2 .\" ** The above line should force tbl to be used as a preprocessor **
4 .\" Man page for fetchmail
6 .\" For license terms, see the file COPYING in this directory.
9 fetchmail \- fetch mail from a POP, IMAP, or ETRN-capable server
12 \fBfetchmail\fR [\fIoption...\fR] [\fImailserver...\fR]
18 is a mail-retrieval and forwarding utility; it fetches mail from
19 remote mailservers and forwards it to your local (client) machine's
20 delivery system. You can then handle the retrieved mail using normal
21 mail user agents such as \fImutt\fR(1), \fIelm\fR(1) or \fIMail\fR(1).
22 The \fIfetchmail\fR utility can be run in a daemon mode to repeatedly
23 poll one or more systems at a specified interval.
27 program can gather mail from servers supporting any of the common
28 mail-retrieval protocols: POP2, POP3, IMAP2bis, IMAP4, and IMAPrev1.
29 It can also use the ESMTP ETRN extension and ODMR. (The RFCs describing all
30 these protocols are listed at the end of this manual page.)
34 is primarily intended to be used over on-demand TCP/IP links (such as
35 SLIP or PPP connections), it may also be useful as a message transfer
36 agent for sites which refuse for security reasons to permit
37 (sender-initiated) SMTP transactions with sendmail.
39 As each message is retrieved \fIfetchmail\fR normally delivers it via SMTP to
40 port 25 on the machine it is running on (localhost), just as though it
41 were being passed in over a normal TCP/IP link. The mail will then be
42 delivered locally via your system's MDA (Mail Delivery Agent, usually
43 \fIsendmail\fR(8) but your system may use a different one such
44 as \fIsmail\fR, \fImmdf\fR, \fIexim\fR, or \fIqmail\fR). All the
45 delivery-control mechanisms (such as \fI.forward\fR files) normally
46 available through your system MDA and local delivery agents will
49 If no port 25 listener is available, but your fetchmail compilation
50 detected or was told about a reliable local MDA, it will use that MDA
51 for local delivery instead. At build time, fetchmail normally looks
60 is available, it will assist you in setting up and editing a
61 fetchmailrc configuration. It runs under X and requires that the
62 language Python and the Tk toolkit be present on your system. If
63 you are first setting up fetchmail for single-user mode, it is
64 recommended that you use Novice mode. Expert mode provides
65 complete control of fetchmail configuration, including the
66 multidrop features. In either case, the `Autoprobe' button
67 will tell you the most capable protocol a given mailserver
68 supports, and warn you of potential problems with that server.
73 is controlled by command-line options and a run control file,
74 .IR ~/.fetchmailrc\fR ,
75 the syntax of which we describe in a later section (this file is what
76 the \fIfetchmailconf\fR program edits). Command-line options override
80 Each server name that you specify following the options on the
81 command line will be queried. If you don't specify any servers
82 on the command line, each `poll' entry in your
86 To facilitate the use of
88 in scripts and pipelines, it returns an appropriate exit code upon
89 termination -- see EXIT CODES below.
91 The following options modify the behavior of \fIfetchmail\fR. It is
92 seldom necessary to specify any of these once you have a
93 working \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file set up.
95 Almost all options have a corresponding keyword which can be used to
100 Some special options are not covered here, but are documented instead
101 in sections on AUTHENTICATION and DAEMON MODE which follow.
105 Displays the version information for your copy of
107 No mail fetch is performed.
108 Instead, for each server specified, all the option information
109 that would be computed if
111 were connecting to that server is displayed. Any non-printables in
112 passwords or other string names are shown as backslashed C-like
113 escape sequences. This option is useful for verifying that your
114 options are set the way you want them.
117 Return a status code to indicate whether there is mail waiting,
118 without actually fetching or deleting mail (see EXIT CODES below).
119 This option turns off daemon mode (in which it would be useless). It
120 doesn't play well with queries to multiple sites, and doesn't work
121 with ETRN or ODMR. It will return a false positive if you leave read but
122 undeleted mail in your server mailbox and your fetch protocol can't
123 tell kept messages from new ones. This means it will work with IMAP,
124 not work with POP2, and may occasionally flake out under POP3.
127 Silent mode. Suppresses all progress/status messages that are
128 normally echoed to standard error during a fetch (but does not
129 suppress actual error messages). The --verbose option overrides this.
132 Verbose mode. All control messages passed between
134 and the mailserver are echoed to stderr. Overrides --silent.
135 Doubling this option (-v -v) causes extra diagnostic information
141 Retrieve both old (seen) and new messages from the mailserver. The
142 default is to fetch only messages the server has not marked seen.
143 Under POP3, this option also forces the use of RETR rather than TOP.
144 Note that POP2 retrieval behaves as though --all is always on (see
145 RETRIEVAL FAILURE MODES below) and this option does not work with ETRN
150 Keep retrieved messages on the remote mailserver. Normally, messages
151 are deleted from the folder on the mailserver after they have been retrieved.
154 option causes retrieved messages to remain in your folder on the
155 mailserver. This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
159 Delete retrieved messages from the remote mailserver. This
160 option forces retrieved mail to be deleted. It may be useful if
161 you have specified a default of \fBkeep\fR in your
162 \&\fI.fetchmailrc\fR. This option is forced on with ETRN and ODMR.
165 POP3/IMAP only. Delete old (previously retrieved) messages from the mailserver
166 before retrieving new messages. This option does not work with ETRN or
168 Warning: if your local MTA hangs and fetchmail is aborted, the next
169 time you run fetchmail, it will delete mail that was never delivered to you.
170 What you probably want is the default setting: if you don't specify `-k', then
171 fetchmail will automatically delete messages after successful delivery.
172 .SS Protocol and Query Options
174 .B \-p, \--protocol <proto>
175 (Keyword: proto[col])
176 Specify the protocol to use when communicating with the remote
177 mailserver. If no protocol is specified, the default is AUTO.
179 may be one of the following:
182 Tries IMAP, POP3, and POP2 (skipping any of these for which support
183 has not been compiled in).
185 Post Office Protocol 2
187 Post Office Protocol 3
189 Use POP3 with old-fashioned MD5-challenge authentication.
191 Use POP3 with RPOP authentication.
193 Use POP3 with Kerberos V4 authentication on port 1109.
195 Use POP3 with Demon Internet's SDPS extensions.
197 IMAP2bis, IMAP4, or IMAP4rev1 (\fIfetchmail\fR autodetects their capabilities).
199 Use the ESMTP ETRN option.
201 Use the the On-Demand Mail Relay ESMTP profile.
204 All these alternatives work in basically the same way (communicating
205 with standard server daemons to fetch mail already delivered to a
206 mailbox on the server) except ETRN and ODMR. The ETRN mode
207 allows you to ask a compliant ESMTP server (such as BSD sendmail at
208 release 8.8.0 or higher) to immediately open a sender-SMTP connection
209 to your client machine and begin forwarding any items addressed to
210 your client machine in the server's queue of undelivered mail. The
211 ODMR mode requires an ODMR-capable server and works similarly to
212 ETRN, except that it does not require the client machine to have
217 Force UIDL use (effective only with POP3). Force client-side tracking
218 of `newness' of messages (UIDL stands for ``unique ID listing'' and is
219 described in RFC1725). Use with `keep' to use a mailbox as a baby
220 news drop for a group of users.
222 .B \-P, --port <portnumber>
224 The port option permits you to specify a TCP/IP port to connect on.
225 This option will seldom be necessary as all the supported protocols have
226 well-established default port numbers.
228 .B \--principal <principal>
230 The principal option permits you to specify a service principal for
231 mutual authentication. This is applicable to POP3 or IMAP with Kerberos
234 .B \-t, --timeout <seconds>
236 The timeout option allows you to set a server-nonresponse
237 timeout in seconds. If a mailserver does not send a greeting message
238 or respond to commands for the given number of seconds,
239 \fIfetchmail\fR will hang up on it. Without such a timeout
240 \fIfetchmail\fR might hang up indefinitely trying to fetch mail from a
241 down host. This would be particularly annoying for a \fIfetchmail\fR
242 running in background. There is a default timeout which fetchmail -V
243 will report. If a given connection receives too many timeouts in
244 succession, fetchmail will consider it wedged and stop retrying,
245 the calkling user will be notified by email if this happens.
247 .B \--plugin <command>
248 (Keyword: plugin) The plugin option allows you to use an external
249 program to establish the TCP connection. This is useful if you want
250 to use socks, SSL, ssh, or need some special firewalling setup. The
251 program will be looked up in $PATH and can optionally be passed the
252 hostname and port as arguments using "%h" and "%p" respectively (note
253 that the interpolation logic is rather promitive, and these token must
254 be bounded by whitespace or beginning of string or end of string).
255 Fetchmail will write to the plugin's stdin and read from the plugin's
258 .B \--plugout <command>
260 Identical to the plugin option above, but this one is used for the SMTP
261 connections (which will probably not need it, so it has been separated
264 .B \-r <name>, --folder <name>
266 Causes a specified non-default mail folder on the mailserver (or
267 comma-separated list of folders) to be retrieved. The syntax of the
268 folder name is server-dependent. This option is not available under
273 Causes the connection to the mail server to be encrypted via SSL. Connect
274 to the server using the specified base protocol over a connection secured
275 by SSL. SSL support must be present at the server. If no port is
276 specified, the connection is attempted to the well known port of the SSL
277 version of the base protocol. This is generally a different port than the
278 port used by the base protocol. For IMAP, this is port 143 for the clear
279 protocol and port 993 for the SSL secured protocol.
283 Specifies the file name of the client side public SSL certificate. Some
284 SSL encrypted servers may require client side keys and certificates for
285 authentication. In most cases, this is optional. This specifies
286 the location of the public key certificate to be presented to the server
287 at the time the SSL session is established. It is not required (but may
288 be provided) if the server does not require it. Some servers may
289 require it, some servers may request it but not require it, and some
290 servers may not request it at all. It may be the same file
291 as the private key (combined key and certificate file) but this is not
296 Specifies the file name of the client side private SSL key. Some SSL
297 encrypted servers may require client side keys and certificates for
298 authentication. In most cases, this is optional. This specifies
299 the location of the private key used to sign transactions with the server
300 at the time the SSL session is established. It is not required (but may
301 be provided) if the server does not require it. Some servers may
302 require it, some servers may request it but not require it, and some
303 servers may not request it at all. It may be the same file
304 as the public key (combined key and certificate file) but this is not
305 recommended. If a password is required to unlock the key, it will be
306 prompted for at the time just prior to establishing the session to the
307 server. This can cause some complications in daemon mode.
309 .B \--sslproto <name>
311 Forces an ssl protocol. Possible values are \&`\fBssl2\fR', `\fBssl3\fR' and
312 `\fBtls1\fR'. Try this if the default handshake does not work for your server.
313 .SS Delivery Control Options
315 .B \-S <hosts>, --smtphost <hosts>
316 (Keyword: smtp[host])
317 Specify a hunt list of hosts to forward mail to (one or more
318 hostnames, comma-separated). In ETRN mode, set the host that the
319 mailserver is asked to ship mail to. Hosts are tried in list order;
320 the first one that is up becomes the forwarding target for the current
321 run. Normally, `localhost' is added to the end of the list as an
322 invisible default. However, when using ETRN or ODMR mode or Kerberos
323 authentication, the FQDN of the machine running fetchmail is added to
324 the end of the list as an invisible default. Each hostname may have a
325 port number following the host name. The port number is separated
326 from the host name by a slash; the default port is 25 (or ``smtp''
327 under IPv6). If you specify an absolute pathname (beginning with a
328 /), it will be interpreted as the name of a UNIX socket accepting LMTP
329 connections (such as is supported by the Cyrus IMAP daemon) Example:
331 --smtphost server1,server2/2525,server3,/var/imap/socket/lmtp
333 In ODMR mode, this option specifies the list of domains the ODMR
334 server should ship mail for once the connection is turned around.
336 .B \-D <domain>, --smtpaddress <domain>
337 (Keyword: smtpaddress)
338 Specify the domain to be put in RCPT TO lines shipped to SMTP. The
339 name of the SMTP server (as specified by --smtphost, or defaulted to
340 "localhost") is used when this is not specified.
342 .B --smtpname <user@domain>
344 Specify the domain and user to be put in RCPT TO lines shipped to SMTP.
345 The default user is the current local user.
347 .B \-Z <nnn>, --antispam <nnn[, nnn]...>
349 Specifies the list of numeric SMTP errors that are to be interpreted
350 as a spam-block response from the listener. A value of -1 disables
351 this option. For the command-line option, the list values should
354 .B \-m <command>, \--mda <command>
356 You can force mail to be passed to an MDA directly (rather than
357 forwarded to port 25) with the -mda or -m option. To avoid losing
358 mail, use this option only with MDAs like procmail or sendmail that
359 return a nonzero status on disk-full and other resource-exhaustion
360 errors; the nonzero status tells fetchmail that delivery failed and
361 prevents the message from being deleted off the server. If
362 \fIfetchmail\fR is running as root, it sets its userid to that of the
363 target user while delivering mail through an MDA. Some possible MDAs
364 are "/usr/sbin/sendmail -oem -f %F %T", "/usr/bin/deliver" and
365 "/usr/bin/procmail -d %T" (but the latter is usually redundant as it's
366 what SMTP listeners normally forward to). Local delivery addresses
367 will be inserted into the MDA command wherever you place a %T; the
368 mail message's From address will be inserted where you place an %F.
369 Do \fInot\fR use an MDA invocation like "sendmail -oem -t" that
370 dispatches on the contents of To/Cc/Bcc, it will create mail loops and
371 bring the just wrath of many postmasters down upon your head.
375 Cause delivery via LMTP (Local Mail Transfer Protocol). A service
376 port \fImust\fR be explicitly specified (with a slash suffix) on each
377 host in the smtphost hunt list if this option is selected; the
378 default port 25 will (in accordance with RFC 2033) not be accepted.
380 .B \--bsmtp <filename>
382 Append fetched mail to a BSMTP file. This simply contains the SMTP
383 commands that would normally be generated by fetchmail when passing
384 mail to an SMTP listener daemon. An argument of `-' causes the mail
385 to be written to standard output. Note that fetchmail's
386 reconstruction of MAIL FROM and RCPT TO lines is not guaranteed
387 correct; the caveats discussed under THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP
388 MAILBOXES below apply.
389 .SS Resource Limit Control Options
391 .B \-l <maxbytes>, --limit <maxbytes>
393 Takes a maximum octet size argument. Messages larger than this size
394 will not be fetched and will be left on the server (in foreground
395 sessions, the progress messages will note that they are "oversized").
396 If the fetch protocol permits (in particular, under IMAP or POP3
397 without the fetchall option) the message will not be marked seen An
398 explicit --limit of 0 overrides any limits set in your run control
399 file. This option is intended for those needing to strictly control
400 fetch time due to expensive and variable phone rates. In daemon mode,
401 oversize notifications are mailed to the calling user (see the
402 --warnings option). This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
404 .B \-w <interval>, --warnings <interval>
406 Takes an interval in seconds. When you call
408 with a `limit' option in daemon mode, this controls the interval at
409 which warnings about oversized messages are mailed to the calling user
410 (or the user specified by the `postmaster' option). One such
411 notification is always mailed at the end of the the first poll that
412 the oversized message is detected. Thereafter, renotification is
413 suppressed until after the warning interval elapses (it will take
414 place at the end of the first following poll).
416 .B -b <count>, --batchlimit <count>
417 (Keyword: batchlimit)
418 Specify the maximum number of messages that will be shipped to an SMTP
419 listener before the connection is deliberately torn down and rebuilt
420 (defaults to 0, meaning no limit). An explicit --batchlimit of 0
421 overrides any limits set in your run control file. While
422 \fBsendmail\fR(8) normally initiates delivery of a message immediately
423 after receiving the message terminator, some SMTP listeners are not so
424 prompt. MTAs like \fIqmail\fR(8) and \fIsmail\fR(8) may wait till the
425 delivery socket is shut down to deliver. This may produce annoying
426 delays when \fIfetchmail\fR is processing very large batches. Setting
427 the batch limit to some nonzero size will prevent these delays. This
428 option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
430 .B -B <number>, --fetchlimit <number>
431 (Keyword: fetchlimit)
432 Limit the number of messages accepted from a given server in a single
433 poll. By default there is no limit. An explicit --fetchlimit of 0
434 overrides any limits set in your run control file.
435 This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
437 .B -e <count>, --expunge <count>
439 Arrange for deletions to be made final after a given number of
440 messages. Under POP2 or POP3, fetchmail cannot make deletions final
441 without sending QUIT and ending the session -- with this option on,
442 fetchmail will break a long mail retrieval session into multiple
443 subsessions, sending QUIT after each sub-session. This is a good
444 defense against line drops on POP3 servers that do not do the
445 equivalent of a QUIT on hangup. Under IMAP,
447 normally issues an EXPUNGE command after each deletion in order to
448 force the deletion to be done immediately. This is safest when your
449 connection to the server is flaky and expensive, as it avoids
450 resending duplicate mail after a line hit. However, on large
451 mailboxes the overhead of re-indexing after every message can slam the
452 server pretty hard, so if your connection is reliable it is good to do
453 expunges less frequently. If you specify this option to an integer N,
456 to only issue expunges on every Nth delete. An argument of zero
457 suppresses expunges entirely (so no expunges at all will be done until
458 the end of run). This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
459 .SS Authentication Options
461 .B \-u <name>, --username <name>
462 (Keyword: user[name])
463 Specifies the user identification to be used when logging in to the mailserver.
464 The appropriate user identification is both server and user-dependent.
465 The default is your login name on the client machine that is running
467 See USER AUTHENTICATION below for a complete description.
469 .B \-I <specification>, --interface <specification>
471 Require that a specific interface device be up and have a specific local
472 or remote IP address (or range) before polling. Frequently
474 is used over a transient point-to-point TCP/IP link established directly
475 to a mailserver via SLIP or PPP. That is a relatively secure channel.
476 But when other TCP/IP routes to the mailserver exist (e.g. when the link
477 is connected to an alternate ISP), your username and password may be
478 vulnerable to snooping (especially when daemon mode automatically polls
479 for mail, shipping a clear password over the net at predictable
480 intervals). The --interface option may be used to prevent this. When
481 the specified link is not up or is not connected to a matching IP
482 address, polling will be skipped. The format is:
484 interface/iii.iii.iii.iii/mmm.mmm.mmm.mmm
486 The field before the first slash is the interface name (i.e. sl0, ppp0
487 etc.). The field before the second slash is the acceptable IP address.
488 The field after the second slash is a mask which specifies a range of
489 IP addresses to accept. If no mask is present 255.255.255.255 is
490 assumed (i.e. an exact match). This option is currently only supported
491 under Linux and FreeBSD. Please see the
493 section for below for FreeBSD specific information.
495 .B \-M <interface>, --monitor <interface>
497 Daemon mode can cause transient links which are automatically taken down
498 after a period of inactivity (e.g. PPP links) to remain up
499 indefinitely. This option identifies a system TCP/IP interface to be
500 monitored for activity. After each poll interval, if the link is up but
501 no other activity has occurred on the link, then the poll will be
502 skipped. However, when fetchmail is woken up by a signal, the
503 monitor check is skipped and the poll goes through unconditionally.
504 This option is currently only supported under Linux and FreeBSD.
509 options to work for non root users under FreeBSD, the fetchmail binary
510 must be installed SGID kmem. This would be a security hole, but
511 fetchmail runs with the effective GID set to that of the kmem group
513 when interface data is being collected.
516 (Keyword: auth[enticate])
517 This option permits you to specify an authentication type (see USER
518 AUTHENTICATION below for details). The possible values are \fBany\fR,
519 \&`\fBpassword\fR', `\fBkerberos_v5\fR' and `\fBkerberos\fR' (or, for
520 excruciating exactness, `\fBkerberos_v4\fR'), \fRgssapi\fR,
521 \fIcram-md5\fR, \fIotp\fR, \fIntlm\fR, and \fBssh\fR. When \fBany\fR (the
522 default) is specified, fetchmail tries first methods that don't
523 require a password (GSSAPI, KERBEROS_IV); then it looks for methods
524 that mask your password (CRAM-MD5, X-OTP, NTLM); and only if the server
525 doesn't support any of those will it ship your password en clair.
526 Other values may be used to force various authentication methods
527 (\fBssh\fR suppresses authentication). Any value other than
528 \fIpassword\fR, \fIcram-md5\fR, \fIntlm\fR or \fIotp\fR suppresses fetchmail's
529 normal inquiry for a password. Specify \fIssh\fR when you are using
530 an end-to-end secure connection such as an ssh tunnel; specify
531 \fRgssapi\fR or \fBkerberos_v4\fR if you are using a protocol variant
532 that employs GSSAPI or K4. Choosing KPOP protocol automatically
533 selects Kerberos authentication. This option does not work with ETRN.
534 .SS Miscellaneous Options
536 .B \-f <pathname>, --fetchmailrc <pathname>
537 Specify a non-default name for the
539 run control file. The pathname argument must be either "-" (a single
540 dash, meaning to read the configuration from standard input) or a
541 filename. Unless the --version option is also on, a named file
542 argument must have permissions no more open than 0600 (u=rw,g=,o=) or
545 .B \-i <pathname>, --idfile <pathname>
547 Specify an alternate name for the .fetchids file used to save POP3
551 (Keyword: no rewrite)
554 edits RFC-822 address headers (To, From, Cc, Bcc, and Reply-To) in
555 fetched mail so that any mail IDs local to the server are expanded to
556 full addresses (@ and the mailserver hostname are appended). This enables
557 replies on the client to get addressed correctly (otherwise your
558 mailer might think they should be addressed to local users on the
559 client machine!). This option disables the rewrite. (This option is
560 provided to pacify people who are paranoid about having an MTA edit
561 mail headers and want to know they can prevent it, but it is generally
562 not a good idea to actually turn off rewrite.)
563 When using ETRN or ODMR, the rewrite option is ineffective.
565 .B -E <line>, --envelope <line>
567 This option changes the header
569 assumes will carry a copy of the mail's envelope address. Normally
570 this is `X-Envelope-To' but as this header is not standard, practice
571 varies. See the discussion of multidrop address handling below. As a
572 special case, `envelope "Received"' enables parsing of sendmail-style
573 Received lines. This is the default, and it should not be necessary
574 unless you have globally disabled Received parsing with `no envelope'
575 in the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file.
577 .B -Q <prefix>, --qvirtual <prefix>
579 The string prefix assigned to this option will be removed from the user
580 name found in the header specified with the \fIenvelope\fR option
581 (\fIbefore\fR doing multidrop name mapping or localdomain checking,
582 if either is applicable). This option is useful if you are using
584 to collect the mail for an entire domain and your ISP (or your mail
585 redirection provider) is using qmail.
586 One of the basic features of qmail is the
590 message header. Whenever qmail delivers a message to a local mailbox
591 it puts the username and hostname of the envelope recipient on this
592 line. The major reason for this is to prevent mail loops. To set up
593 qmail to batch mail for a disconnected site the ISP-mailhost will have
594 normally put that site in its `Virtualhosts' control file so it will
595 add a prefix to all mail addresses for this site. This results in mail
596 .\" The \&@\& tries to stop HTML converters from making a mailto URL here.
597 sent to 'username\&@\&userhost.userdom.dom.com' having a
598 \&`Delivered-To:' line of the form:
600 Delivered-To: mbox-userstr-username\&@\&userhost.userdom.dom.com
602 The ISP can make the 'mbox-userstr-' prefix anything they choose
603 but a string matching the user host name is likely.
604 By using the option `envelope Delivered-To:' you can make fetchmail reliably
605 identify the original envelope recipient, but you have to strip the
606 `mbox-userstr-' prefix to deliver to the correct user.
607 This is what this option is for.
612 file, interpret any command-line options specified, and dump a
613 configuration report to standard output. The configuration report is
614 a data structure assignment in the language Python. This option
615 is meant to be used with an interactive
621 .SH USER AUTHENTICATION AND ENCRYPTION
622 All modes except ETRN require authentication of the client.
623 Normal user authentication in
625 is very much like the authentication mechanism of
627 The correct user-id and password depend upon the underlying security
628 system at the mailserver.
630 If the mailserver is a Unix machine on which you have an ordinary user
631 account, your regular login name and password are used with
633 If you use the same login name on both the server and the client machines,
634 you needn't worry about specifying a user-id with the
637 the default behavior is to use your login name on the client machine as the
638 user-id on the server machine. If you use a different login name
639 on the server machine, specify that login name with the
641 option. e.g. if your login name is 'jsmith' on a machine named 'mailgrunt',
646 fetchmail -u jsmith mailgrunt
648 The default behavior of
650 is to prompt you for your mailserver password before the connection is
651 established. This is the safest way to use
653 and ensures that your password will not be compromised. You may also specify
654 your password in your
656 file. This is convenient when using
658 in daemon mode or with scripts.
660 If you do not specify a password, and
662 cannot extract one from your
664 file, it will look for a
666 file in your home directory before requesting one interactively; if an
667 entry matching the mailserver is found in that file, the password will
668 be used. Fetchmail first looks for a match on poll name; if it finds none,
669 it checks for a match on via name. See the
671 man page for details of the syntax of the
673 file. (This feature may allow you to avoid duplicating password
674 information in more than one file.)
676 On mailservers that do not provide ordinary user accounts, your user-id and
677 password are usually assigned by the server administrator when you apply for
678 a mailbox on the server. Contact your server administrator if you don't know
679 the correct user-id and password for your mailbox account.
681 Early versions of POP3 (RFC1081, RFC1225) supported a crude form of
682 independent authentication using the
684 file on the mailserver side. Under this RPOP variant, a fixed
685 per-user ID equivalent to a password was sent in clear over a link to
686 a reserved port, with the command RPOP rather than PASS to alert the
687 server that it should do special checking. RPOP is supported
690 (you can specify `protocol RPOP' to have the program send `RPOP'
691 rather than `PASS') but its use is strongly discouraged. This
692 facility was vulnerable to spoofing and was withdrawn in RFC1460.
694 RFC1460 introduced APOP authentication. In this variant of POP3,
695 you register an APOP password on your server host (the program
696 to do this with on the server is probably called \fIpopauth\fR(8)). You
697 put the same password in your
701 logs in, it sends a cryptographically secure hash of your password and
702 the server greeting time to the server, which can verify it by
703 checking its authorization database.
705 If your \fIfetchmail\fR was built with Kerberos support and you specify
706 Kerberos authentication (either with --auth or the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
707 option \fBauthenticate kerberos_v4\fR) it will try to get a Kerberos
708 ticket from the mailserver at the start of each query. Note: if
709 either the pollnane or via name is `hesiod', fetchmail will try to use
710 Hesiod to look up the mailserver.
712 If you use POP3 or IMAP with GSSAPI authentication, \fIfetchmail\fR will
713 expect the server to have RFC1731- or RFC1734-conformant GSSAPI
714 capability, and will use it. Currently this has only been tested over
715 Kerberos V, so you're expected to already have a ticket-granting
716 ticket. You may pass a username different from your principal name
717 using the standard \fB--user\fR command or by the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
720 If your IMAP daemon returns the PREAUTH response in its greeting line,
721 fetchmail will notice this and skip the normal authentication step.
722 This can be useful, e.g. if you start imapd explicitly using ssh.
723 In this case you can declare the authentication value `ssh' on that
724 site entry to stop \fI.fetchmail\fR from asking you for a password
727 If you are using POP3, and the server issues a one-time-password
728 challenge conforming to RFC1938, \fIfetchmail\fR will use your
729 password as a pass phrase to generate the required response. This
730 avoids sending secrets over the net unencrypted.
732 Compuserve's RPA authentication (similar to APOP) is supported. If you
733 compile in the support, \fIfetchmail\fR will try to perform an RPA pass-phrase
734 authentication instead of sending over the password en clair if it
735 detects "@compuserve.com" in the hostname.
737 Microsoft's NTLM authentication (used by Microsoft Exchange) is
738 supported. If you compile in the support, \fIfetchmail\fR will try to
739 perform an NTLM authentication (instead of sending over the
740 password en clair) whenever the server returns AUTH=NTLM in its
741 capability response. Note: if you specify a user option value
742 that looks like `user@domain', the part to the left of the @ will
743 be passed as the username and the part to the right as the NTLM domain.
745 If you are using IPsec, the -T (--netsec) option can be used to pass
746 an IP security request to be used when outgoing IP connections are
747 initialized. You can also do this using the `netsec' server option
748 in the .fetchmailrc file. In either case, the option value is a
749 string in the format accepted by the net_security_strtorequest()
750 function of the inet6_apps library.
752 You can access SSL encrypted services by specifying the --ssl option.
753 You can also do this using the "ssl" server option in the .fetchmailrc
754 file. With SSL encryption enabled, queries are initiated over a connection
755 after negotiating an SSL session. Some services, such as POP3 and IMAP,
756 have different well known ports defined for the SSL encrypted services.
757 The encrypted ports will be selected automatically when SSL is enabled and
758 no explicit port is specified.
760 When connecting to an SSL encrypted server, the server presents a certificate
761 to the client for validation. The certificate is checked to verify that
762 the common name in the certificate matches the name of the server being
763 contacted and that the effective and expiration dates in the certificate
764 indicate that it is currently valid. If any of these checks fail, a warning
765 message is printed, but the connection continues. The server certificate
766 does not need to be signed by any specific Certifying Authority and may
767 be a "self-signed" certificate.
769 Some SSL encrypted servers may request a client side certificate. A client
770 side public SSL certificate and private SSL key may be specified. If
771 requested by the server, the client certificate is sent to the server for
772 validation. Some servers may require a valid client certificate and may
773 refuse connections if a certificate is not provided or if the certificate
774 is not valid. Some servers may require client side certificates be signed
775 by a recognized Certifying Authority. The format for the key files and
776 the certificate files is that required by the underlying SSL libraries
777 (OpenSSL in the general case).
779 Finally, a word of care about the use of SSL: While above mentioned
780 setup with self-signed server certificates retrieved over the wires
781 can protect you from a passive eavesdropper it doesn't help against an
782 active attacker. It's clearly an improvement over sending the
783 passwords in clear but you should be aware that a man-in-the-middle
784 attack is trivially possible (in particular with tools such as dsniff,
785 http://www.monkey.org/~dugsong/dsniff/). Use of an ssh tunnel (see
786 below for some examples) is preferable if you care seriously about the
787 security of your mailbox.
791 .B --daemon <interval>
796 in daemon mode. You must specify a numeric argument which is a
797 polling interval in seconds.
801 puts itself in background and runs forever, querying each specified
802 host and then sleeping for the given polling interval.
808 will, therefore, poll all the hosts described in your
810 file (except those explicitly excluded with the `skip' verb) once
811 every fifteen minutes.
813 It is possible to set a polling interval
816 file by saying `set daemon <interval>', where <interval> is an
817 integer number of seconds. If you do this, fetchmail will always
818 start in daemon mode unless you override it with the command-line
819 option --daemon 0 or -d0.
821 Only one daemon process is permitted per user; in daemon mode,
823 makes a per-user lockfile to guarantee this.
825 Normally, calling fetchmail with a daemon in the background sends a
826 wakeup signal to the daemon, forcing it to poll mailservers
827 immediately. (The wakeup signal is SIGHUP if fetchmail is running as
828 root, SIGUSR1 otherwise.) The wakeup action also clears any `wedged'
829 flags indicating that connections have wedged due to failed
830 authentication or multiple timeouts.
834 will kill a running daemon process instead of waking it up (if there
837 notifies you). If the --quit option is the only command-line option,
838 that's all there is to it.
840 The quit option may also be mixed with other command-line options; its
841 effect is to kill any running daemon before doing what the other
842 options specify in combination with the rc file.
847 .B --logfile <filename>
848 option (keyword: set logfile) allows you to redirect status messages
849 emitted while detached into a specified logfile (follow the
850 option with the logfile name). The logfile is opened for append, so
851 previous messages aren't deleted. This is primarily useful for
852 debugging configurations.
856 option (keyword: set syslog) allows you to redirect status and error
857 messages emitted to the
859 system daemon if available.
860 Messages are logged with an id of \fBfetchmail\fR, the facility \fBLOG_MAIL\fR,
861 and priorities \fBLOG_ERR\fR, \fBLOG_ALERT\fR or \fBLOG_INFO\fR.
862 This option is intended for logging status and error messages which
863 indicate the status of the daemon and the results while fetching mail
865 Error messages for command line options and parsing the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
866 file are still written to stderr, or to the specified log file.
869 option turns off use of
871 assuming it's turned on in the
881 or --nodetach option suppresses backgrounding and detachment of the
882 daemon process from its control terminal. This is primarily useful
883 for debugging. Note that this also causes the logfile option to be
884 ignored (though perhaps it shouldn't).
886 Note that while running in daemon mode polling a POP2 or IMAP2bis server,
887 transient errors (such as DNS failures or sendmail delivery refusals)
888 may force the fetchall option on for the duration of the next polling
889 cycle. This is a robustness feature. It means that if a message is
890 fetched (and thus marked seen by the mailserver) but not delivered
891 locally due to some transient error, it will be re-fetched during the
892 next poll cycle. (The IMAP logic doesn't delete messages until
893 they're delivered, so this problem does not arise.)
895 If you touch or change the
897 file while fetchmail is running in daemon mode, this will be detected
898 at the beginning of the next poll cycle. When a changed
900 is detected, fetchmail rereads it and restarts from scratch (using
901 exec(2); no state information is retained in the new instance). Note also
902 that if you break the
904 file's syntax, the new instance will softly and silently vanish away
907 .SH ADMINISTRATIVE OPTIONS
910 .B --postmaster <name>
911 option (keyword: set postmaster) specifies the last-resort username to
912 which multidrop mail is to be forwarded if no matching local recipient
913 can be found. Normally this is just the user who invoked fetchmail.
914 If the invoking user is root, then the default of this option is
915 the user `postmaster'.
919 option suppresses the normal action of bouncing errors back to the
920 sender in an RFC1894-conformant error message. If nobounce is on, the
921 message will go to the postmaster instead.
925 option (keyword: set invisible) tries to make fetchmail invisible.
926 Normally, fetchmail behaves like any other MTA would -- it generates a
927 Received header into each message describing its place in the chain of
928 transmission, and tells the MTA it forwards to that the mail came from
929 the machine fetchmail itself is running on. If the invisible option
930 is on, the Received header is suppressed and fetchmail tries to spoof
931 the MTA it forwards to into thinking it came directly from the
936 option (keyword: set showdots) forces fetchmail to show progress dots
937 even if the current tty is not stdout (for example logfiles).
938 Starting with fetchmail version 5.3.0,
939 progress dots are only shown on stdout by default.
941 .SH RETRIEVAL FAILURE MODES
942 The protocols \fIfetchmail\fR uses to talk to mailservers are next to
943 bulletproof. In normal operation forwarding to port 25, no message is
944 ever deleted (or even marked for deletion) on the host until the SMTP
945 listener on the client side has acknowledged to \fIfetchmail\fR that
946 the message has been either accepted for delivery or rejected due to a
949 When forwarding to an MDA, however, there is more possibility
950 of error. Some MDAs are `safe' and reliably return a nonzero status
951 on any delivery error, even one due to temporary resource limits.
954 program is like this; so are most programs designed as mail transport
959 These programs give back a reliable positive acknowledgement and
960 can be used with the mda option with no risk of mail loss. Unsafe
961 MDAs, though, may return 0 even on delivery failure. If this
962 happens, you will lose mail.
964 The normal mode of \fIfetchmail\fR is to try to download only `new'
965 messages, leaving untouched (and undeleted) messages you have already
966 read directly on the server (or fetched with a previous \fIfetchmail
967 --keep\fR). But you may find that messages you've already read on the
968 server are being fetched (and deleted) even when you don't specify
969 --all. There are several reasons this can happen.
971 One could be that you're using POP2. The POP2 protocol includes no
972 representation of `new' or `old' state in messages, so \fIfetchmail\fR
973 must treat all messages as new all the time. But POP2 is obsolete, so
976 Under POP3, blame RFC1725. That version of the POP3 protocol
977 specification removed the LAST command, and some POP servers follow it
978 (you can verify this by invoking \fIfetchmail -v\fR to the mailserver
979 and watching the response to LAST early in the query). The
980 \fIfetchmail\fR code tries to compensate by using POP3's UID feature,
981 storing the identifiers of messages seen in each session until the
982 next session, in the \fI.fetchids\fR file. But this doesn't track
983 messages seen with other clients, or read directly with a mailer on
984 the host but not deleted afterward. A better solution would be to
987 Another potential POP3 problem might be servers that insert messages
988 in the middle of mailboxes (some VMS implementations of mail are
989 rumored to do this). The \fIfetchmail\fR code assumes that new
990 messages are appended to the end of the mailbox; when this is not true
991 it may treat some old messages as new and vice versa. The only
992 real fix for this problem is to switch to IMAP.
994 Yet another POP3 problem is that if they can't make tempfiles in the
995 user's home directory, some POP3 servers will hand back an
996 undocumented response that causes fetchmail to spuriously report "No
999 The IMAP code uses the presence or absence of the server flag \eSeen
1000 to decide whether or not a message is new. Under Unix, it counts on
1001 your IMAP server to notice the BSD-style Status flags set by mail user
1002 agents and set the \eSeen flag from them when appropriate. All Unix
1003 IMAP servers we know of do this, though it's not specified by the IMAP
1004 RFCs. If you ever trip over a server that doesn't, the symptom will
1005 be that messages you have already read on your host will look new to
1006 the server. In this (unlikely) case, only messages you fetched with
1007 \fIfetchmail --keep\fR will be both undeleted and marked old.
1009 In ETRN and ODMR modes, \fIfetchmail\fR does not actually retrieve messages;
1010 instead, it asks the server's SMTP listener to start a queue flush
1011 to the client via SMTP. Therefore it sends only undelivered messages.
1014 Many SMTP listeners allow administrators to set up `spam filters' that
1015 block unsolicited email from specified domains. A MAIL FROM or DATA line that
1016 triggers this feature will elicit an SMTP response which
1017 (unfortunately) varies according to the listener.
1021 return an error code of 571. This return value
1022 is blessed by RFC1893 as "Delivery not authorized, message refused".
1024 According to current drafts of the replacement for RFC821, the correct
1025 thing to return in this situation is 550 "Requested action not taken:
1026 mailbox unavailable" (the draft adds "[E.g., mailbox not found, no
1027 access, or command rejected for policy reasons].").
1031 MTA returns 501 "Syntax error in parameters or arguments", but will
1036 MTA runs 554 as an antispam response.
1040 code recognizes and discards the message on any of a list of responses
1041 that defaults to [571, 550, 501, 554] but can be set with the `antispam'
1042 option. This is one of the
1044 three circumstance under which fetchmail ever discards mail (the others
1045 are the 552 and 553 errors described below, and the suppression of
1046 multidropped messages with a message-ID already seen).
1050 is fetching from an IMAP server, the antispam response will be detected and
1051 the message rejected immediately after the headers have been fetched,
1052 without reading the message body. Thus, you won't pay for downloading
1053 spam message bodies.
1055 If the \fIspambounce\fR option is on, mail that is spam-blocked
1056 triggers an RFC1892 bounce message informing the originator that we do
1057 not accept mail from it.
1059 .SH SMTP/ESMTP ERROR HANDLING
1060 Besides the spam-blocking described above, fetchmail takes special
1061 actions on the following SMTP/ESMTP error responses
1063 452 (insufficient system storage)
1064 Leave the message in the server mailbox for later retrieval.
1066 552 (message exceeds fixed maximum message size)
1067 Delete the message from the server. Send bounce-mail to the originator.
1069 553 (invalid sending domain)
1070 Delete the message from the server. Send bounce-mail to the originator.
1072 Other errors trigger bounce mail back to the originator.
1074 .SH THE RUN CONTROL FILE
1075 The preferred way to set up fetchmail is to write a
1076 \&\fI.fetchmailrc\fR file in your home directory (you may do this
1077 directly, with a text editor, or indirectly via \fIfetchmailconf\fR).
1078 When there is a conflict between the command-line arguments and the
1079 arguments in this file, the command-line arguments take precedence.
1081 To protect the security of your passwords, when --version is not on
1082 your \fI~/.fetchmailrc\fR may not have more than 0600 (u=rw,g=,o=) permissions;
1084 will complain and exit otherwise.
1086 You may read the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file as a list of commands to
1089 is called with no arguments.
1090 .SS Run Control Syntax
1092 Comments begin with a '#' and extend through the end of the line.
1093 Otherwise the file consists of a series of server entries or global
1094 option statements in a free-format, token-oriented syntax.
1096 There are four kinds of tokens: grammar keywords, numbers
1097 (i.e. decimal digit sequences), unquoted strings, and quoted strings.
1098 A quoted string is bounded by double quotes and may contain
1099 whitespace (and quoted digits are treated as a string). An unquoted
1100 string is any whitespace-delimited token that is neither numeric, string
1101 quoted nor contains the special characters `,', `;', `:', or `='.
1103 Any amount of whitespace separates tokens in server entries, but is
1104 otherwise ignored. You may use standard C-style escapes (\en, \et,
1105 \eb, octal, and hex) to embed non-printable characters or string
1106 delimiters in strings.
1108 Each server entry consists of one of the keywords `poll' or `skip',
1109 followed by a server name, followed by server options, followed by any
1110 number of user descriptions. Note: the most common cause of syntax
1111 errors is mixing up user and server options.
1113 For backward compatibility, the word `server' is a synonym for `poll'.
1115 You can use the noise keywords `and', `with',
1116 \&`has', `wants', and `options' anywhere in an entry to make
1117 it resemble English. They're ignored, but but can make entries much
1118 easier to read at a glance. The punctuation characters ':', ';' and
1119 \&',' are also ignored.
1122 The `poll' verb tells fetchmail to query this host when it is run with
1123 no arguments. The `skip' verb tells
1125 not to poll this host unless it is explicitly named on the command
1126 line. (The `skip' verb allows you to experiment with test entries
1127 safely, or easily disable entries for hosts that are temporarily down.)
1129 .SS Keyword/Option Summary
1130 Here are the legal options. Keyword suffixes enclosed in
1131 square brackets are optional. Those corresponding to command-line
1132 options are followed by `-' and the appropriate option letter.
1134 Here are the legal global options:
1138 Keyword Opt Function
1141 Set a background poll interval in seconds
1143 set postmaster \& T{
1144 Give the name of the last-resort mail recipient
1146 set no bouncemail \& T{
1147 Direct error mail to postmaster rather than sender
1149 set no spambounce \& T{
1153 Name of a file to dump error and status messages to
1156 Name of the file to store UID lists in
1159 Do error logging through syslog(3).
1162 Turn off error logging through syslog(3).
1164 set properties \& T{
1165 String value is ignored by fetchmail (may be used by extension scripts)
1169 Here are the legal server options:
1173 Keyword Opt Function
1176 Specify DNS name of mailserver, overriding poll name
1179 Specify protocol (case insensitive):
1180 POP2, POP3, IMAP, APOP, KPOP
1182 local[domains] \& T{
1183 Specify domain(s) to be regarded as local
1186 Specify TCP/IP service port
1188 auth[enticate] -A T{
1189 Set authentication type (default `password')
1192 Server inactivity timeout in seconds (default 300)
1195 Specify envelope-address header name
1198 Disable looking for envelope address
1201 Qmail virtual domain prefix to remove from user name
1204 Specify alternate DNS names of mailserver
1207 specify IP interface(s) that must be up for server poll to take place
1210 Specify IP address to monitor for activity
1213 Specify command through which to make server connections.
1216 Specify command through which to make listener connections.
1219 Enable DNS lookup for multidrop (default)
1222 Disable DNS lookup for multidrop
1225 Do comparison by IP address for multidrop
1228 Do comparison by name for multidrop (default)
1231 Force POP3 to use client-side UIDLs
1234 Turn off POP3 use of client-side UIDLs (default)
1237 Only check this site every N poll cycles; N is a numeric argument.
1240 Pass in IPsec security option request.
1243 Set Kerberos principal (only useful with imap and kerberos)
1247 Here are the legal user options:
1251 Keyword Opt Function
1254 Set remote user name
1255 (local user name if name followed by `here')
1258 Connect local and remote user names
1261 Connect local and remote user names
1264 Specify remote account password
1267 Connect to server over the specified base protocol using SSL encryption
1270 Specify file for client side public SSL certificate
1273 Specify file for client side private SSL key
1276 Force ssl protocol for connection
1279 Specify remote folder to query
1282 Specify smtp host(s) to forward to
1285 Specify the domain to be put in RCPT TO lines
1288 Specify the user and domain to be put in RCPT TO lines
1291 Specify what SMTP returns are interpreted as spam-policy blocks
1294 Specify MDA for local delivery
1297 Specify BSMTP batch file to append to
1300 Command to be executed before each connection
1303 Command to be executed after each connection
1306 Don't delete seen messages from server
1309 Flush all seen messages before querying
1312 Fetch all messages whether seen or not
1315 Rewrite destination addresses for reply (default)
1318 Strip carriage returns from ends of lines
1321 Force carriage returns at ends of lines
1324 Force BODY=8BITMIME to ESMTP listener
1327 Strip Status and X-Mozilla-Status lines out of incoming mail
1330 Strip Delivered-To lines out of incoming mail
1333 Convert quoted-printable to 8-bit in MIME messages
1336 Idle waiting for new messages after each poll (IMAP only)
1339 Delete seen messages from server (default)
1342 Don't flush all seen messages before querying (default)
1345 Retrieve only new messages (default)
1348 Don't rewrite headers
1351 Don't strip carriage returns (default)
1354 Don't force carriage returns at EOL (default)
1357 Don't force BODY=8BITMIME to ESMTP listener (default)
1360 Don't drop Status headers (default)
1362 no dropdelivered \& T{
1363 Don't drop Delivered-To headers (default)
1366 Don't convert quoted-printable to 8-bit in MIME messages (default)
1369 Don't idle waiting for new messages after each poll (IMAP only)
1372 Set message size limit
1375 Set message size warning interval
1378 Max # messages to forward in single connect
1381 Max # messages to fetch in single connect
1384 Perform an expunge on every #th message (IMAP and POP3 only)
1387 String value is ignored by fetchmail (may be used by extension scripts)
1391 Remember that all user options must \fIfollow\fR all server options.
1393 In the .fetchmailrc file, the `envelope' string argument may be
1394 preceded by a whitespace-separated number. This number, if specified,
1395 is the number of such headers to skip (that is, an argument of 1
1396 selects the second header of the given type). This is sometime useful
1397 for ignoring bogus Received headers created by an ISP's local delivery
1399 .SS Keywords Not Corresponding To Option Switches
1401 The `folder' and `smtphost' options (unlike their command-line
1402 equivalents) can take a space- or comma-separated list of names
1405 All options correspond to the obvious command-line arguments, except
1406 the following: `via', `interval', `aka', `is', `to', `dns'/`no dns',
1407 `checkalias'/`no checkalias', `password', `preconnect', `postconnect',
1408 `localdomains', `stripcr'/`no stripcr', `forcecr'/`no forcecr',
1409 `pass8bits'/`no pass8bits' `dropstatus/no dropstatus',
1410 `dropdelivered/no dropdelivered', `mimedecode/no mimedecode', `idle/no
1411 idle', and `no envelope'.
1413 The `via' option is for use with ssh, or if you want to have more
1414 than one configuration pointing at the same site. If it is present,
1415 the string argument will be taken as the actual DNS name of the
1416 mailserver host to query.
1417 This will override the argument of poll, which can then simply be a
1418 distinct label for the configuration (e.g. what you would give on the
1419 command line to explicitly query this host).
1420 If the `via' name is `localhost', the poll name will also still be
1421 used as a possible match in multidrop mode; otherwise the `via' name
1422 will be used instead and the poll name will be purely a label.
1424 The `interval' option (which takes a numeric argument) allows you to poll a
1425 server less frequently than the basic poll interval. If you say
1426 \&`interval N' the server this option is attached to will only be
1427 queried every N poll intervals.
1429 The `is' or `to' keywords associate the following local (client)
1430 name(s) (or server-name to client-name mappings separated by =) with
1431 the mailserver user name in the entry. If an is/to list has `*' as
1432 its last name, unrecognized names are simply passed through.
1434 A single local name can be used to support redirecting your mail when
1435 your username on the client machine is different from your name on the
1436 mailserver. When there is only a single local name, mail is forwarded
1437 to that local username regardless of the message's Received, To, Cc,
1438 and Bcc headers. In this case
1440 never does DNS lookups.
1442 When there is more than one local name (or name mapping) the
1443 \fIfetchmail\fR code does look at the Received, To, Cc, and Bcc
1444 headers of retrieved mail (this is `multidrop mode'). It looks for
1445 addresses with hostname parts that match your poll name or your `via',
1446 `aka' or `localdomains' options, and usually also for hostname parts
1447 which DNS tells it are aliases of the mailserver. See the discussion
1448 of `dns', `checkalias', `localdomains', and `aka' for details on how
1449 matching addresses are handled.
1451 If \fIfetchmail\fR cannot match any mailserver usernames or
1452 localdomain addresses, the mail will be bounced.
1453 Normally it will be bounced to the sender, but if `nobounce' is on
1454 it will go to the postmaster (which in turn defaults to being the
1457 The `dns' option (normally on) controls the way addresses from
1458 multidrop mailboxes are checked. On, it enables logic to check each
1459 host address that doesn't match an `aka' or `localdomains' declaration
1460 by looking it up with DNS. When a mailserver username is recognized
1461 attached to a matching hostname part, its local mapping is added to
1462 the list of local recipients.
1464 The `checkalias' option (normally off) extends the lookups performed
1465 by the `dns' keyword in multidrop mode, providing a way to cope with
1466 remote MTAs that identify themselves using their canonical name, while
1467 they're polled using an alias.
1468 When such a server is polled, checks to extract the envelope address
1471 reverts to delivery using the To/Cc/Bcc headers (See below
1472 `Header vs. Envelope addresses').
1473 Specifying this option instructs
1475 to retrieve all the IP addresses associated with both the poll name
1476 and the name used by the remote MTA and to do a comparison of the IP
1477 addresses. This comes in handy in situations where the remote server
1478 undergoes frequent canonical name changes, that would otherwise
1479 require modifications to the rcfile. `checkalias' has no effect if
1480 `no dns' is specified in the rcfile.
1482 The `aka' option is for use with multidrop mailboxes. It allows you
1483 to pre-declare a list of DNS aliases for a server. This is an
1484 optimization hack that allows you to trade space for speed. When
1486 while processing a multidrop mailbox, grovels through message headers
1487 looking for names of the mailserver, pre-declaring common ones can
1488 save it from having to do DNS lookups. Note: the names you give
1489 as arguments to `aka' are matched as suffixes -- if you specify
1490 (say) `aka netaxs.com', this will match not just a hostnamed
1491 netaxs.com, but any hostname that ends with `.netaxs.com'; such as
1492 (say) pop3.netaxs.com and mail.netaxs.com.
1494 The `localdomains' option allows you to declare a list of domains
1495 which fetchmail should consider local. When fetchmail is parsing
1496 address lines in multidrop modes, and a trailing segment of a host
1497 name matches a declared local domain, that address is passed through
1498 to the listener or MDA unaltered (local-name mappings are \fInot\fR
1501 If you are using `localdomains', you may also need to specify \&`no
1502 envelope', which disables \fIfetchmail\fR's normal attempt to deduce
1503 an envelope address from the Received line or X-Envelope-To header or
1504 whatever header has been previously set by `envelope'. If you set `no
1505 envelope' in the defaults entry it is possible to undo that in
1506 individual entries by using `envelope <string>'. As a special case,
1507 \&`envelope "Received"' restores the default parsing of
1510 The \fBpassword\fR option requires a string argument, which is the password
1511 to be used with the entry's server.
1513 The `preconnect' keyword allows you to specify a shell command to be
1514 executed just before each time
1516 establishes a mailserver connection. This may be useful if you are
1517 attempting to set up secure POP connections with the aid of
1519 If the command returns a nonzero status, the poll of that mailserver
1522 Similarly, the `postconnect' keyword similarly allows you to specify a
1523 shell command to be executed just after each time a mailserver
1524 connection is taken down.
1526 The `forcecr' option controls whether lines terminated by LF only are
1527 given CRLF termination before forwarding. Strictly speaking RFC821
1528 requires this, but few MTAs enforce the requirement it so this option
1529 is normally off (only one such MTA, qmail, is in significant use at
1532 The `stripcr' option controls whether carriage returns are stripped
1533 out of retrieved mail before it is forwarded. It is normally not
1534 necessary to set this, because it defaults to `on' (CR stripping
1535 enabled) when there is an MDA declared but `off' (CR stripping
1536 disabled) when forwarding is via SMTP. If `stripcr' and `forcecr' are
1537 both on, `stripcr' will override.
1539 The `pass8bits' option exists to cope with Microsoft mail programs that
1540 stupidly slap a "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit" on everything. With
1541 this option off (the default) and such a header present,
1543 declares BODY=7BIT to an ESMTP-capable listener; this causes problems for
1544 messages actually using 8-bit ISO or KOI-8 character sets, which will
1545 be garbled by having the high bits of all characters stripped. If
1546 \&`pass8bits' is on,
1548 is forced to declare BODY=8BITMIME to any ESMTP-capable listener. If
1549 the listener is 8-bit-clean (as all the major ones now are) the right
1550 thing will probably result.
1552 The `dropstatus' option controls whether nonempty Status and
1553 X-Mozilla-Status lines are retained in fetched mail (the default) or
1554 discarded. Retaining them allows your MUA to see what messages (if
1555 any) were marked seen on the server. On the other hand, it can
1556 confuse some new-mail notifiers, which assume that anything with a
1557 Status line in it has been seen. (Note: the empty Status lines
1558 inserted by some buggy POP servers are unconditionally discarded.)
1560 The `dropdelivered' option controls wether Delivered-To headers will
1561 be kept in fetched mail (the default) or discarded. These headers are
1562 added by Qmail and Postfix mailservers in order to avoid mail loops but
1563 may get in your way if you try to "mirror" a mailserver within the same
1564 domain. Use with caution.
1566 The `mimedecode' option controls whether MIME messages using the
1567 quoted-printable encoding are automatically converted into pure 8-bit
1568 data. If you are delivering mail to an ESMTP-capable, 8-bit-clean
1569 listener (that includes all of the major MTAs like sendmail), then
1570 this will automatically convert quoted-printable message headers and
1571 data into 8-bit data, making it easier to understand when reading
1572 mail. If your e-mail programs know how to deal with MIME messages,
1573 then this option is not needed. The mimedecode option is off by
1574 default, because doing RFC2047 conversion on headers throws away
1575 character-set information and can lead to bad results if the encoding
1576 of the headers differs from the body encoding.
1578 The `idle' option is usable only with IMAP servers supporting the
1579 RFC2177 IDLE command extension. If it is enabled, and fetchmail
1580 detects that IDLE is supported, an IDLE will be issued at the end
1581 of each poll. This will tell the IMAP server to hold the connection
1582 open and notify the client when new mail is available. If you need to
1583 poll a link frequently, IDLE can save bandwidth by eliminating TCP/IP
1584 connects and LOGIN/LOGOUT sequences. On the other hand, an IDLE
1585 connection will eat almost all of your fetchmail's time, because it
1586 will never drop the connection and allow other pools to occur unless
1587 the server times out the IDLE. It also doesn't work with multiple
1588 folders; only the first folder will ever be polled.
1590 The `properties' option is an extension mechanism. It takes a string
1591 argument, which is ignored by fetchmail itself. The string argument may be
1592 used to store configuration information for scripts which require it.
1593 In particular, the output of `--configdump' option will make properties
1594 associated with a user entry readily available to a Python script.
1596 .SS Miscellaneous Run Control Options
1597 The words `here' and `there' have useful English-like
1598 significance. Normally `user eric is esr' would mean that
1599 mail for the remote user `eric' is to be delivered to `esr',
1600 but you can make this clearer by saying `user eric there is esr here',
1601 or reverse it by saying `user esr here is eric there'
1603 Legal protocol identifiers for use with the `protocol' keyword are:
1614 Legal authentication types are `password', `kerberos', and `gssapi'.
1615 The `password' type specifies authentication by normal transmission of a
1616 password (the password may be plaintext or subject to
1617 protocol-specific encryption as in APOP); `kerberos' tells
1618 \fIfetchmail\fR to try to get a Kerberos ticket at the start of each
1619 query instead, and send an arbitrary string as the password; and
1620 `gssapi' tells fetchmail to use GSSAPI authentication.
1622 Specifying `kpop' sets POP3 protocol over port 1109 with Kerberos V4
1623 authentication. These defaults may be overridden by later options.
1625 There are currently four global option statements; `set logfile'
1626 followed by a string sets the same global specified by --logfile. A
1627 command-line --logfile option will override this. Also, `set daemon'
1628 sets the poll interval as --daemon does. This can be overridden by a
1629 command-line --daemon option; in particular --daemon 0 can be used to
1630 force foreground operation. The `set postmaster' statement sets the
1631 address to which multidrop mail defaults if there are no local
1632 matches. Finally, `set syslog' sends log messages to syslogd(8).
1634 .SH INTERACTION WITH RFC 822
1635 When trying to determine the originating address of a message,
1636 fetchmail looks through headers in the following order:
1646 The originating address is used for logging, and to set the MAIL FROM
1647 address when forwarding to SMTP. This order is intended to cope
1648 gracefully with receiving mailing list messages in multidrop mode. The
1649 intent is that if a local address doesn't exist, the bounce message
1650 won't be returned blindly to the author or to the list itself, but
1651 rather to the list manager (which is less annoying).
1653 In multidrop mode, destination headers are processed as follows:
1654 First, fetchmail looks for the Received: header (or whichever one is
1655 specified by the `envelope' option) to determine the local
1656 recipient address. If the mail is addressed to more than one recipient,
1657 the Received line won't contain any information regarding recipient addresses.
1659 Then fetchmail looks for the Resent-To:, Resent-Cc:, and Resent-Bcc:
1660 lines. If they exists, they should contain the final recipients and
1661 have precedence over their To:/Cc:/Bcc: counterparts. If the Resent-*
1662 lines doesn't exist, the To:, Cc:, Bcc: and Apparently-To: lines are
1663 looked for. (The presence of a Resent-To: is taken to imply that the
1664 person referred by the To: address has already received the original
1667 .SH CONFIGURATION EXAMPLES
1668 Note that although there are password declarations in a good many
1669 of the examples below, this is mainly for illustrative purposes.
1670 We recommend stashing account/password pairs in your $HOME/.netrc
1671 file, where they can be used not just by fetchmail but by ftp(1) and
1677 poll SERVERNAME protocol PROTOCOL username NAME password PASSWORD
1683 poll pop.provider.net protocol pop3 username "jsmith" password "secret1"
1686 Or, using some abbreviations:
1689 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" password "secret1"
1692 Multiple servers may be listed:
1695 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" pass "secret1"
1696 poll other.provider.net proto pop2 user "John.Smith" pass "My^Hat"
1699 Here's a version of those two with more whitespace and some noise words:
1702 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3
1703 user "jsmith", with password secret1, is "jsmith" here;
1704 poll other.provider.net proto pop2:
1705 user "John.Smith", with password "My^Hat", is "John.Smith" here;
1708 This version is much easier to read and doesn't cost significantly
1709 more (parsing is done only once, at startup time).
1712 If you need to include whitespace in a parameter string, enclose the
1713 string in double quotes. Thus:
1716 poll mail.provider.net with proto pop3:
1717 user "jsmith" there has password "u can't krak this"
1718 is jws here and wants mda "/bin/mail"
1721 You may have an initial server description headed by the keyword
1722 `defaults' instead of `poll' followed by a name. Such a record
1723 is interpreted as defaults for all queries to use. It may be overwritten
1724 by individual server descriptions. So, you could write:
1729 poll pop.provider.net
1731 poll mail.provider.net
1732 user "jjsmith" there has password "secret2"
1735 It's possible to specify more than one user per server (this is only
1736 likely to be useful when running fetchmail in daemon mode as root).
1737 The `user' keyword leads off a user description, and every user specification
1738 in a multi-user entry must include it. Here's an example:
1741 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 port 3111
1742 user "jsmith" with pass "secret1" is "smith" here
1743 user jones with pass "secret2" is "jjones" here
1746 This associates the local username `smith' with the pop.provider.net
1747 username `jsmith' and the local username `jjones' with the
1748 pop.provider.net username `jones'.
1750 Here's what a simple retrieval configuration for a multi-drop mailbox
1754 poll pop.provider.net:
1755 user maildrop with pass secret1 to golux 'hurkle'='happy' snark here
1758 This says that the mailbox of account `maildrop' on the server is a
1759 multi-drop box, and that messages in it should be parsed for the
1760 server user names `golux', `hurkle', and `snark'. It further
1761 specifies that `golux' and `snark' have the same name on the
1762 client as on the server, but mail for server user `hurkle' should be
1763 delivered to client user `happy'.
1765 Here's an example of another kind of multidrop connection:
1768 poll pop.provider.net localdomains loonytoons.org toons.org:
1769 user maildrop with pass secret1 to 'esr' * here
1772 This also says that the mailbox of account `maildrop' on the server is
1773 a multi-drop box. It tells fetchmail that any address in the
1774 loonytoons.org or toons.org domains (including subdomain addresses like
1775 `joe@daffy.loonytoons.org') should be passed through to the local SMTP
1776 listener without modification. Be careful of mail loops if you do this!
1778 Here's an example configuration using ssh. The queries go through an
1779 ssh connecting local port 1234 to port 110 on mailhost.net; the
1780 preconnect command sets up the ssh.
1783 poll mailhost.net via localhost port 1234 with proto pop3:
1784 user esr is esr here
1785 preconnect "ssh -f -L 1234:mailhost.net:110
1786 mailhost.net sleep 20 </dev/null >/dev/null";
1790 Here's an example configuration using ssh and the plugin option (this
1791 method is better, as it doesn't require the IMAP port to be open on
1792 the server). The queries are made directly on the stdin and stdout of
1793 imapd via ssh. Note that in this setup, IMAP authentication can be
1797 poll mailhost.net with proto imap:
1798 plugin "ssh %h /usr/sbin/imapd" auth ssh;
1799 user esr is esr here
1802 .SH THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP MAILBOXES
1803 Use the multiple-local-recipients feature with caution -- it can bite.
1804 All multidrop features are ineffective in ETRN and ODMR modes.
1806 Also, note that in multidrop mode duplicate mails are suppressed. A
1807 piece of mail is considered duplicate if it has the same message-ID as
1808 the message immediately preceding and more than one addressee. Such
1809 runs of messages may be generated when copies of a message addressed
1810 to multiple users are delivered to a multidrop box.
1812 .SS Header vs. Envelope addresses
1813 The fundamental problem is that by having your mailserver toss several
1814 peoples' mail in a single maildrop box, you may have thrown away
1815 potentially vital information about who each piece of mail was
1816 actually addressed to (the `envelope address', as opposed to the
1817 header addresses in the RFC822 To/Cc/Bcc headers). This `envelope
1818 address' is the address you need in order to reroute mail properly.
1822 can deduce the envelope address. If the mailserver MTA is
1824 and the item of mail had just one recipient, the MTA will have written
1825 a `by/for' clause that gives the envelope addressee into its Received
1826 header. But this doesn't work reliably for other MTAs, nor if there is
1827 more than one recipient. By default, \fIfetchmail\fR looks for
1828 envelope addresses in these lines; you can restore this default with
1829 -E "Received" or \&`envelope Received'.
1831 Alternatively, some SMTP listeners and/or mail servers insert a header
1832 in each message containing a copy of the envelope addresses. This
1833 header (when it exists) is often `X-Envelope-To'. Fetchmail's
1834 assumption about this can be changed with the -E or `envelope' option.
1835 Note that writing an envelope header of this kind exposes the names of
1836 recipients (including blind-copy recipients) to all receivers of the
1837 messages; it is therefore regarded by some administrators as a
1838 security/privacy problem.
1840 A slight variation of the `X-Envelope-To' header is the `Delivered-To' put
1841 by qmail to avoid mail loops. It will probably prefix the user name with a
1842 string that normally matches the user's domain. To remove this prefix you
1843 can use the -Q or `qvirtual' option.
1845 Sometimes, unfortunately, neither of these methods works. When they
1846 all fail, fetchmail must fall back on the contents of To/Cc/Bcc
1847 headers to try to determine recipient addressees -- and these are not
1848 reliable. In particular, mailing-list software often ships mail with
1849 only the list broadcast address in the To header.
1853 cannot deduce a recipient address that is local, and the intended
1854 recipient address was anyone other than fetchmail's invoking user,
1855 mail will get lost. This is what makes the multidrop feature risky.
1857 A related problem is that when you blind-copy a mail message, the Bcc
1858 information is carried \fIonly\fR as envelope address (it's not put
1859 in the headers fetchmail can see unless there is an X-Envelope
1860 header). Thus, blind-copying to someone who gets mail over a
1861 fetchmail link will fail unless the the mailserver host routinely
1862 writes X-Envelope or an equivalent header into messages in your maildrop.
1864 .SS Good Ways To Use Multidrop Mailboxes
1865 Multiple local names can be used to administer a mailing list from the
1866 client side of a \fIfetchmail\fR collection. Suppose your name is
1867 \&`esr', and you want to both pick up your own mail and maintain a mailing
1868 list called (say) "fetchmail-friends", and you want to keep the alias
1869 list on your client machine.
1871 On your server, you can alias \&`fetchmail-friends' to `esr'; then, in
1872 your \fI.fetchmailrc\fR, declare \&`to esr fetchmail-friends here'.
1873 Then, when mail including `fetchmail-friends' as a local address
1874 gets fetched, the list name will be appended to the list of
1875 recipients your SMTP listener sees. Therefore it will undergo alias
1876 expansion locally. Be sure to include `esr' in the local alias
1877 expansion of fetchmail-friends, or you'll never see mail sent only to
1878 the list. Also be sure that your listener has the "me-too" option set
1879 (sendmail's -oXm command-line option or OXm declaration) so your name
1880 isn't removed from alias expansions in messages you send.
1882 This trick is not without its problems, however. You'll begin to see
1883 this when a message comes in that is addressed only to a mailing list
1884 you do \fInot\fR have declared as a local name. Each such message
1885 will feature an `X-Fetchmail-Warning' header which is generated
1886 because fetchmail cannot find a valid local name in the recipient
1887 addresses. Such messages default (as was described above) to being
1888 sent to the local user running
1890 but the program has no way to know that that's actually the right thing.
1892 .SS Bad Ways To Abuse Multidrop Mailboxes
1893 Multidrop mailboxes and
1895 serving multiple users in daemon mode do not mix. The problem, again, is
1896 mail from mailing lists, which typically does not have an individual
1897 recipient address on it. Unless
1899 can deduce an envelope address, such mail will only go to the account
1900 running fetchmail (probably root). Also, blind-copied users are very
1901 likely never to see their mail at all.
1903 If you're tempted to use
1905 to retrieve mail for multiple users from a single mail drop via POP or
1906 IMAP, think again (and reread the section on header and envelope
1907 addresses above). It would be smarter to just let the mail sit in the
1908 mailserver's queue and use fetchmail's ETRN or ODMR modes to trigger
1909 SMTP sends periodically (of course, this means you have to poll more
1910 frequently than the mailserver's expiry period). If you can't arrange
1911 this, try setting up a UUCP feed.
1913 If you absolutely \fImust\fR use multidrop for this purpose, make sure
1914 your mailserver writes an envelope-address header that fetchmail can
1915 see. Otherwise you \fIwill\fR lose mail and it \fIwill\fR come back
1918 .SS Speeding Up Multidrop Checking
1919 Normally, when multiple users are declared
1921 extracts recipient addresses as described above and checks each host
1922 part with DNS to see if it's an alias of the mailserver. If so, the
1923 name mappings described in the to ... here declaration are done and
1924 the mail locally delivered.
1926 This is the safest but also slowest method. To speed it up,
1927 pre-declare mailserver aliases with `aka'; these are checked before
1928 DNS lookups are done. If you're certain your aka list contains
1930 DNS aliases of the mailserver (and all MX names pointing at it)
1931 you can declare `no dns' to suppress DNS lookups entirely and
1932 \fIonly\fR match against the aka list.
1935 To facilitate the use of
1937 in shell scripts, an exit code is returned to give an indication
1938 of what occurred during a given connection.
1940 The exit codes returned by
1944 One or more messages were successfully retrieved (or, if the -c option
1945 was selected, were found waiting but not retrieved).
1947 There was no mail awaiting retrieval. (There may have been old mail still
1948 on the server but not selected for retrieval.)
1950 An error was encountered when attempting to open a socket to retrieve
1951 mail. If you don't know what a socket is, don't worry about it --
1952 just treat this as an 'unrecoverable error'. This error can also be
1953 because a protocol fetchmail wants to use is not listed in /etc/services.
1955 The user authentication step failed. This usually means that a bad
1956 user-id, password, or APOP id was specified. Or it may mean that you
1957 tried to run fetchmail under circumstances where it did not have
1958 standard input attached to a terminal and could not prompt for a
1961 Some sort of fatal protocol error was detected.
1963 There was a syntax error in the arguments to
1966 The run control file had bad permissions.
1968 There was an error condition reported by the server. Can also
1971 timed out while waiting for the server.
1973 Client-side exclusion error. This means
1975 either found another copy of itself already running, or failed in such
1976 a way that it isn't sure whether another copy is running.
1978 The user authentication step failed because the server responded "lock
1979 busy". Try again after a brief pause! This error is not implemented
1980 for all protocols, nor for all servers. If not implemented for your
1981 server, "3" will be returned instead, see above. May be returned when
1982 talking to qpopper or other servers that can respond with "lock busy"
1983 or some similar text containing the word "lock".
1987 run failed while trying to do an SMTP port open or transaction.
1989 Fatal DNS error. Fetchmail encountered an error while performing
1990 a DNS lookup at startup and could not proceed.
1992 BSMTP batch file could not be opened.
1994 Poll terminated by a fetch limit (see the --fetchlimit option).
1996 Server busy indication.
1998 Internal error. You should see a message on standard error with
2003 queries more than one host, return status is 0 if \fIany\fR query
2004 successfully retrieved mail. Otherwise the returned error status is
2005 that of the last host queried.
2010 default run control file
2013 default location of file associating hosts with last message IDs seen
2014 (used only with newer RFC1725-compliant POP3 servers supporting the
2018 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (non-root mode).
2021 your FTP run control file, which (if present) will be searched for
2022 passwords as a last resort before prompting for one interactively.
2024 /var/run/fetchmail.pid
2025 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, Linux systems).
2028 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, systems without /var/run).
2031 If the FETCHMAILUSER variable is set, it is used as the name of the
2032 calling user (default local name) for purposes such as mailing error
2033 notifications. Otherwise, if either the LOGNAME or USER variable is
2034 correctly set (e.g. the corresponding UID matches the session user ID)
2035 then that name is used as the default local name. Otherwise
2036 \fBgetpwuid\fR(3) must be able to retrieve a password entry for the
2037 session ID (this elaborate logic is designed to handle the case of
2038 multiple names per userid gracefully).
2040 If the environment variable FETCHMAILHOME is set to a valid and
2041 existing directory name, the .fetchmailrc and .fetchids and
2042 \&.fetchmail.pid files are put there instead of in the invoking user's
2043 home directory (and lose the leading dots on theirt names). The
2044 \&.netrc file is looked for in the the invoking user's home directory
2045 regardless of FETCHMAILHOME's setting.
2050 daemon is running as root, SIGHUP wakes it up from its sleep phase and
2051 forces a poll of all non-skipped servers (this is in accordance with
2052 the usual conventions for system daemons).
2056 is running in daemon mode as non-root, use SIGUSR1 to wake it (this is
2057 so SIGHUP due to logout can retain the default action of killing it).
2061 in foreground while a background fetchmail is running will do
2062 whichever of these is appropriate to wake it up.
2064 .SH BUGS AND KNOWN PROBLEMS
2065 The RFC822 address parser used in multidrop mode chokes on some
2066 @-addresses that are technically legal but bizarre. Strange uses of
2067 quoting and embedded comments are likely to confuse it.
2069 In a message with multiple envelope headers, only the last one
2070 processed will be visible to fetchmail. To get around this, use a
2071 mailserver-side filter that consolidates the contents of all envelope
2072 headers into a single one (procmail, mailagent, or maildrop can be
2073 programmed to do this fairly easily).
2075 Use of some of these protocols requires that the program send
2076 unencrypted passwords over the TCP/IP connection to the mailserver.
2077 This creates a risk that name/password pairs might be snaffled with a
2078 packet sniffer or more sophisticated monitoring software. Under Linux
2079 and FreeBSD, the --interface option can be used to restrict polling to
2080 availability of a specific interface device with a specific local or
2081 remote IP address, but snooping is still possible if (a) either host
2082 has a network device that can be opened in promiscuous mode, or (b)
2083 the intervening network link can be tapped. We recommend the use of
2085 tunnelling to not only shroud your passwords but encrypt the entire
2088 Use of the %F or %T escapes in an mda option could open a security
2089 hole, because they pass text manipulable by an attacker to a shell
2090 command. Potential shell characters are replaced by `_' before
2091 execution. The hole is further reduced by the fact that fetchmail
2092 temporarily discards any suid privileges it may have while running the
2093 MDA. For maximum safety, however, don't use an mda command containing
2094 %F or %T when fetchmail is run from the root account itself.
2096 Fetchmail's method of sending bouncemail and spambounce requires that
2097 port 25 of localhost be available for sending mail via SMTP.
2101 while a background instance is running and break the syntax, the
2102 background instance will die silently. Unfortunately, it can't
2103 die noisily because we don't yet know whether syslog should be enabled.
2105 The RFC 2177 IDLE support is flaky. It sort of works, but may generate
2106 spurious socket error messages or silently hang in the presence of
2107 various network or server errors.
2109 The combination of using a remote name with embedded spaces and POP3
2110 UIDs will not work; the UIDL-handling code will core-dump while trying
2111 to read in what it sees as malformed .fetchids lines, typically
2112 on the second poll after startup.
2114 The UIDL code is generally flaky and tends to lose its state on errors
2115 and line drops (so that old messages are re-seen). If this happens to
2116 you, switch to IMAP4.
2118 ODMR is very new. The ODMR code is untested.
2120 The `principal' option only handles Kerberos IV, not V.
2122 Send comments, bug reports, gripes, and the like to the
2123 fetchmail-friends list <fetchmail-friends@lists.ccil.org>. An HTML FAQ is
2124 available at the fetchmail home page; surf to
2125 http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail or do a WWW search for pages with
2126 `fetchmail' in their titles.
2129 Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>. Too many other people to
2130 name here have contributed code and patches.
2131 This program is descended from and replaces
2133 by Carl Harris <ceharris@mal.com>; the internals have become quite different,
2134 but some of its interface design is directly traceable to that
2138 mutt(1), elm(1), mail(1), sendmail(8), popd(8), imapd(8), netrc(5)
2139 .SH APPLICABLE STANDARDS
2142 RFC 821, RFC 1869, RFC 1652, RFC 1870, RFC1983, RFC 1985
2145 RFC 822, RFC 1123, RFC 1892, RFC 1894
2151 RFC 1081, RFC 1225, RFC 1460, RFC 1725, RFC1734, RFC 1939, RFC 1957,
2155 RFC 1460, RFC 1725, RFC 1939
2164 RFC 1730, RFC 1731, RFC 1732, RFC 2060, RFC 2061, RFC 2195, RFC 2177,
projects / ~andy / fetchmail / blob