \-\-auth or the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
1040 option \fBauthenticate kerberos_v4\fR) it will try to get a Kerberos
1041 ticket from the mailserver at the start of each query. Note: if
1042 either the pollname or via name is 'hesiod', fetchmail will try to use
1043 Hesiod to look up the mailserver.
1045 If you use POP3 or IMAP with GSSAPI authentication, \fIfetchmail\fR will
1046 expect the server to have RFC1731- or RFC1734-conforming GSSAPI
1047 capability, and will use it. Currently this has only been tested over
1048 Kerberos V, so you're expected to already have a ticket-granting
1049 ticket. You may pass a username different from your principal name
1050 using the standard \fB\-\-user\fR command or by the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
1053 If your IMAP daemon returns the PREAUTH response in its greeting line,
1054 fetchmail will notice this and skip the normal authentication step.
1055 This can be useful, e.g. if you start imapd explicitly using ssh.
1056 In this case you can declare the authentication value 'ssh' on that
1057 site entry to stop \fI.fetchmail\fR from asking you for a password
1060 If you use client authentication with \fITLS1\fR and your IMAP daemon
1061 returns the \fIAUTH=EXTERNAL\fR response, fetchmail will notice this
1062 and will use the authentication shortcut and will not send the
1063 passphrase. In this case you can declare the authentication value 'external'
1064 on that site to stop \fIfetchmail\fR from asking you for a password
1067 If you are using POP3, and the server issues a one-time-password
1068 challenge conforming to RFC1938, \fIfetchmail\fR will use your
1069 password as a pass phrase to generate the required response. This
1070 avoids sending secrets over the net unencrypted.
1072 Compuserve's RPA authentication is supported. If you
1073 compile in the support, \fIfetchmail\fR will try to perform an RPA pass-phrase
1074 authentication instead of sending over the password en clair if it
1075 detects "@compuserve.com" in the hostname.
1077 If you are using IMAP, Microsoft's NTLM authentication (used by Microsoft
1078 Exchange) is supported. If you compile in the support, \fIfetchmail\fR
1079 will try to perform an NTLM authentication (instead of sending over the
1080 password en clair) whenever the server returns AUTH=NTLM in its
1081 capability response. Specify a user option value that looks like
1082 \&'user@domain': the part to the left of the @ will be passed as the
1083 username and the part to the right as the NTLM domain.
1084 .SS Secure Socket Layers (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS)
1086 You can access SSL encrypted services by specifying the \-\-ssl option.
1087 You can also do this using the "ssl" user option in the .fetchmailrc
1088 file. With SSL encryption enabled, queries are initiated over a connection
1089 after negotiating an SSL session, and the connection fails if SSL cannot
1090 be negotiated. Some services, such as POP3 and IMAP, have different
1091 well known ports defined for the SSL encrypted services. The encrypted
1092 ports will be selected automatically when SSL is enabled and no explicit
1093 port is specified. The \-\-sslproto option can be used to select the SSL
1094 protocols (default: v2 or v3). The \-\-sslcertck command line or
1095 sslcertck run control file option should be used to force strict
1096 certificate checking - see below.
1098 If SSL is not configured, fetchmail will usually opportunistically try to use
1099 TLS. TLS can be enforced by using \-\-sslproto "TLS1". TLS
1100 connections use the same port as the unencrypted version of the
1101 protocol and negotiate TLS via special parameter. The \-\-sslcertck
1102 command line or sslcertck run control file option should be used to
1103 force strict certificate checking - see below.
1106 recommended: When connecting to an SSL or TLS encrypted server, the
1107 server presents a certificate to the client for validation. The
1108 certificate is checked to verify that the common name in the certificate
1109 matches the name of the server being contacted and that the effective
1110 and expiration dates in the certificate indicate that it is currently
1111 valid. If any of these checks fail, a warning message is printed, but
1112 the connection continues. The server certificate does not need to be
1113 signed by any specific Certifying Authority and may be a "self-signed"
1114 certificate. If the \-\-sslcertck command line option or sslcertck run
1115 control file option is used, fetchmail will instead abort if any of
1116 these checks fail. Use of the sslcertck or \-\-sslcertck option is
1119 Some SSL encrypted servers may request a client side certificate. A client
1120 side public SSL certificate and private SSL key may be specified. If
1121 requested by the server, the client certificate is sent to the server for
1122 validation. Some servers may require a valid client certificate and may
1123 refuse connections if a certificate is not provided or if the certificate
1124 is not valid. Some servers may require client side certificates be signed
1125 by a recognized Certifying Authority. The format for the key files and
1126 the certificate files is that required by the underlying SSL libraries
1127 (OpenSSL in the general case).
1129 A word of care about the use of SSL: While above mentioned
1130 setup with self-signed server certificates retrieved over the wires
1131 can protect you from a passive eavesdropper, it doesn't help against an
1132 active attacker. It's clearly an improvement over sending the
1133 passwords in clear, but you should be aware that a man-in-the-middle
1134 attack is trivially possible (in particular with tools such as dsniff,
1135 http://monkey.org/~dugsong/dsniff/). Use of strict certificate checking
1136 with a certification authority recognized by server and client, or
1137 perhaps of an SSH tunnel (see below for some examples) is preferable if
1138 you care seriously about the security of your mailbox and passwords.
1142 also supports authentication to the ESMTP server on the client side
1143 according to RFC 2554. You can specify a name/password pair to be
1144 used with the keywords 'esmtpname' and 'esmtppassword'; the former
1145 defaults to the username of the calling user.
1148 .SS Introducing the daemon mode
1151 puts itself into the background and runs forever, querying each
1152 specified host and then sleeping for a given polling interval.
1153 .SS Starting the daemon mode
1154 There are several ways to make fetchmail work in daemon mode. On the
1155 command line, \fB\-\-daemon\ <interval>\fR or \fB\-d\ <interval>\fR
1156 option runs \fIfetchmail\fR in daemon mode. You must specify a numeric
1157 argument which is a polling interval in seconds.
1159 Example: simply invoking
1163 will, therefore, poll all the hosts described in your
1165 file (except those explicitly excluded with the 'skip' verb) once
1168 It is also possible to set a polling interval
1169 in your \fI~/.fetchmailrc\fR file by saying 'set\ daemon\ <interval>',
1170 where <interval> is an integer number of seconds. If you do this,
1171 fetchmail will always start in daemon mode unless you override it with
1172 the command-line option \-\-daemon 0 or \-d0.
1174 Only one daemon process is permitted per user; in daemon mode,
1175 \fIfetchmail\fR sets up a per-user lockfile to guarantee this.
1176 (You can however cheat and set the FETCHMAILHOME environment variable to
1177 overcome this setting, but in that case, it is your responsibility to
1178 make sure you aren't polling the same server with two processes at the
1180 .SS Awakening the background daemon
1182 Normally, calling fetchmail with a daemon in the background sends a
1183 wake-up signal to the daemon and quits without output. The background
1184 daemon then starts its next poll cycle immediately. The wake-up signal,
1185 SIGUSR1, can also be sent manually. The wake-up action also clears any
1186 \&'wedged' flags indicating that connections have wedged due to failed
1187 authentication or multiple timeouts.
1188 .SS Terminating the background daemon
1192 will kill a running daemon process instead of waking it up (if there
1193 is no such process, \fIfetchmail\fP will notify you.
1194 If the \-\-quit option appears last on the command line, \fIfetchmail\fP
1195 will kill the running daemon process and then quit. Otherwise,
1196 \fIfetchmail\fP will first kill a running daemon process and then
1197 continue running with the other options.
1198 .SS Useful options for daemon mode
1203 .B \-\-logfile <filename>
1204 option (keyword: set logfile) is only effective when fetchmail is
1205 detached. This option allows you to redirect status messages
1206 into a specified logfile (follow the option with the logfile name). The
1207 logfile is opened for append, so previous messages aren't deleted. This
1208 is primarily useful for debugging configurations. Note that fetchmail
1209 does not detect if the logfile is rotated, the logfile is only opened
1210 once when fetchmail starts. You need to restart fetchmail after rotating
1211 the logfile and before compressing it (if applicable).
1215 option (keyword: set syslog) allows you to redirect status and error
1216 messages emitted to the
1218 system daemon if available.
1219 Messages are logged with an id of \fBfetchmail\fR, the facility \fBLOG_MAIL\fR,
1220 and priorities \fBLOG_ERR\fR, \fBLOG_ALERT\fR or \fBLOG_INFO\fR.
1221 This option is intended for logging status and error messages which
1222 indicate the status of the daemon and the results while fetching mail
1224 Error messages for command line options and parsing the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
1225 file are still written to stderr, or to the specified log file.
1228 option turns off use of
1230 assuming it's turned on in the
1235 .B \-\-logfile <file>
1242 option suppresses backgrounding and detachment of the
1243 daemon process from its control terminal. This is useful
1244 for debugging or when fetchmail runs as the child of a supervisor
1249 Note that this also causes the logfile option to be
1250 ignored (though perhaps it shouldn't).
1252 Note that while running in daemon mode polling a POP2 or IMAP2bis server,
1253 transient errors (such as DNS failures or sendmail delivery refusals)
1254 may force the fetchall option on for the duration of the next polling
1255 cycle. This is a robustness feature. It means that if a message is
1256 fetched (and thus marked seen by the mailserver) but not delivered
1257 locally due to some transient error, it will be re-fetched during the
1258 next poll cycle. (The IMAP logic doesn't delete messages until
1259 they're delivered, so this problem does not arise.)
1261 If you touch or change the
1263 file while fetchmail is running in daemon mode, this will be detected
1264 at the beginning of the next poll cycle. When a changed
1266 is detected, fetchmail rereads it and restarts from scratch (using
1267 exec(2); no state information is retained in the new instance).
1268 Note also that if you break the
1270 file's syntax, the new instance will softly and silently vanish away
1273 .SH ADMINISTRATIVE OPTIONS
1276 .B \-\-postmaster <name>
1277 option (keyword: set postmaster) specifies the last-resort username to
1278 which multidrop mail is to be forwarded if no matching local recipient
1279 can be found. It is also used as destination of undeliverable mail if
1280 the 'bouncemail' global option is off and additionally for spam-blocked
1281 mail if the 'bouncemail' global option is off and the 'spambounce'
1282 global option is on. This option defaults to the user who invoked
1284 If the invoking user is root, then the default of this option is
1285 the user 'postmaster'. Setting postmaster to the empty string causes
1286 such mail as described above to be discarded - this however is usually a
1288 See also the description of the 'FETCHMAILUSER' environment variable in
1289 the ENVIRONMENT section below.
1293 behaves like the "set no bouncemail" global option, which see.
1297 option (keyword: set invisible) tries to make fetchmail invisible.
1298 Normally, fetchmail behaves like any other MTA would -- it generates a
1299 Received header into each message describing its place in the chain of
1300 transmission, and tells the MTA it forwards to that the mail came from
1301 the machine fetchmail itself is running on. If the invisible option
1302 is on, the Received header is suppressed and fetchmail tries to spoof
1303 the MTA it forwards to into thinking it came directly from the
1308 option (keyword: set showdots) forces fetchmail to show progress dots
1309 even if the current tty is not stdout (for example logfiles).
1310 Fetchmail shows the dots by default when run in nodetach mode or when
1311 daemon mode is not enabled.
1315 option, you can ask fetchmail to add information to the Received
1316 header on the form "polling {label} account {user}", where {label} is
1317 the account label (from the specified rcfile, normally ~/.fetchmailrc)
1318 and {user} is the username which is used to log on to the mail
1319 server. This header can be used to make filtering email where no
1320 useful header information is available and you want mail from
1321 different accounts sorted into different mailboxes (this could, for
1322 example, occur if you have an account on the same server running a
1323 mailing list, and are subscribed to the list using that account). The
1324 default is not adding any such header. In
1326 this is called 'tracepolls'.
1328 .SH RETRIEVAL FAILURE MODES
1329 The protocols \fIfetchmail\fR uses to talk to mailservers are next to
1330 bulletproof. In normal operation forwarding to port 25, no message is
1331 ever deleted (or even marked for deletion) on the host until the SMTP
1332 listener on the client side has acknowledged to \fIfetchmail\fR that
1333 the message has been either accepted for delivery or rejected due to a
1336 When forwarding to an MDA, however, there is more possibility
1337 of error. Some MDAs are 'safe' and reliably return a nonzero status
1338 on any delivery error, even one due to temporary resource limits.
1341 program is like this; so are most programs designed as mail transport
1344 including the sendmail wrapper of Postfix and
1346 These programs give back a reliable positive acknowledgement and
1347 can be used with the mda option with no risk of mail loss. Unsafe
1348 MDAs, though, may return 0 even on delivery failure. If this
1349 happens, you will lose mail.
1351 The normal mode of \fIfetchmail\fR is to try to download only 'new'
1352 messages, leaving untouched (and undeleted) messages you have already
1353 read directly on the server (or fetched with a previous \fIfetchmail
1354 \-\-keep\fR). But you may find that messages you've already read on the
1355 server are being fetched (and deleted) even when you don't specify
1356 \-\-all. There are several reasons this can happen.
1358 One could be that you're using POP2. The POP2 protocol includes no
1359 representation of 'new' or 'old' state in messages, so \fIfetchmail\fR
1360 must treat all messages as new all the time. But POP2 is obsolete, so
1363 A potential POP3 problem might be servers that insert messages
1364 in the middle of mailboxes (some VMS implementations of mail are
1365 rumored to do this). The \fIfetchmail\fR code assumes that new
1366 messages are appended to the end of the mailbox; when this is not true
1367 it may treat some old messages as new and vice versa. Using UIDL whilst
1368 setting fastuidl 0 might fix this, otherwise, consider switching to IMAP.
1370 Yet another POP3 problem is that if they can't make tempfiles in the
1371 user's home directory, some POP3 servers will hand back an
1372 undocumented response that causes fetchmail to spuriously report "No
1375 The IMAP code uses the presence or absence of the server flag \eSeen
1376 to decide whether or not a message is new. This isn't the right thing
1377 to do, fetchmail should check the UIDVALIDITY and use UID, but it
1378 doesn't do that yet. Under Unix, it counts on your IMAP server to notice
1379 the BSD-style Status flags set by mail user agents and set the \eSeen
1380 flag from them when appropriate. All Unix IMAP servers we know of do
1381 this, though it's not specified by the IMAP RFCs. If you ever trip over
1382 a server that doesn't, the symptom will be that messages you have
1383 already read on your host will look new to the server. In this
1384 (unlikely) case, only messages you fetched with \fIfetchmail \-\-keep\fR
1385 will be both undeleted and marked old.
1387 In ETRN and ODMR modes, \fIfetchmail\fR does not actually retrieve messages;
1388 instead, it asks the server's SMTP listener to start a queue flush
1389 to the client via SMTP. Therefore it sends only undelivered messages.
1392 Many SMTP listeners allow administrators to set up 'spam filters' that
1393 block unsolicited email from specified domains. A MAIL FROM or DATA line that
1394 triggers this feature will elicit an SMTP response which
1395 (unfortunately) varies according to the listener.
1399 return an error code of 571.
1401 According to RFC2821, the correct thing to return in this situation is
1402 550 "Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable" (the draft adds
1403 "[E.g., mailbox not found, no access, or command rejected for policy
1406 Older versions of the
1408 MTA return 501 "Syntax error in parameters or arguments".
1412 MTA runs 554 as an antispam response.
1415 may reject code with a 500 response (followed by an enhanced status
1416 code that contains more information).
1420 treats as antispam responses and discards
1421 the message can be set with the 'antispam' option. This is one of the
1423 three circumstance under which fetchmail ever discards mail (the others
1424 are the 552 and 553 errors described below, and the suppression of
1425 multidropped messages with a message-ID already seen).
1429 is fetching from an IMAP server, the antispam response will be detected and
1430 the message rejected immediately after the headers have been fetched,
1431 without reading the message body. Thus, you won't pay for downloading
1432 spam message bodies.
1434 By default, the list of antispam responses is empty.
1436 If the \fIspambounce\fR global option is on, mail that is spam-blocked
1437 triggers an RFC1892/RFC1894 bounce message informing the originator that
1438 we do not accept mail from it. See also BUGS.
1440 .SH SMTP/ESMTP ERROR HANDLING
1441 Besides the spam-blocking described above, fetchmail takes special
1442 actions on the following SMTP/ESMTP error responses
1444 452 (insufficient system storage)
1445 Leave the message in the server mailbox for later retrieval.
1447 552 (message exceeds fixed maximum message size)
1448 Delete the message from the server. Send bounce-mail to the
1451 553 (invalid sending domain)
1452 Delete the message from the server. Don't even try to send
1453 bounce-mail to the originator.
1455 Other errors trigger bounce mail back to the originator. See also BUGS.
1457 .SH THE RUN CONTROL FILE
1458 The preferred way to set up fetchmail is to write a
1459 \&\fI.fetchmailrc\fR file in your home directory (you may do this
1460 directly, with a text editor, or indirectly via \fIfetchmailconf\fR).
1461 When there is a conflict between the command-line arguments and the
1462 arguments in this file, the command-line arguments take precedence.
1464 To protect the security of your passwords,
1465 your \fI~/.fetchmailrc\fR may not normally have more than 0600 (u=rw,g=,o=) permissions;
1467 will complain and exit otherwise (this check is suppressed when
1470 You may read the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file as a list of commands to
1473 is called with no arguments.
1474 .SS Run Control Syntax
1476 Comments begin with a '#' and extend through the end of the line.
1477 Otherwise the file consists of a series of server entries or global
1478 option statements in a free-format, token-oriented syntax.
1480 There are four kinds of tokens: grammar keywords, numbers
1481 (i.e. decimal digit sequences), unquoted strings, and quoted strings.
1482 A quoted string is bounded by double quotes and may contain
1483 whitespace (and quoted digits are treated as a string). Note that
1484 quoted strings will also contain line feed characters if they run across
1485 two or more lines, unless you use a backslash to join lines (see below).
1486 An unquoted string is any whitespace-delimited token that is neither
1487 numeric, string quoted nor contains the special characters ',', ';',
1490 Any amount of whitespace separates tokens in server entries, but is
1491 otherwise ignored. You may use backslash escape sequences (\en for LF,
1492 \&\et for HT, \eb for BS, \er for CR, \e\fInnn\fP for decimal (where
1493 nnn cannot start with a 0), \e0\fIooo\fP for octal, and \ex\fIhh\fP for
1494 hex) to embed non-printable characters or string delimiters in strings.
1495 In quoted strings, a backslash at the very end of a line will cause the
1496 backslash itself and the line feed (LF or NL, new line) character to be
1497 ignored, so that you can wrap long strings. Without the backslash at the
1498 line end, the line feed character would become part of the string.
1501 while these resemble C-style escape sequences, they are not the same.
1502 fetchmail only supports these eight styles. C supports more escape
1503 sequences that consist of backslash (\e) and a single character, but
1504 does not support decimal codes and does not require the leading 0 in
1505 octal notation. Example: fetchmail interprets \e233 the same as \exE9
1506 (Latin small letter e with acute), where C would interpret \e233 as
1507 octal 0233 = \ex9B (CSI, control sequence introducer).
1509 Each server entry consists of one of the keywords 'poll' or 'skip',
1510 followed by a server name, followed by server options, followed by any
1511 number of user (or username) descriptions, followed by user options.
1512 Note: the most common cause of syntax errors is mixing up user and
1513 server options or putting user options before the user descriptions.
1515 For backward compatibility, the word 'server' is a synonym for 'poll'.
1517 You can use the noise keywords 'and', 'with',
1518 \&'has', 'wants', and 'options' anywhere in an entry to make
1519 it resemble English. They're ignored, but but can make entries much
1520 easier to read at a glance. The punctuation characters ':', ';' and
1521 \&',' are also ignored.
1524 The 'poll' verb tells fetchmail to query this host when it is run with
1525 no arguments. The 'skip' verb tells
1527 not to poll this host unless it is explicitly named on the command
1528 line. (The 'skip' verb allows you to experiment with test entries
1529 safely, or easily disable entries for hosts that are temporarily down.)
1531 .SS Keyword/Option Summary
1532 Here are the legal options. Keyword suffixes enclosed in
1533 square brackets are optional. Those corresponding to short command-line
1534 options are followed by '\-' and the appropriate option letter. If
1535 option is only relevant to a single mode of operation, it is noted as
1536 \&'s' or 'm' for singledrop- or multidrop-mode, respectively.
1538 Here are the legal global options:
1542 Keyword Opt Mode Function
1544 set daemon \-d \& T{
1545 Set a background poll interval in seconds.
1547 set postmaster \& \& T{
1548 Give the name of the last-resort mail recipient (default: user running
1549 fetchmail, "postmaster" if run by the root user)
1551 set bouncemail \& \& T{
1552 Direct error mail to the sender (default)
1554 set no bouncemail \& \& T{
1555 Direct error mail to the local postmaster (as per the 'postmaster'
1556 global option above).
1558 set no spambounce \& \& T{
1559 Do not bounce spam-blocked mail (default).
1561 set spambounce \& \& T{
1562 Bounce blocked spam-blocked mail (as per the 'antispam' user option)
1563 back to the destination as indicated by the 'bouncemail' global option.
1564 Warning: Do not use this to bounce spam back to the sender - most spam
1565 is sent with false sender address and thus this option hurts innocent
1568 set logfile \-L \& T{
1569 Name of a file to append error and status messages to.
1571 set idfile \-i \& T{
1572 Name of the file to store UID lists in.
1575 Do error logging through syslog(3).
1577 set no syslog \& \& T{
1578 Turn off error logging through syslog(3). (default)
1580 set properties \& \& T{
1581 String value that is ignored by fetchmail (may be used by extension
1586 Here are the legal server options:
1590 Keyword Opt Mode Function
1593 Specify DNS name of mailserver, overriding poll name
1595 proto[col] \-p \& T{
1596 Specify protocol (case insensitive):
1597 POP2, POP3, IMAP, APOP, KPOP
1599 local[domains] \& m T{
1600 Specify domain(s) to be regarded as local
1603 Specify TCP/IP service port (obsolete, use 'service' instead).
1606 Specify service name (a numeric value is also allowed and
1607 considered a TCP/IP port number).
1609 auth[enticate] \& \& T{
1610 Set authentication type (default 'any')
1613 Server inactivity timeout in seconds (default 300)
1616 Specify envelope-address header name
1619 Disable looking for envelope address
1622 Qmail virtual domain prefix to remove from user name
1625 Specify alternate DNS names of mailserver
1628 specify IP interface(s) that must be up for server poll to take place
1631 Specify IP address to monitor for activity
1634 Specify command through which to make server connections.
1637 Specify command through which to make listener connections.
1640 Enable DNS lookup for multidrop (default)
1643 Disable DNS lookup for multidrop
1646 Do comparison by IP address for multidrop
1648 no checkalias \& m T{
1649 Do comparison by name for multidrop (default)
1652 Force POP3 to use client-side UIDLs (recommended)
1655 Turn off POP3 use of client-side UIDLs (default)
1658 Only check this site every N poll cycles; N is a numeric argument.
1661 Add poll tracing information to the Received header
1664 Set Kerberos principal (only useful with IMAP and kerberos)
1667 Set name for RFC2554 authentication to the ESMTP server.
1669 esmtppassword \& \& T{
1670 Set password for RFC2554 authentication to the ESMTP server.
1674 Here are the legal user descriptions and options:
1678 Keyword Opt Mode Function
1680 user[name] \-u \& T{
1681 This is the user description and must come first after server
1682 description and after possible server options, and before user options.
1684 It sets the remote user name if by itself or followed by 'there', or the
1685 local user name if followed by 'here'.
1688 Connect local and remote user names
1691 Connect local and remote user names
1694 Specify remote account password
1697 Connect to server over the specified base protocol using SSL encryption
1700 Specify file for client side public SSL certificate
1703 Specify file for client side private SSL key
1706 Force ssl protocol for connection
1709 Specify remote folder to query
1712 Specify smtp host(s) to forward to
1714 fetchdomains \& m T{
1715 Specify domains for which mail should be fetched
1717 smtpaddress \-D \& T{
1718 Specify the domain to be put in RCPT TO lines
1721 Specify the user and domain to be put in RCPT TO lines
1724 Specify what SMTP returns are interpreted as spam-policy blocks
1727 Specify MDA for local delivery
1730 Specify BSMTP batch file to append to
1733 Command to be executed before each connection
1735 postconnect \& \& T{
1736 Command to be executed after each connection
1739 Don't delete seen messages from server (for POP3, uidl is recommended)
1742 Flush all seen messages before querying (DANGEROUS)
1745 Flush all oversized messages before querying
1748 Fetch all messages whether seen or not
1751 Rewrite destination addresses for reply (default)
1754 Strip carriage returns from ends of lines
1757 Force carriage returns at ends of lines
1760 Force BODY=8BITMIME to ESMTP listener
1763 Strip Status and X-Mozilla-Status lines out of incoming mail
1765 dropdelivered \& \& T{
1766 Strip Delivered-To lines out of incoming mail
1769 Convert quoted-printable to 8-bit in MIME messages
1772 Idle waiting for new messages after each poll (IMAP only)
1775 Delete seen messages from server (default)
1778 Don't flush all seen messages before querying (default)
1780 no fetchall \& \& T{
1781 Retrieve only new messages (default)
1784 Don't rewrite headers
1787 Don't strip carriage returns (default)
1790 Don't force carriage returns at EOL (default)
1792 no pass8bits \& \& T{
1793 Don't force BODY=8BITMIME to ESMTP listener (default)
1795 no dropstatus \& \& T{
1796 Don't drop Status headers (default)
1798 no dropdelivered \& \& T{
1799 Don't drop Delivered\-To headers (default)
1801 no mimedecode \& \& T{
1802 Don't convert quoted-printable to 8-bit in MIME messages (default)
1805 Don't idle waiting for new messages after each poll (IMAP only)
1808 Set message size limit
1811 Set message size warning interval
1813 batchlimit \-b \& T{
1814 Max # messages to forward in single connect
1816 fetchlimit \-B \& T{
1817 Max # messages to fetch in single connect
1819 fetchsizelimit \& \& T{
1820 Max # message sizes to fetch in single transaction
1823 Use binary search for first unseen message (POP3 only)
1826 Perform an expunge on every #th message (IMAP and POP3 only)
1829 String value is ignored by fetchmail (may be used by extension scripts)
1833 All user options must begin with a user description (user or username
1834 option) and \fIfollow\fR all server descriptions and options.
1836 In the .fetchmailrc file, the 'envelope' string argument may be
1837 preceded by a whitespace-separated number. This number, if specified,
1838 is the number of such headers to skip over (that is, an argument of 1
1839 selects the second header of the given type). This is sometime useful
1840 for ignoring bogus envelope headers created by an ISP's local delivery
1841 agent or internal forwards (through mail inspection systems, for
1843 .SS Keywords Not Corresponding To Option Switches
1845 The 'folder' and 'smtphost' options (unlike their command-line
1846 equivalents) can take a space- or comma-separated list of names
1849 All options correspond to the obvious command-line arguments, except
1850 the following: 'via', 'interval', 'aka', 'is', 'to', 'dns'/'no dns',
1851 \&'checkalias'/'no checkalias', 'password', 'preconnect', 'postconnect',
1852 \&'localdomains', 'stripcr'/'no stripcr', 'forcecr'/'no forcecr',
1853 \&'pass8bits'/'no pass8bits' 'dropstatus/no dropstatus',
1854 \&'dropdelivered/no dropdelivered', 'mimedecode/no mimedecode', 'no idle',
1857 The 'via' option is for if you want to have more
1858 than one configuration pointing at the same site. If it is present,
1859 the string argument will be taken as the actual DNS name of the
1860 mailserver host to query.
1861 This will override the argument of poll, which can then simply be a
1862 distinct label for the configuration (e.g. what you would give on the
1863 command line to explicitly query this host).
1865 The 'interval' option (which takes a numeric argument) allows you to poll a
1866 server less frequently than the basic poll interval. If you say
1867 \&'interval N' the server this option is attached to will only be
1868 queried every N poll intervals.
1869 .SS Singledrop vs. Multidrop options
1871 Please ensure you read the section titled
1872 .B THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP MAILBOXES
1873 if you intend to use multidrop mode.
1875 The 'is' or 'to' keywords associate the following local (client)
1876 name(s) (or server-name to client-name mappings separated by =) with
1877 the mailserver user name in the entry. If an is/to list has '*' as
1878 its last name, unrecognized names are simply passed through. Note that
1879 until \fIfetchmail\fR version 6.3.4 inclusively, these lists could only
1880 contain local parts of user names (fetchmail would only look at the part
1881 before the @ sign). \fIfetchmail\fR versions 6.3.5 and
1882 newer support full addresses on the left hand side of these mappings,
1883 and they take precedence over any 'localdomains', 'aka', 'via' or
1886 A single local name can be used to support redirecting your mail when
1887 your username on the client machine is different from your name on the
1888 mailserver. When there is only a single local name, mail is forwarded
1889 to that local username regardless of the message's Received, To, Cc,
1890 and Bcc headers. In this case,
1892 never does DNS lookups.
1894 When there is more than one local name (or name mapping),
1895 \fIfetchmail\fR looks at the envelope header, if configured, and
1896 otherwise at the Received, To, Cc, and Bcc headers of retrieved mail
1897 (this is 'multidrop mode'). It looks for addresses with hostname parts
1898 that match your poll name or your 'via', 'aka' or 'localdomains'
1899 options, and usually also for hostname parts which DNS tells it are
1900 aliases of the mailserver. See the discussion of 'dns', 'checkalias',
1901 \&'localdomains', and 'aka' for details on how matching addresses are
1904 If \fIfetchmail\fR cannot match any mailserver usernames or
1905 localdomain addresses, the mail will be bounced.
1906 Normally it will be bounced to the sender, but if the 'bouncemail'
1907 global option is off, the mail will go to the local postmaster instead.
1908 (see the 'postmaster' global option). See also BUGS.
1910 The 'dns' option (normally on) controls the way addresses from
1911 multidrop mailboxes are checked. On, it enables logic to check each
1912 host address that does not match an 'aka' or 'localdomains' declaration
1913 by looking it up with DNS. When a mailserver username is recognized
1914 attached to a matching hostname part, its local mapping is added to
1915 the list of local recipients.
1917 The 'checkalias' option (normally off) extends the lookups performed
1918 by the 'dns' keyword in multidrop mode, providing a way to cope with
1919 remote MTAs that identify themselves using their canonical name, while
1920 they're polled using an alias.
1921 When such a server is polled, checks to extract the envelope address
1924 reverts to delivery using the To/Cc/Bcc headers (See below
1925 \&'Header vs. Envelope addresses').
1926 Specifying this option instructs
1928 to retrieve all the IP addresses associated with both the poll name
1929 and the name used by the remote MTA and to do a comparison of the IP
1930 addresses. This comes in handy in situations where the remote server
1931 undergoes frequent canonical name changes, that would otherwise
1932 require modifications to the rcfile. 'checkalias' has no effect if
1933 \&'no dns' is specified in the rcfile.
1935 The 'aka' option is for use with multidrop mailboxes. It allows you
1936 to pre-declare a list of DNS aliases for a server. This is an
1937 optimization hack that allows you to trade space for speed. When
1939 while processing a multidrop mailbox, grovels through message headers
1940 looking for names of the mailserver, pre-declaring common ones can
1941 save it from having to do DNS lookups. Note: the names you give
1942 as arguments to 'aka' are matched as suffixes -- if you specify
1943 (say) 'aka netaxs.com', this will match not just a hostname
1944 netaxs.com, but any hostname that ends with '.netaxs.com'; such as
1945 (say) pop3.netaxs.com and mail.netaxs.com.
1947 The 'localdomains' option allows you to declare a list of domains
1948 which fetchmail should consider local. When fetchmail is parsing
1949 address lines in multidrop modes, and a trailing segment of a host
1950 name matches a declared local domain, that address is passed through
1951 to the listener or MDA unaltered (local-name mappings are \fInot\fR
1954 If you are using 'localdomains', you may also need to specify 'no
1955 envelope', which disables \fIfetchmail\fR's normal attempt to deduce
1956 an envelope address from the Received line or X-Envelope-To header or
1957 whatever header has been previously set by 'envelope'. If you set 'no
1958 envelope' in the defaults entry it is possible to undo that in
1959 individual entries by using 'envelope <string>'. As a special case,
1960 \&'envelope "Received"' restores the default parsing of
1963 The \fBpassword\fR option requires a string argument, which is the password
1964 to be used with the entry's server.
1966 The 'preconnect' keyword allows you to specify a shell command to be
1967 executed just before each time
1969 establishes a mailserver connection. This may be useful if you are
1970 attempting to set up secure POP connections with the aid of
1972 If the command returns a nonzero status, the poll of that mailserver
1975 Similarly, the 'postconnect' keyword similarly allows you to specify a
1976 shell command to be executed just after each time a mailserver
1977 connection is taken down.
1979 The 'forcecr' option controls whether lines terminated by LF only are
1980 given CRLF termination before forwarding. Strictly speaking RFC821
1981 requires this, but few MTAs enforce the requirement it so this option
1982 is normally off (only one such MTA, qmail, is in significant use at
1985 The 'stripcr' option controls whether carriage returns are stripped
1986 out of retrieved mail before it is forwarded. It is normally not
1987 necessary to set this, because it defaults to 'on' (CR stripping
1988 enabled) when there is an MDA declared but 'off' (CR stripping
1989 disabled) when forwarding is via SMTP. If 'stripcr' and 'forcecr' are
1990 both on, 'stripcr' will override.
1992 The 'pass8bits' option exists to cope with Microsoft mail programs that
1993 stupidly slap a "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit" on everything. With
1994 this option off (the default) and such a header present,
1996 declares BODY=7BIT to an ESMTP-capable listener; this causes problems for
1997 messages actually using 8-bit ISO or KOI-8 character sets, which will
1998 be garbled by having the high bits of all characters stripped. If
1999 \&'pass8bits' is on,
2001 is forced to declare BODY=8BITMIME to any ESMTP-capable listener. If
2002 the listener is 8-bit-clean (as all the major ones now are) the right
2003 thing will probably result.
2005 The 'dropstatus' option controls whether nonempty Status and
2006 X-Mozilla-Status lines are retained in fetched mail (the default) or
2007 discarded. Retaining them allows your MUA to see what messages (if
2008 any) were marked seen on the server. On the other hand, it can
2009 confuse some new-mail notifiers, which assume that anything with a
2010 Status line in it has been seen. (Note: the empty Status lines
2011 inserted by some buggy POP servers are unconditionally discarded.)
2013 The 'dropdelivered' option controls whether Delivered\-To headers will
2014 be kept in fetched mail (the default) or discarded. These headers are
2015 added by Qmail and Postfix mailservers in order to avoid mail loops but
2016 may get in your way if you try to "mirror" a mailserver within the same
2017 domain. Use with caution.
2019 The 'mimedecode' option controls whether MIME messages using the
2020 quoted-printable encoding are automatically converted into pure 8-bit
2021 data. If you are delivering mail to an ESMTP-capable, 8-bit-clean
2022 listener (that includes all of the major MTAs like sendmail), then
2023 this will automatically convert quoted-printable message headers and
2024 data into 8-bit data, making it easier to understand when reading
2025 mail. If your e-mail programs know how to deal with MIME messages,
2026 then this option is not needed. The mimedecode option is off by
2027 default, because doing RFC2047 conversion on headers throws away
2028 character-set information and can lead to bad results if the encoding
2029 of the headers differs from the body encoding.
2031 The 'idle' option is intended to be used with IMAP servers supporting
2032 the RFC2177 IDLE command extension, but does not strictly require it.
2033 If it is enabled, and fetchmail detects that IDLE is supported, an
2034 IDLE will be issued at the end of each poll. This will tell the IMAP
2035 server to hold the connection open and notify the client when new mail
2036 is available. If IDLE is not supported, fetchmail will simulate it by
2037 periodically issuing NOOP. If you need to poll a link frequently, IDLE
2038 can save bandwidth by eliminating TCP/IP connects and LOGIN/LOGOUT
2039 sequences. On the other hand, an IDLE connection will eat almost all
2040 of your fetchmail's time, because it will never drop the connection
2041 and allow other polls to occur unless the server times out the IDLE.
2042 It also doesn't work with multiple folders; only the first folder will
2046 The 'properties' option is an extension mechanism. It takes a string
2047 argument, which is ignored by fetchmail itself. The string argument may be
2048 used to store configuration information for scripts which require it.
2049 In particular, the output of '\-\-configdump' option will make properties
2050 associated with a user entry readily available to a Python script.
2052 .SS Miscellaneous Run Control Options
2053 The words 'here' and 'there' have useful English-like
2054 significance. Normally 'user eric is esr' would mean that
2055 mail for the remote user 'eric' is to be delivered to 'esr',
2056 but you can make this clearer by saying 'user eric there is esr here',
2057 or reverse it by saying 'user esr here is eric there'
2059 Legal protocol identifiers for use with the 'protocol' keyword are:
2062 auto (or AUTO) (legacy, to be removed from future release)
2063 pop2 (or POP2) (legacy, to be removed from future release)
2072 Legal authentication types are 'any', 'password', 'kerberos',
2073 \&'kerberos_v4', 'kerberos_v5' and 'gssapi', 'cram\-md5', 'otp', 'msn'
2074 (only for POP3), 'ntlm', 'ssh', 'external' (only IMAP).
2075 The 'password' type specifies
2076 authentication by normal transmission of a password (the password may be
2077 plain text or subject to protocol-specific encryption as in CRAM-MD5);
2078 \&'kerberos' tells \fIfetchmail\fR to try to get a Kerberos ticket at the
2079 start of each query instead, and send an arbitrary string as the
2080 password; and 'gssapi' tells fetchmail to use GSSAPI authentication.
2081 See the description of the 'auth' keyword for more.
2083 Specifying 'kpop' sets POP3 protocol over port 1109 with Kerberos V4
2084 authentication. These defaults may be overridden by later options.
2086 There are some global option statements: 'set logfile'
2087 followed by a string sets the same global specified by \-\-logfile. A
2088 command-line \-\-logfile option will override this. Note that \-\-logfile is
2089 only effective if fetchmail detaches itself from the terminal. Also,
2090 \&'set daemon' sets the poll interval as \-\-daemon does. This can be
2091 overridden by a command-line \-\-daemon option; in particular \-\-daemon\~0
2092 can be used to force foreground operation. The 'set postmaster'
2093 statement sets the address to which multidrop mail defaults if there are
2094 no local matches. Finally, 'set syslog' sends log messages to
2097 .SH DEBUGGING FETCHMAIL
2098 .SS Fetchmail crashing
2099 There are various ways in that fetchmail may "crash", i. e. stop
2100 operation suddenly and unexpectedly. A "crash" usually refers to an
2101 error condition that the software did not handle by itself. A well-known
2102 failure mode is the "segmentation fault" or "signal 11" or "SIGSEGV" or
2103 just "segfault" for short. These can be caused by hardware or by software
2104 problems. Software-induced segfaults can usually be reproduced easily
2105 and in the same place, whereas hardware-induced segfaults can go away if
2106 the computer is rebooted, or powered off for a few hours, and can happen
2107 in random locations even if you use the software the same way.
2109 For solving hardware-induced segfaults, find the faulty component and repair or
2110 replace it. <http://www.bitwizard.nl/sig11/> may help you with details.
2112 For solving software-induced segfaults, the developers may need a "stack
2115 .SS Enabling fetchmail core dumps
2116 By default, fetchmail suppresses core dumps as these might contain
2117 passwords and other sensitive information. For debugging fetchmail
2118 crashes, obtaining a "stack backtrace" from a core dump is often the
2119 quickest way to solve the problem, and when posting your problem on a
2120 mailing list, the developers may ask you for a "backtrace".
2122 1. To get useful backtraces, fetchmail needs to be installed without
2123 getting stripped of its compilation symbols. Unfortunately, most
2124 binary packages that are installed are stripped, and core files from
2125 symbol-stripped programs are worthless. So you may need to recompile
2126 fetchmail. On many systems, you can type
2129 file `which fetchmail`
2132 to find out if fetchmail was symbol-stripped or not. If yours was
2133 unstripped, fine, proceed, if it was stripped, you need to recompile the
2134 source code first. You do not usually need to install fetchmail in order
2137 2. The shell environment that starts fetchmail needs to enable core
2138 dumps. The key is the "maximum core (file) size" that can usually be
2139 configured with a tool named "limit" or "ulimit". See the documentation
2140 for your shell for details. In the popular bash shell, "ulimit \-Sc
2141 unlimited" will allow the core dump.
2143 3. You need to tell fetchmail, too, to allow core dumps. To do
2144 this, run fetchmail with the \fB\-d0 \-v\fP options. It is often easier
2145 to also add \fB\-\-nosyslog \-N\fR as well.
2147 Finally, you need to reproduce the crash. You can just start fetchmail
2148 from the directory where you compiled it by typing \fB./fetchmail\fR,
2149 so the complete command line will start with \fB./fetchmail \-Nvd0
2150 \&\-\-nosyslog\fR and perhaps list your other options.
2152 After the crash, run your debugger to obtain the core dump. The
2153 debugger will often be GNU GDB, you can then type (adjust paths as
2154 necessary) \fBgdb ./fetchmail fetchmail.core\fR and then, after GDB
2155 has started up and read all its files, type \fBbacktrace full\fR, save
2156 the output (copy & paste will do, the backtrace will be read by a human)
2157 and then type \fBquit\fR to leave gdb.
2159 on some systems, the core
2160 files have different names, they might contain a number instead of the
2161 program name, or number and name, but it will usually have "core" as
2164 .SH INTERACTION WITH RFC 822
2165 When trying to determine the originating address of a message,
2166 fetchmail looks through headers in the following order:
2170 Resent-Sender: (ignored if it doesn't contain an @ or !)
2171 Sender: (ignored if it doesn't contain an @ or !)
2178 The originating address is used for logging, and to set the MAIL FROM
2179 address when forwarding to SMTP. This order is intended to cope
2180 gracefully with receiving mailing list messages in multidrop mode. The
2181 intent is that if a local address doesn't exist, the bounce message
2182 won't be returned blindly to the author or to the list itself, but
2183 rather to the list manager (which is less annoying).
2185 In multidrop mode, destination headers are processed as follows:
2186 First, fetchmail looks for the header specified by the 'envelope' option
2187 in order to determine the local recipient address. If the mail is
2188 addressed to more than one recipient, the Received line won't contain
2189 any information regarding recipient addresses.
2191 Then fetchmail looks for the Resent-To:, Resent-Cc:, and Resent-Bcc:
2192 lines. If they exist, they should contain the final recipients and
2193 have precedence over their To:/Cc:/Bcc: counterparts. If the Resent\-*
2194 lines don't exist, the To:, Cc:, Bcc: and Apparently-To: lines are
2195 looked for. (The presence of a Resent\-To: is taken to imply that the
2196 person referred by the To: address has already received the original
2199 .SH CONFIGURATION EXAMPLES
2200 Note that although there are password declarations in a good many
2201 of the examples below, this is mainly for illustrative purposes.
2202 We recommend stashing account/password pairs in your $HOME/.netrc
2203 file, where they can be used not just by fetchmail but by ftp(1) and
2209 poll SERVERNAME protocol PROTOCOL username NAME password PASSWORD
2215 poll pop.provider.net protocol pop3 username "jsmith" password "secret1" ssl
2218 Or, using some abbreviations:
2221 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" password "secret1"
2224 Multiple servers may be listed:
2227 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" pass "secret1"
2228 poll other.provider.net proto pop2 user "John.Smith" pass "My^Hat"
2231 Here's a version of those two with more whitespace and some noise words:
2234 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3
2235 user "jsmith", with password secret1, is "jsmith" here;
2236 poll other.provider.net proto pop2:
2237 user "John.Smith", with password "My^Hat", is "John.Smith" here;
2240 This version is much easier to read and doesn't cost significantly
2241 more (parsing is done only once, at startup time).
2244 If you need to include whitespace in a parameter string or start the
2245 latter with a number, enclose the string in double quotes. Thus:
2248 poll mail.provider.net with proto pop3:
2249 user "jsmith" there has password "4u but u can't krak this"
2250 is jws here and wants mda "/bin/mail"
2253 You may have an initial server description headed by the keyword
2254 \&'defaults' instead of 'poll' followed by a name. Such a record
2255 is interpreted as defaults for all queries to use. It may be overwritten
2256 by individual server descriptions. So, you could write:
2261 poll pop.provider.net
2263 poll mail.provider.net
2264 user "jjsmith" there has password "secret2"
2267 It's possible to specify more than one user per server.
2268 The 'user' keyword leads off a user description, and every user specification
2269 in a multi-user entry must include it. Here's an example:
2272 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 port 3111
2273 user "jsmith" with pass "secret1" is "smith" here
2274 user jones with pass "secret2" is "jjones" here keep
2277 This associates the local username 'smith' with the pop.provider.net
2278 username 'jsmith' and the local username 'jjones' with the
2279 pop.provider.net username 'jones'. Mail for 'jones' is kept on the
2280 server after download.
2282 Here's what a simple retrieval configuration for a multidrop mailbox
2286 poll pop.provider.net:
2287 user maildrop with pass secret1 to golux 'hurkle'='happy' snark here
2290 This says that the mailbox of account 'maildrop' on the server is a
2291 multidrop box, and that messages in it should be parsed for the
2292 server user names 'golux', 'hurkle', and 'snark'. It further
2293 specifies that 'golux' and 'snark' have the same name on the
2294 client as on the server, but mail for server user 'hurkle' should be
2295 delivered to client user 'happy'.
2300 until version 6.3.4, did NOT allow full user@domain specifications here,
2301 these would never match. \fIFetchmail\fP 6.3.5 and newer support
2302 user@domain specifications on the left-hand side of a user mapping.
2304 Here's an example of another kind of multidrop connection:
2307 poll pop.provider.net localdomains loonytoons.org toons.org
2308 envelope X-Envelope-To
2309 user maildrop with pass secret1 to * here
2312 This also says that the mailbox of account 'maildrop' on the server is
2313 a multidrop box. It tells fetchmail that any address in the
2314 loonytoons.org or toons.org domains (including sub-domain addresses like
2315 \&'joe@daffy.loonytoons.org') should be passed through to the local SMTP
2316 listener without modification. Be careful of mail loops if you do this!
2318 Here's an example configuration using ssh and the plugin option. The
2319 queries are made directly on the stdin and stdout of imapd via ssh.
2320 Note that in this setup, IMAP authentication can be skipped.
2323 poll mailhost.net with proto imap:
2324 plugin "ssh %h /usr/sbin/imapd" auth ssh;
2325 user esr is esr here
2328 .SH THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP MAILBOXES
2329 Use the multiple-local-recipients feature with caution -- it can bite.
2330 All multidrop features are ineffective in ETRN and ODMR modes.
2332 Also, note that in multidrop mode duplicate mails are suppressed. A
2333 piece of mail is considered duplicate if it has the same message-ID as
2334 the message immediately preceding and more than one addressee. Such
2335 runs of messages may be generated when copies of a message addressed
2336 to multiple users are delivered to a multidrop box.
2338 .SS Header vs. Envelope addresses
2339 The fundamental problem is that by having your mailserver toss several
2340 peoples' mail in a single maildrop box, you may have thrown away
2341 potentially vital information about who each piece of mail was
2342 actually addressed to (the 'envelope address', as opposed to the
2343 header addresses in the RFC822 To/Cc headers - the Bcc is not available
2344 at the receiving end). This 'envelope address' is the address you need
2345 in order to reroute mail properly.
2349 can deduce the envelope address. If the mailserver MTA is
2351 and the item of mail had just one recipient, the MTA will have written
2352 a 'by/for' clause that gives the envelope addressee into its Received
2353 header. But this doesn't work reliably for other MTAs, nor if there is
2354 more than one recipient. By default, \fIfetchmail\fR looks for
2355 envelope addresses in these lines; you can restore this default with
2356 \&\-E "Received" or 'envelope Received'.
2358 .B As a better alternative,
2359 some SMTP listeners and/or mail servers insert a header
2360 in each message containing a copy of the envelope addresses. This
2361 header (when it exists) is often 'X\-Original\-To', 'Delivered\-To' or
2362 \&'X\-Envelope\-To'. Fetchmail's assumption about this can be changed with
2363 the \-E or 'envelope' option. Note that writing an envelope header of
2364 this kind exposes the names of recipients (including blind-copy
2365 recipients) to all receivers of the messages, so the upstream must store
2366 one copy of the message per recipient to avoid becoming a privacy problem.
2368 Postfix, since version 2.0, writes an X\-Original\-To: header which
2369 contains a copy of the envelope as it was received.
2371 Qmail and Postfix generally write a 'Delivered\-To' header upon
2372 delivering the message to the mail spool and use it to avoid mail loops.
2373 Qmail virtual domains however will prefix the user name with a string
2374 that normally matches the user's domain. To remove this prefix you can
2375 use the \-Q or 'qvirtual' option.
2377 Sometimes, unfortunately, neither of these methods works. That is the
2378 point when you should contact your ISP and ask them to provide such an
2379 envelope header, and you should not use multidrop in this situation.
2380 When they all fail, fetchmail must fall back on the contents of To/Cc
2381 headers (Bcc headers are not available - see below) to try to determine
2382 recipient addressees -- and these are unreliable.
2383 In particular, mailing-list software often ships mail with only
2384 the list broadcast address in the To header.
2386 .B Note that a future version of \fIfetchmail\fP may remove To/Cc parsing!
2390 cannot deduce a recipient address that is local, and the intended
2391 recipient address was anyone other than fetchmail's invoking user,
2392 .B mail will get lost.
2393 This is what makes the multidrop feature risky without proper envelope
2396 A related problem is that when you blind-copy a mail message, the Bcc
2397 information is carried \fIonly\fR as envelope address (it's removed from
2398 the headers by the sending mail server, so fetchmail can see it only if
2399 there is an X-\Envelope\-To header). Thus, blind-copying to someone who
2400 gets mail over a fetchmail multidrop link will fail unless the the
2401 mailserver host routinely writes X\-Envelope\-To or an equivalent header
2402 into messages in your maildrop.
2404 \fBIn conclusion, mailing lists and Bcc'd mail can only work if the
2405 server you're fetching from (1) stores one copy of the message per
2406 recipient in \fIyour\fP domain and (2) records the envelope
2407 information in a special header (X\-Original\-To, Delivered\-To,
2408 X\-Envelope\-To).\fR
2410 .SS Good Ways To Use Multidrop Mailboxes
2411 Multiple local names can be used to administer a mailing list from the
2412 client side of a \fIfetchmail\fR collection. Suppose your name is
2413 \&'esr', and you want to both pick up your own mail and maintain a mailing
2414 list called (say) "fetchmail-friends", and you want to keep the alias
2415 list on your client machine.
2417 On your server, you can alias 'fetchmail\-friends' to 'esr'; then, in
2418 your \fI.fetchmailrc\fR, declare 'to esr fetchmail\-friends here'.
2419 Then, when mail including 'fetchmail\-friends' as a local address
2420 gets fetched, the list name will be appended to the list of
2421 recipients your SMTP listener sees. Therefore it will undergo alias
2422 expansion locally. Be sure to include 'esr' in the local alias
2423 expansion of fetchmail\-friends, or you'll never see mail sent only to
2424 the list. Also be sure that your listener has the "me-too" option set
2425 (sendmail's \-oXm command-line option or OXm declaration) so your name
2426 isn't removed from alias expansions in messages you send.
2428 This trick is not without its problems, however. You'll begin to see
2429 this when a message comes in that is addressed only to a mailing list
2430 you do \fInot\fR have declared as a local name. Each such message
2431 will feature an 'X\-Fetchmail\-Warning' header which is generated
2432 because fetchmail cannot find a valid local name in the recipient
2433 addresses. Such messages default (as was described above) to being
2434 sent to the local user running
2436 but the program has no way to know that that's actually the right thing.
2438 .SS Bad Ways To Abuse Multidrop Mailboxes
2439 Multidrop mailboxes and
2441 serving multiple users in daemon mode do not mix. The problem, again, is
2442 mail from mailing lists, which typically does not have an individual
2443 recipient address on it. Unless
2445 can deduce an envelope address, such mail will only go to the account
2446 running fetchmail (probably root). Also, blind-copied users are very
2447 likely never to see their mail at all.
2449 If you're tempted to use
2451 to retrieve mail for multiple users from a single mail drop via POP or
2452 IMAP, think again (and reread the section on header and envelope
2453 addresses above). It would be smarter to just let the mail sit in the
2454 mailserver's queue and use fetchmail's ETRN or ODMR modes to trigger
2455 SMTP sends periodically (of course, this means you have to poll more
2456 frequently than the mailserver's expiry period). If you can't arrange
2457 this, try setting up a UUCP feed.
2459 If you absolutely \fImust\fR use multidrop for this purpose, make sure
2460 your mailserver writes an envelope-address header that fetchmail can
2461 see. Otherwise you \fIwill\fR lose mail and it \fIwill\fR come back
2464 .SS Speeding Up Multidrop Checking
2465 Normally, when multiple users are declared
2467 extracts recipient addresses as described above and checks each host
2468 part with DNS to see if it's an alias of the mailserver. If so, the
2469 name mappings described in the "to ... here" declaration are done and
2470 the mail locally delivered.
2472 This is a convenient but also slow method. To speed
2473 it up, pre-declare mailserver aliases with 'aka'; these are checked
2474 before DNS lookups are done. If you're certain your aka list contains
2476 DNS aliases of the mailserver (and all MX names pointing at it - note
2477 this may change in a future version)
2478 you can declare 'no dns' to suppress DNS lookups entirely and
2479 \fIonly\fR match against the aka list.
2482 Support for socks4/5 is a \fBcompile time\fP configuration option. Once
2483 compiled in, fetchmail will always use the socks libraries and
2484 configuration on your system, there are no run-time switches in
2485 fetchmail - but you can still configure SOCKS: you can specify which
2486 SOCKS configuration file is used in the \fBSOCKS_CONF\fP environment
2489 For instance, if you wanted to bypass the SOCKS proxy altogether and
2490 have fetchmail connect directly, you could just pass
2491 SOCKS_CONF=/dev/null in the environment, for example (add your usual
2492 command line options - if any - to the end of this line):
2495 env SOCKS_CONF=/dev/null fetchmail
2499 To facilitate the use of
2501 in shell scripts, an exit\ status code is returned to give an indication
2502 of what occurred during a given connection.
2504 The exit codes returned by
2508 One or more messages were successfully retrieved (or, if the \-c option
2509 was selected, were found waiting but not retrieved).
2511 There was no mail awaiting retrieval. (There may have been old mail still
2512 on the server but not selected for retrieval.)
2514 An error was encountered when attempting to open a socket to retrieve
2515 mail. If you don't know what a socket is, don't worry about it --
2516 just treat this as an 'unrecoverable error'. This error can also be
2517 because a protocol fetchmail wants to use is not listed in /etc/services.
2519 The user authentication step failed. This usually means that a bad
2520 user-id, password, or APOP id was specified. Or it may mean that you
2521 tried to run fetchmail under circumstances where it did not have
2522 standard input attached to a terminal and could not prompt for a
2525 Some sort of fatal protocol error was detected.
2527 There was a syntax error in the arguments to
2530 The run control file had bad permissions.
2532 There was an error condition reported by the server. Can also
2535 timed out while waiting for the server.
2537 Client-side exclusion error. This means
2539 either found another copy of itself already running, or failed in such
2540 a way that it isn't sure whether another copy is running.
2542 The user authentication step failed because the server responded "lock
2543 busy". Try again after a brief pause! This error is not implemented
2544 for all protocols, nor for all servers. If not implemented for your
2545 server, "3" will be returned instead, see above. May be returned when
2546 talking to qpopper or other servers that can respond with "lock busy"
2547 or some similar text containing the word "lock".
2551 run failed while trying to do an SMTP port open or transaction.
2553 Fatal DNS error. Fetchmail encountered an error while performing
2554 a DNS lookup at startup and could not proceed.
2556 BSMTP batch file could not be opened.
2558 Poll terminated by a fetch limit (see the \-\-fetchlimit option).
2560 Server busy indication.
2562 Internal error. You should see a message on standard error with
2564 .IP "24 - 26, 28, 29"
2565 These are internal codes and should not appear externally.
2569 queries more than one host, return status is 0 if \fIany\fR query
2570 successfully retrieved mail. Otherwise the returned error status is
2571 that of the last host queried.
2576 default run control file
2579 default location of file recording last message UIDs seen per host.
2582 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (non-root mode).
2585 your FTP run control file, which (if present) will be searched for
2586 passwords as a last resort before prompting for one interactively.
2588 /var/run/fetchmail.pid
2589 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, Linux systems).
2592 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, systems without /var/run).
2596 If the FETCHMAILUSER variable is set, it is used as the name of the
2597 calling user (default local name) for purposes such as mailing error
2598 notifications. Otherwise, if either the LOGNAME or USER variable is
2599 correctly set (e.g. the corresponding UID matches the session user ID)
2600 then that name is used as the default local name. Otherwise
2601 \fBgetpwuid\fR(3) must be able to retrieve a password entry for the
2602 session ID (this elaborate logic is designed to handle the case of
2603 multiple names per userid gracefully).
2606 If the environment variable FETCHMAILHOME is set to a valid and
2607 existing directory name, fetchmail will read $FETCHMAILHOME/fetchmailrc
2608 (the dot is missing in this case), $FETCHMAILHOME/.fetchids and
2609 $FETCHMAILHOME/.fetchmail.pid rather than from the user's home
2610 directory. The .netrc file is always looked for in the the invoking
2611 user's home directory regardless of FETCHMAILHOME's setting.
2614 If the HOME_ETC variable is set, fetchmail will read
2615 $HOME_ETC/.fetchmailrc instead of ~/.fetchmailrc.
2617 If HOME_ETC and FETCHMAILHOME are both set, HOME_ETC will be ignored.
2620 (only if SOCKS support is compiled in) this variable is used by the
2621 socks library to find out which configuration file it should read. Set
2622 this to /dev/null to bypass the SOCKS proxy.
2627 daemon is running as root, SIGUSR1 wakes it up from its sleep phase and
2628 forces a poll of all non-skipped servers. For compatibility reasons,
2629 SIGHUP can also be used in 6.3.X but may not be available in future
2634 is running in daemon mode as non-root, use SIGUSR1 to wake it (this is
2635 so SIGHUP due to logout can retain the default action of killing it).
2639 in foreground while a background fetchmail is running will do
2640 whichever of these is appropriate to wake it up.
2642 .SH BUGS AND KNOWN PROBLEMS
2644 Please check the \fBNEWS\fP file that shipped with fetchmail for more
2645 known bugs than those listed here.
2647 Fetchmail cannot handle user names that contain blanks after a "@"
2648 character, for instance "demonstr@ti on". These are rather uncommon and
2649 only hurt when using UID-based \-\-keep setups, so the 6.3.X versions of
2650 fetchmail won't be fixed.
2652 The assumptions that the DNS and in particular the checkalias options
2653 make are not often sustainable. For instance, it has become uncommon for
2654 an MX server to be a POP3 or IMAP server at the same time. Therefore the
2655 MX lookups may go away in a future release.
2657 The mda and plugin options interact badly. In order to collect error
2658 status from the MDA, fetchmail has to change its normal signal
2659 handling so that dead plugin processes don't get reaped until the end
2660 of the poll cycle. This can cause resource starvation if too many
2661 zombies accumulate. So either don't deliver to a MDA using plugins or
2662 risk being overrun by an army of undead.
2664 The \-\-interface option does not support IPv6 and it is doubtful if it
2665 ever will, since there is no portable way to query interface IPv6
2668 The RFC822 address parser used in multidrop mode chokes on some
2669 @-addresses that are technically legal but bizarre. Strange uses of
2670 quoting and embedded comments are likely to confuse it.
2672 In a message with multiple envelope headers, only the last one
2673 processed will be visible to fetchmail.
2675 Use of some of these protocols requires that the program send
2676 unencrypted passwords over the TCP/IP connection to the mailserver.
2677 This creates a risk that name/password pairs might be snaffled with a
2678 packet sniffer or more sophisticated monitoring software. Under Linux
2679 and FreeBSD, the \-\-interface option can be used to restrict polling to
2680 availability of a specific interface device with a specific local or
2681 remote IP address, but snooping is still possible if (a) either host
2682 has a network device that can be opened in promiscuous mode, or (b)
2683 the intervening network link can be tapped. We recommend the use of
2685 tunnelling to not only shroud your passwords but encrypt the entire
2688 Use of the %F or %T escapes in an mda option could open a security
2689 hole, because they pass text manipulable by an attacker to a shell
2690 command. Potential shell characters are replaced by '_' before
2691 execution. The hole is further reduced by the fact that fetchmail
2692 temporarily discards any suid privileges it may have while running the
2693 MDA. For maximum safety, however, don't use an mda command containing
2694 %F or %T when fetchmail is run from the root account itself.
2696 Fetchmail's method of sending bounces due to errors or spam-blocking and
2697 spam bounces requires that port 25 of localhost be available for sending
2702 while a background instance is running and break the syntax, the
2703 background instance will die silently. Unfortunately, it can't
2704 die noisily because we don't yet know whether syslog should be enabled.
2705 On some systems, fetchmail dies quietly even if there is no syntax
2706 error; this seems to have something to do with buggy terminal ioctl
2709 The \-f\~\- option (reading a configuration from stdin) is incompatible
2710 with the plugin option.
2712 The 'principal' option only handles Kerberos IV, not V.
2714 Interactively entered passwords are truncated after 63 characters. If
2715 you really need to use a longer password, you will have to use a
2718 A backslash as the last character of a configuration file will be
2719 flagged as a syntax error rather than ignored.
2721 The BSMTP error handling is virtually nonexistent and may leave broken
2724 Send comments, bug reports, gripes, and the like to the
2725 fetchmail\-devel list <fetchmail\-devel@lists.berlios.de>. An HTML FAQ is
2726 available at the fetchmail home page; surf to
2727 http://fetchmail.berlios.de/ or do a WWW search for pages with
2728 \&'fetchmail' in their titles.
2731 Fetchmail is currently maintained by Matthias Andree and Rob Funk with
2732 major assistance from Sunil Shetye (for code) and Rob MacGregor (for the
2735 Most of the code is from Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>. Too
2736 many other people to name here have contributed code and patches.
2738 This program is descended from and replaces
2740 by Carl Harris <ceharris@mal.com>; the internals have become quite different,
2741 but some of its interface design is directly traceable to that
2744 This manual page has been improved by R.\ Hannes Beinert and H\['e]ctor
2748 mutt(1), elm(1), mail(1), sendmail(8), popd(8), imapd(8), netrc(5)
2750 The fetchmail home page: <http://fetchmail.berlios.de/>
2752 The maildrop home page: <http://www.courier-mta.org/maildrop/>
2753 .SH APPLICABLE STANDARDS
2755 Note that this list is just a collection of references and not a
2756 statement as to the actual protocol conformance or requirements in
2760 RFC 821, RFC 2821, RFC 1869, RFC 1652, RFC 1870, RFC 1983, RFC 1985,
2764 RFC 822, RFC 2822, RFC 1123, RFC 1892, RFC 1894.
2770 RFC 1081, RFC 1225, RFC 1460, RFC 1725, RFC 1734, RFC 1939, RFC 1957,
2783 RFC 1730, RFC 1731, RFC 1732, RFC 2060, RFC 2061, RFC 2195, RFC 2177,
projects / ~andy / fetchmail / blob