2 .\" ** The above line should force tbl to be used as a preprocessor **
4 .\" Man page for fetchmail
6 .\" For license terms, see the file COPYING in this directory.
9 fetchmail \- fetch mail from a POP, IMAP, ETRN, or ODMR-capable server
12 \fBfetchmail\fR [\fIoption...\fR] [\fImailserver...\fR]
18 is a mail-retrieval and forwarding utility; it fetches mail from
19 remote mailservers and forwards it to your local (client) machine's
20 delivery system. You can then handle the retrieved mail using normal
21 mail user agents such as \fImutt\fR(1), \fIelm\fR(1) or \fIMail\fR(1).
22 The \fIfetchmail\fR utility can be run in a daemon mode to repeatedly
23 poll one or more systems at a specified interval.
27 program can gather mail from servers supporting any of the common
28 mail-retrieval protocols: POP2, POP3, IMAP2bis, IMAP4, and IMAPrev1.
29 It can also use the ESMTP ETRN extension and ODMR. (The RFCs describing all
30 these protocols are listed at the end of this manual page.)
34 is primarily intended to be used over on-demand TCP/IP links (such as
35 SLIP or PPP connections), it may also be useful as a message transfer
36 agent for sites which refuse for security reasons to permit
37 (sender-initiated) SMTP transactions with sendmail.
39 As each message is retrieved \fIfetchmail\fR normally delivers it via SMTP to
40 port 25 on the machine it is running on (localhost), just as though it
41 were being passed in over a normal TCP/IP link. The mail will then be
42 delivered locally via your system's MDA (Mail Delivery Agent, usually
43 \fIsendmail\fR(8) but your system may use a different one such
44 as \fIsmail\fR, \fImmdf\fR, \fIexim\fR, or \fIqmail\fR). All the
45 delivery-control mechanisms (such as \fI.forward\fR files) normally
46 available through your system MDA and local delivery agents will
49 If no port 25 listener is available, but your fetchmail configuration
50 was told about a reliable local MDA, it will use that MDA for local
51 delivery instead. At build time, fetchmail normally looks for
60 is available, it will assist you in setting up and editing a
61 fetchmailrc configuration. It runs under X and requires that the
62 language Python and the Tk toolkit be present on your system. If
63 you are first setting up fetchmail for single-user mode, it is
64 recommended that you use Novice mode. Expert mode provides
65 complete control of fetchmail configuration, including the
66 multidrop features. In either case, the `Autoprobe' button
67 will tell you the most capable protocol a given mailserver
68 supports, and warn you of potential problems with that server.
73 is controlled by command-line options and a run control file,
74 .IR ~/.fetchmailrc\fR ,
75 the syntax of which we describe in a later section (this file is what
76 the \fIfetchmailconf\fR program edits). Command-line options override
80 Each server name that you specify following the options on the
81 command line will be queried. If you don't specify any servers
82 on the command line, each `poll' entry in your
86 To facilitate the use of
88 in scripts and pipelines, it returns an appropriate exit code upon
89 termination -- see EXIT CODES below.
91 The following options modify the behavior of \fIfetchmail\fR. It is
92 seldom necessary to specify any of these once you have a
93 working \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file set up.
95 Almost all options have a corresponding keyword which can be used to
100 Some special options are not covered here, but are documented instead
101 in sections on AUTHENTICATION and DAEMON MODE which follow.
105 Displays the version information for your copy of
107 No mail fetch is performed.
108 Instead, for each server specified, all the option information
109 that would be computed if
111 were connecting to that server is displayed. Any non-printables in
112 passwords or other string names are shown as backslashed C-like
113 escape sequences. This option is useful for verifying that your
114 options are set the way you want them.
117 Return a status code to indicate whether there is mail waiting,
118 without actually fetching or deleting mail (see EXIT CODES below).
119 This option turns off daemon mode (in which it would be useless). It
120 doesn't play well with queries to multiple sites, and doesn't work
121 with ETRN or ODMR. It will return a false positive if you leave read but
122 undeleted mail in your server mailbox and your fetch protocol can't
123 tell kept messages from new ones. This means it will work with IMAP,
124 not work with POP2, and may occasionally flake out under POP3.
127 Silent mode. Suppresses all progress/status messages that are
128 normally echoed to standard error during a fetch (but does not
129 suppress actual error messages). The --verbose option overrides this.
132 Verbose mode. All control messages passed between
134 and the mailserver are echoed to stdout. Overrides --silent.
135 Doubling this option (-v -v) causes extra diagnostic information
141 Retrieve both old (seen) and new messages from the mailserver. The
142 default is to fetch only messages the server has not marked seen.
143 Under POP3, this option also forces the use of RETR rather than TOP.
144 Note that POP2 retrieval behaves as though --all is always on (see
145 RETRIEVAL FAILURE MODES below) and this option does not work with ETRN
150 Keep retrieved messages on the remote mailserver. Normally, messages
151 are deleted from the folder on the mailserver after they have been retrieved.
154 option causes retrieved messages to remain in your folder on the
155 mailserver. This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
159 Delete retrieved messages from the remote mailserver. This
160 option forces retrieved mail to be deleted. It may be useful if
161 you have specified a default of \fBkeep\fR in your
162 \&\fI.fetchmailrc\fR. This option is forced on with ETRN and ODMR.
165 POP3/IMAP only. Delete old (previously retrieved) messages from the mailserver
166 before retrieving new messages. This option does not work with ETRN or
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 <proto> | \-\-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. The fact that seen messages are skipped
221 is logged, unless error logging is done through syslog while running in
225 .B \-P <portnumber> | \-\-port <portnumber>
227 The port option permits you to specify a TCP/IP port to connect on.
228 This option will seldom be necessary as all the supported protocols have
229 well-established default port numbers.
231 .B \-\-principal <principal>
233 The principal option permits you to specify a service principal for
234 mutual authentication. This is applicable to POP3 or IMAP with Kerberos
237 .B \-t <seconds> | -\-timeout <seconds>
239 The timeout option allows you to set a server-nonresponse
240 timeout in seconds. If a mailserver does not send a greeting message
241 or respond to commands for the given number of seconds,
242 \fIfetchmail\fR will hang up on it. Without such a timeout
243 \fIfetchmail\fR might hang up indefinitely trying to fetch mail from a
244 down host. This would be particularly annoying for a \fIfetchmail\fR
245 running in background. There is a default timeout which fetchmail -V
246 will report. If a given connection receives too many timeouts in
247 succession, fetchmail will consider it wedged and stop retrying,
248 the calling user will be notified by email if this happens.
250 .B \-\-plugin <command>
251 (Keyword: plugin) The plugin option allows you to use an external
252 program to establish the TCP connection. This is useful if you want
253 to use socks, SSL, ssh, or need some special firewalling setup. The
254 program will be looked up in $PATH and can optionally be passed the
255 hostname and port as arguments using "%h" and "%p" respectively (note
256 that the interpolation logic is rather primitive, and these token must
257 be bounded by whitespace or beginning of string or end of string).
258 Fetchmail will write to the plugin's stdin and read from the plugin's
261 .B \-\-plugout <command>
263 Identical to the plugin option above, but this one is used for the SMTP
264 connections (which will probably not need it, so it has been separated
267 .B \-r <name> | \-\-folder <name>
269 Causes a specified non-default mail folder on the mailserver (or
270 comma-separated list of folders) to be retrieved. The syntax of the
271 folder name is server-dependent. This option is not available under
275 (Keyword: tracepolls)
276 Tell fetchail to poll trace information in the form `polling %s
277 account %s' to the Received line it generates, where the %s parts are
278 replaced by the user's remote name and the poll label (the Received
279 header also normally includes the server's truename). This can be
280 used to facilate mail filtering based on the account it is being
285 Causes the connection to the mail server to be encrypted via SSL. Connect
286 to the server using the specified base protocol over a connection secured
287 by SSL. SSL support must be present at the server. If no port is
288 specified, the connection is attempted to the well known port of the SSL
289 version of the base protocol. This is generally a different port than the
290 port used by the base protocol. For IMAP, this is port 143 for the clear
291 protocol and port 993 for the SSL secured protocol.
293 .B \-\-sslcert <name>
295 Specifies the file name of the client side public SSL certificate. Some
296 SSL encrypted servers may require client side keys and certificates for
297 authentication. In most cases, this is optional. This specifies
298 the location of the public key certificate to be presented to the server
299 at the time the SSL session is established. It is not required (but may
300 be provided) if the server does not require it. Some servers may
301 require it, some servers may request it but not require it, and some
302 servers may not request it at all. It may be the same file
303 as the private key (combined key and certificate file) but this is not
308 Specifies the file name of the client side private SSL key. Some SSL
309 encrypted servers may require client side keys and certificates for
310 authentication. In most cases, this is optional. This specifies
311 the location of the private key used to sign transactions with the server
312 at the time the SSL session is established. It is not required (but may
313 be provided) if the server does not require it. Some servers may
314 require it, some servers may request it but not require it, and some
315 servers may not request it at all. It may be the same file
316 as the public key (combined key and certificate file) but this is not
317 recommended. If a password is required to unlock the key, it will be
318 prompted for at the time just prior to establishing the session to the
319 server. This can cause some complications in daemon mode.
321 .B \-\-sslproto <name>
323 Forces an ssl protocol. Possible values are \&`\fBssl2\fR', `\fBssl3\fR' and
324 `\fBtls1\fR'. Try this if the default handshake does not work for your server.
328 Causes fetchmail to strictly check the server certificate against a set of
329 local trusted certificates (see the \fBsslcertpath\fR option). If the server
330 certificate is not signed by one of the trusted ones (directly or indirectly),
331 the SSL connection will fail. This checking should prevent man-in-the-middle
332 attacks against the SSL connection. Note that CRLs are seemingly not currently
333 supported by OpenSSL in certificate verification! Your system clock should
334 be reasonably accurate when using this option!
336 .B \-\-sslcertpath <directory>
337 (Keyword: sslcertpath)
338 Sets the directory fetchmail uses to look up local certificates. The default
339 is your OpenSSL default one. The directory must be hashed as OpenSSL expects
340 it - every time you add or modify a certificate in the directory, you need
341 to use the \fBc_rehash\fR tool (which comes with OpenSSL in the tools/
344 .B \-\-sslfingerprint
345 (Keyword: sslfingerprint)
346 Specify the fingerprint of the server key (an MD5 hash of the key) in
347 hexadecimal notation with colons separating groups of two digits. The letter
348 hex digits must be in upper case. This is the default format OpenSSL uses,
349 and the one fetchmail uses to report the fingerprint when an SSL connection
350 is established. When this is specified, fetchmail will compare the server key
351 fingerprint with the given one, and the connection will fail if they do not
352 match. This can be used to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.
353 .SS Delivery Control Options
355 .B \-S <hosts> | \-\-smtphost <hosts>
356 (Keyword: smtp[host])
357 Specify a hunt list of hosts to forward mail to (one or more
358 hostnames, comma-separated). Hosts are tried in list order; the first
359 one that is up becomes the forwarding target for the current run.
360 Normally, `localhost' is added to the end of the list as an invisible
361 default. However, when using Kerberos authentication, the FQDN of the
362 machine running fetchmail is added to the end of the list as an
363 invisible default. Each hostname may have a port number following the
364 host name. The port number is separated from the host name by a
365 slash; the default port is 25 (or ``smtp'' under IPv6). If you
366 specify an absolute pathname (beginning with a /), it will be
367 interpreted as the name of a UNIX socket accepting LMTP connections
368 (such as is supported by the Cyrus IMAP daemon) Example:
371 --smtphost server1,server2/2525,server3,/var/imap/socket/lmtp
374 This option can be used with ODMR, and will make fetchmail a relay
375 between the ODMR server and SMTP or LMTP receiver.
377 .B \-\-fetchdomains <hosts>
378 (Keyword: fetchdomains)
379 In ETRN or ODMR mode, this option specifies the list of domains the
380 server should ship mail for once the connection is turned around. The
381 default is the FQDN of the machine running
384 .B \-D <domain> | \-\-smtpaddress <domain>
385 (Keyword: smtpaddress) Specify the domain to be appended to addresses
386 in RCPT TO lines shipped to SMTP. The name of the SMTP server (as
387 specified by --smtphost, or defaulted to "localhost") is used when
388 this is not specified.
390 .B \-\-smtpname <user@domain>
392 Specify the domain and user to be put in RCPT TO lines shipped to SMTP.
393 The default user is the current local user.
395 .B \-Z <nnn> | \-\-antispam <nnn[, nnn]...>
397 Specifies the list of numeric SMTP errors that are to be interpreted
398 as a spam-block response from the listener. A value of -1 disables
399 this option. For the command-line option, the list values should
402 .B \-m <command> | \-\-mda <command>
404 You can force mail to be passed to an MDA directly (rather than
405 forwarded to port 25) with the --mda or -m option. To avoid losing
406 mail, use this option only with MDAs like procmail or sendmail that
407 return a nonzero status on disk-full and other resource-exhaustion
408 errors; the nonzero status tells fetchmail that delivery failed and
409 prevents the message from being deleted off the server. If
410 \fIfetchmail\fR is running as root, it sets its userid to that of the
411 target user while delivering mail through an MDA. Some possible MDAs
412 are "/usr/sbin/sendmail -i -oem -f %F %T", "/usr/bin/deliver" and
413 "/usr/bin/procmail -d %T" (but the latter is usually redundant as it's
414 what SMTP listeners normally forward to). Local delivery addresses
415 will be inserted into the MDA command wherever you place a %T; the
416 mail message's From address will be inserted where you place an %F.
417 Do \fInot\fR use an MDA invocation like "sendmail -i -oem -t" that
418 dispatches on the contents of To/Cc/Bcc, it will create mail loops and
419 bring the just wrath of many postmasters down upon your head.
423 Cause delivery via LMTP (Local Mail Transfer Protocol). A service
424 port \fImust\fR be explicitly specified (with a slash suffix) on each
425 host in the smtphost hunt list if this option is selected; the
426 default port 25 will (in accordance with RFC 2033) not be accepted.
428 .B \-\-bsmtp <filename>
430 Append fetched mail to a BSMTP file. This simply contains the SMTP
431 commands that would normally be generated by fetchmail when passing
432 mail to an SMTP listener daemon. An argument of `-' causes the mail
433 to be written to standard output. Note that fetchmail's
434 reconstruction of MAIL FROM and RCPT TO lines is not guaranteed
435 correct; the caveats discussed under THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP
436 MAILBOXES below apply.
437 .SS Resource Limit Control Options
439 .B \-l <maxbytes> | \-\-limit <maxbytes>
441 Takes a maximum octet size argument. Messages larger than this size
442 will not be fetched and will be left on the server (in foreground
443 sessions, the progress messages will note that they are "oversized").
444 If the fetch protocol permits (in particular, under IMAP or POP3
445 without the fetchall option) the message will not be marked seen An
446 explicit --limit of 0 overrides any limits set in your run control
447 file. This option is intended for those needing to strictly control
448 fetch time due to expensive and variable phone rates. In daemon mode,
449 oversize notifications are mailed to the calling user (see the
450 --warnings option). This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
452 .B \-w <interval> | \-\-warnings <interval>
454 Takes an interval in seconds. When you call
456 with a `limit' option in daemon mode, this controls the interval at
457 which warnings about oversized messages are mailed to the calling user
458 (or the user specified by the `postmaster' option). One such
459 notification is always mailed at the end of the the first poll that
460 the oversized message is detected. Thereafter, renotification is
461 suppressed until after the warning interval elapses (it will take
462 place at the end of the first following poll).
464 .B \-b <count> | \-\-batchlimit <count>
465 (Keyword: batchlimit)
466 Specify the maximum number of messages that will be shipped to an SMTP
467 listener before the connection is deliberately torn down and rebuilt
468 (defaults to 0, meaning no limit). An explicit --batchlimit of 0
469 overrides any limits set in your run control file. While
470 \fBsendmail\fR(8) normally initiates delivery of a message immediately
471 after receiving the message terminator, some SMTP listeners are not so
472 prompt. MTAs like \fIsmail\fR(8) may wait till the
473 delivery socket is shut down to deliver. This may produce annoying
474 delays when \fIfetchmail\fR is processing very large batches. Setting
475 the batch limit to some nonzero size will prevent these delays. This
476 option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
478 .B \-B <number> | \-\-fetchlimit <number>
479 (Keyword: fetchlimit)
480 Limit the number of messages accepted from a given server in a single
481 poll. By default there is no limit. An explicit --fetchlimit of 0
482 overrides any limits set in your run control file.
483 This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
485 .B \-e <count> | \-\-expunge <count>
487 Arrange for deletions to be made final after a given number of
488 messages. Under POP2 or POP3, fetchmail cannot make deletions final
489 without sending QUIT and ending the session -- with this option on,
490 fetchmail will break a long mail retrieval session into multiple
491 subsessions, sending QUIT after each sub-session. This is a good
492 defense against line drops on POP3 servers that do not do the
493 equivalent of a QUIT on hangup. Under IMAP,
495 normally issues an EXPUNGE command after each deletion in order to
496 force the deletion to be done immediately. This is safest when your
497 connection to the server is flaky and expensive, as it avoids
498 resending duplicate mail after a line hit. However, on large
499 mailboxes the overhead of re-indexing after every message can slam the
500 server pretty hard, so if your connection is reliable it is good to do
501 expunges less frequently. Also note that some servers enforce a delay
502 of a few seconds after each quit, so fetchmail may not be able to get
503 back in immediately after an expunge -- you may see "lock busy" errors
504 if this happens. If you specify this option to an integer N,
507 to only issue expunges on every Nth delete. An argument of zero
508 suppresses expunges entirely (so no expunges at all will be done until
509 the end of run). This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
510 .SS Authentication Options
512 .B \-u <name> | \-\-username <name>
513 (Keyword: user[name])
514 Specifies the user identification to be used when logging in to the mailserver.
515 The appropriate user identification is both server and user-dependent.
516 The default is your login name on the client machine that is running
518 See USER AUTHENTICATION below for a complete description.
520 .B \-I <specification> | \-\-interface <specification>
522 Require that a specific interface device be up and have a specific local
523 or remote IP address (or range) before polling. Frequently
525 is used over a transient point-to-point TCP/IP link established directly
526 to a mailserver via SLIP or PPP. That is a relatively secure channel.
527 But when other TCP/IP routes to the mailserver exist (e.g. when the link
528 is connected to an alternate ISP), your username and password may be
529 vulnerable to snooping (especially when daemon mode automatically polls
530 for mail, shipping a clear password over the net at predictable
531 intervals). The --interface option may be used to prevent this. When
532 the specified link is not up or is not connected to a matching IP
533 address, polling will be skipped. The format is:
536 interface/iii.iii.iii.iii/mmm.mmm.mmm.mmm
539 The field before the first slash is the interface name (i.e. sl0, ppp0
540 etc.). The field before the second slash is the acceptable IP address.
541 The field after the second slash is a mask which specifies a range of
542 IP addresses to accept. If no mask is present 255.255.255.255 is
543 assumed (i.e. an exact match). This option is currently only supported
544 under Linux and FreeBSD. Please see the
546 section for below for FreeBSD specific information.
548 .B \-M <interface> | --monitor <interface>
550 Daemon mode can cause transient links which are automatically taken down
551 after a period of inactivity (e.g. PPP links) to remain up
552 indefinitely. This option identifies a system TCP/IP interface to be
553 monitored for activity. After each poll interval, if the link is up but
554 no other activity has occurred on the link, then the poll will be
555 skipped. However, when fetchmail is woken up by a signal, the
556 monitor check is skipped and the poll goes through unconditionally.
557 This option is currently only supported under Linux and FreeBSD.
562 options to work for non root users under FreeBSD, the fetchmail binary
563 must be installed SGID kmem. This would be a security hole, but
564 fetchmail runs with the effective GID set to that of the kmem group
566 when interface data is being collected.
569 (Keyword: auth[enticate])
570 This option permits you to specify an authentication type (see USER
571 AUTHENTICATION below for details). The possible values are \fBany\fR,
572 \&`\fBpassword\fR', `\fBkerberos_v5\fR' and `\fBkerberos\fR' (or, for
573 excruciating exactness, `\fBkerberos_v4\fR'), \fRgssapi\fR,
574 \fIcram-md5\fR, \fIotp\fR, \fIntlm\fR, and \fBssh\fR. When \fBany\fR (the
575 default) is specified, fetchmail tries first methods that don't
576 require a password (GSSAPI, KERBEROS_IV); then it looks for methods
577 that mask your password (CRAM-MD5, X-OTP, NTLM); and only if the server
578 doesn't support any of those will it ship your password en clair.
579 Other values may be used to force various authentication methods
580 (\fBssh\fR suppresses authentication). Any value other than
581 \fIpassword\fR, \fIcram-md5\fR, \fIntlm\fR or \fIotp\fR suppresses fetchmail's
582 normal inquiry for a password. Specify \fIssh\fR when you are using
583 an end-to-end secure connection such as an ssh tunnel; specify
584 \fRgssapi\fR or \fBkerberos_v4\fR if you are using a protocol variant
585 that employs GSSAPI or K4. Choosing KPOP protocol automatically
586 selects Kerberos authentication. This option does not work with ETRN.
587 .SS Miscellaneous Options
589 .B \-f <pathname> | \-\-fetchmailrc <pathname>
590 Specify a non-default name for the
592 run control file. The pathname argument must be either "-" (a single
593 dash, meaning to read the configuration from standard input) or a
594 filename. Unless the --version option is also on, a named file
595 argument must have permissions no more open than 0600 (u=rw,g=,o=) or
598 .B \-i <pathname> | \-\-idfile <pathname>
600 Specify an alternate name for the .fetchids file used to save POP3
603 .B \-n | \-\-norewrite
604 (Keyword: no rewrite)
607 edits RFC-822 address headers (To, From, Cc, Bcc, and Reply-To) in
608 fetched mail so that any mail IDs local to the server are expanded to
609 full addresses (@ and the mailserver hostname are appended). This enables
610 replies on the client to get addressed correctly (otherwise your
611 mailer might think they should be addressed to local users on the
612 client machine!). This option disables the rewrite. (This option is
613 provided to pacify people who are paranoid about having an MTA edit
614 mail headers and want to know they can prevent it, but it is generally
615 not a good idea to actually turn off rewrite.)
616 When using ETRN or ODMR, the rewrite option is ineffective.
618 .B \-E <line> | \-\-envelope <line>
620 This option changes the header
622 assumes will carry a copy of the mail's envelope address. Normally
623 this is `X-Envelope-To' but as this header is not standard, practice
624 varies. See the discussion of multidrop address handling below. As a
625 special case, `envelope "Received"' enables parsing of sendmail-style
626 Received lines. This is the default, and it should not be necessary
627 unless you have globally disabled Received parsing with `no envelope'
628 in the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file.
630 .B \-Q <prefix> | \-\-qvirtual <prefix>
632 The string prefix assigned to this option will be removed from the user
633 name found in the header specified with the \fIenvelope\fR option
634 (\fIbefore\fR doing multidrop name mapping or localdomain checking,
635 if either is applicable). This option is useful if you are using
637 to collect the mail for an entire domain and your ISP (or your mail
638 redirection provider) is using qmail.
639 One of the basic features of qmail is the
643 message header. Whenever qmail delivers a message to a local mailbox
644 it puts the username and hostname of the envelope recipient on this
645 line. The major reason for this is to prevent mail loops. To set up
646 qmail to batch mail for a disconnected site the ISP-mailhost will have
647 normally put that site in its `Virtualhosts' control file so it will
648 add a prefix to all mail addresses for this site. This results in mail
649 .\" The \&@\& tries to stop HTML converters from making a mailto URL here.
650 sent to 'username\&@\&userhost.userdom.dom.com' having a
651 \&`Delivered-To:' line of the form:
653 Delivered-To: mbox-userstr-username\&@\&userhost.userdom.dom.com
655 The ISP can make the 'mbox-userstr-' prefix anything they choose
656 but a string matching the user host name is likely.
657 By using the option `envelope Delivered-To:' you can make fetchmail reliably
658 identify the original envelope recipient, but you have to strip the
659 `mbox-userstr-' prefix to deliver to the correct user.
660 This is what this option is for.
665 file, interpret any command-line options specified, and dump a
666 configuration report to standard output. The configuration report is
667 a data structure assignment in the language Python. This option
668 is meant to be used with an interactive
674 .SH USER AUTHENTICATION AND ENCRYPTION
675 All modes except ETRN require authentication of the client to the server.
676 Normal user authentication in
678 is very much like the authentication mechanism of
680 The correct user-id and password depend upon the underlying security
681 system at the mailserver.
683 If the mailserver is a Unix machine on which you have an ordinary user
684 account, your regular login name and password are used with
686 If you use the same login name on both the server and the client machines,
687 you needn't worry about specifying a user-id with the
689 option \-\- the default behavior is to use your login name on the
690 client machine as the user-id on the server machine. If you use a
691 different login name on the server machine, specify that login name
694 option. e.g. if your login name is 'jsmith' on a machine named 'mailgrunt',
699 fetchmail -u jsmith mailgrunt
701 The default behavior of
703 is to prompt you for your mailserver password before the connection is
704 established. This is the safest way to use
706 and ensures that your password will not be compromised. You may also specify
707 your password in your
709 file. This is convenient when using
711 in daemon mode or with scripts.
713 If you do not specify a password, and
715 cannot extract one from your
717 file, it will look for a
719 file in your home directory before requesting one interactively; if an
720 entry matching the mailserver is found in that file, the password will
721 be used. Fetchmail first looks for a match on poll name; if it finds none,
722 it checks for a match on via name. See the
724 man page for details of the syntax of the
726 file. (This feature may allow you to avoid duplicating password
727 information in more than one file.)
729 On mailservers that do not provide ordinary user accounts, your user-id and
730 password are usually assigned by the server administrator when you apply for
731 a mailbox on the server. Contact your server administrator if you don't know
732 the correct user-id and password for your mailbox account.
734 Early versions of POP3 (RFC1081, RFC1225) supported a crude form of
735 independent authentication using the
737 file on the mailserver side. Under this RPOP variant, a fixed
738 per-user ID equivalent to a password was sent in clear over a link to
739 a reserved port, with the command RPOP rather than PASS to alert the
740 server that it should do special checking. RPOP is supported
743 (you can specify `protocol RPOP' to have the program send `RPOP'
744 rather than `PASS') but its use is strongly discouraged. This
745 facility was vulnerable to spoofing and was withdrawn in RFC1460.
747 RFC1460 introduced APOP authentication. In this variant of POP3,
748 you register an APOP password on your server host (the program
749 to do this with on the server is probably called \fIpopauth\fR(8)). You
750 put the same password in your
754 logs in, it sends a cryptographically secure hash of your password and
755 the server greeting time to the server, which can verify it by
756 checking its authorization database.
758 If your \fIfetchmail\fR was built with Kerberos support and you specify
759 Kerberos authentication (either with --auth or the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
760 option \fBauthenticate kerberos_v4\fR) it will try to get a Kerberos
761 ticket from the mailserver at the start of each query. Note: if
762 either the pollnane or via name is `hesiod', fetchmail will try to use
763 Hesiod to look up the mailserver.
765 If you use POP3 or IMAP with GSSAPI authentication, \fIfetchmail\fR will
766 expect the server to have RFC1731- or RFC1734-conformant GSSAPI
767 capability, and will use it. Currently this has only been tested over
768 Kerberos V, so you're expected to already have a ticket-granting
769 ticket. You may pass a username different from your principal name
770 using the standard \fB--user\fR command or by the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
773 If your IMAP daemon returns the PREAUTH response in its greeting line,
774 fetchmail will notice this and skip the normal authentication step.
775 This can be useful, e.g. if you start imapd explicitly using ssh.
776 In this case you can declare the authentication value `ssh' on that
777 site entry to stop \fI.fetchmail\fR from asking you for a password
780 If you are using POP3, and the server issues a one-time-password
781 challenge conforming to RFC1938, \fIfetchmail\fR will use your
782 password as a pass phrase to generate the required response. This
783 avoids sending secrets over the net unencrypted.
785 Compuserve's RPA authentication (similar to APOP) is supported. If you
786 compile in the support, \fIfetchmail\fR will try to perform an RPA pass-phrase
787 authentication instead of sending over the password en clair if it
788 detects "@compuserve.com" in the hostname.
790 If you are using IMAP, Microsoft's NTLM authentication (used by Microsoft
791 Exchange) is supported. If you compile in the support, \fIfetchmail\fR
792 will try to perform an NTLM authentication (instead of sending over the
793 password en clair) whenever the server returns AUTH=NTLM in its
794 capability response. Specify a user option value that looks like
795 `user@domain': the part to the left of the @ will be passed as the
796 username and the part to the right as the NTLM domain.
798 If you are using IPsec, the -T (--netsec) option can be used to pass
799 an IP security request to be used when outgoing IP connections are
800 initialized. You can also do this using the `netsec' server option
801 in the .fetchmailrc file. In either case, the option value is a
802 string in the format accepted by the net_security_strtorequest()
803 function of the inet6_apps library.
805 You can access SSL encrypted services by specifying the --ssl option.
806 You can also do this using the "ssl" server option in the .fetchmailrc
807 file. With SSL encryption enabled, queries are initiated over a connection
808 after negotiating an SSL session. Some services, such as POP3 and IMAP,
809 have different well known ports defined for the SSL encrypted services.
810 The encrypted ports will be selected automatically when SSL is enabled and
811 no explicit port is specified.
813 When connecting to an SSL encrypted server, the server presents a certificate
814 to the client for validation. The certificate is checked to verify that
815 the common name in the certificate matches the name of the server being
816 contacted and that the effective and expiration dates in the certificate
817 indicate that it is currently valid. If any of these checks fail, a warning
818 message is printed, but the connection continues. The server certificate
819 does not need to be signed by any specific Certifying Authority and may
820 be a "self-signed" certificate.
822 Some SSL encrypted servers may request a client side certificate. A client
823 side public SSL certificate and private SSL key may be specified. If
824 requested by the server, the client certificate is sent to the server for
825 validation. Some servers may require a valid client certificate and may
826 refuse connections if a certificate is not provided or if the certificate
827 is not valid. Some servers may require client side certificates be signed
828 by a recognized Certifying Authority. The format for the key files and
829 the certificate files is that required by the underlying SSL libraries
830 (OpenSSL in the general case).
832 A word of care about the use of SSL: While above mentioned
833 setup with self-signed server certificates retrieved over the wires
834 can protect you from a passive eavesdropper it doesn't help against an
835 active attacker. It's clearly an improvement over sending the
836 passwords in clear but you should be aware that a man-in-the-middle
837 attack is trivially possible (in particular with tools such as dsniff,
838 http://www.monkey.org/~dugsong/dsniff/). Use of an ssh tunnel (see
839 below for some examples) is preferable if you care seriously about the
840 security of your mailbox.
843 also supports authentication to the ESMTP server on the client side
844 according to RFC 2554. You can specify a name/password pair to be
845 used with the keywords `esmtpname' and `esmtppassword'; the former
846 defaults to the username of the calling user.
850 .B \-\-daemon <interval>
855 in daemon mode. You must specify a numeric argument which is a
856 polling interval in seconds.
860 puts itself in background and runs forever, querying each specified
861 host and then sleeping for the given polling interval.
867 will, therefore, poll all the hosts described in your
869 file (except those explicitly excluded with the `skip' verb) once
870 every fifteen minutes.
872 It is possible to set a polling interval
875 file by saying `set daemon <interval>', where <interval> is an
876 integer number of seconds. If you do this, fetchmail will always
877 start in daemon mode unless you override it with the command-line
878 option --daemon 0 or -d0.
880 Only one daemon process is permitted per user; in daemon mode,
882 makes a per-user lockfile to guarantee this.
884 Normally, calling fetchmail with a daemon in the background sends a
885 wakeup signal to the daemon, forcing it to poll mailservers
886 immediately. (The wakeup signal is SIGHUP if fetchmail is running as
887 root, SIGUSR1 otherwise.) The wakeup action also clears any `wedged'
888 flags indicating that connections have wedged due to failed
889 authentication or multiple timeouts.
893 will kill a running daemon process instead of waking it up (if there
896 notifies you). If the --quit option is the only command-line option,
897 that's all there is to it.
899 The quit option may also be mixed with other command-line options; its
900 effect is to kill any running daemon before doing what the other
901 options specify in combination with the rc file.
906 .B \-\-logfile <filename>
907 option (keyword: set logfile) allows you to redirect status messages
908 emitted while detached into a specified logfile (follow the
909 option with the logfile name). The logfile is opened for append, so
910 previous messages aren't deleted. This is primarily useful for
911 debugging configurations.
915 option (keyword: set syslog) allows you to redirect status and error
916 messages emitted to the
918 system daemon if available.
919 Messages are logged with an id of \fBfetchmail\fR, the facility \fBLOG_MAIL\fR,
920 and priorities \fBLOG_ERR\fR, \fBLOG_ALERT\fR or \fBLOG_INFO\fR.
921 This option is intended for logging status and error messages which
922 indicate the status of the daemon and the results while fetching mail
924 Error messages for command line options and parsing the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
925 file are still written to stderr, or to the specified log file.
928 option turns off use of
930 assuming it's turned on in the
935 .B \-\-logfile <file>
940 or --nodetach option suppresses backgrounding and detachment of the
941 daemon process from its control terminal. This is primarily useful
942 for debugging. Note that this also causes the logfile option to be
943 ignored (though perhaps it shouldn't).
945 Note that while running in daemon mode polling a POP2 or IMAP2bis server,
946 transient errors (such as DNS failures or sendmail delivery refusals)
947 may force the fetchall option on for the duration of the next polling
948 cycle. This is a robustness feature. It means that if a message is
949 fetched (and thus marked seen by the mailserver) but not delivered
950 locally due to some transient error, it will be re-fetched during the
951 next poll cycle. (The IMAP logic doesn't delete messages until
952 they're delivered, so this problem does not arise.)
954 If you touch or change the
956 file while fetchmail is running in daemon mode, this will be detected
957 at the beginning of the next poll cycle. When a changed
959 is detected, fetchmail rereads it and restarts from scratch (using
960 exec(2); no state information is retained in the new instance). Note also
961 that if you break the
963 file's syntax, the new instance will softly and silently vanish away
966 .SH ADMINISTRATIVE OPTIONS
969 .B \-\-postmaster <name>
970 option (keyword: set postmaster) specifies the last-resort username to
971 which multidrop mail is to be forwarded if no matching local recipient
972 can be found. Normally this is just the user who invoked
974 If the invoking user is root, then the default of this option is
975 the user `postmaster'. Setting postmaster to the empty string causes
976 such mail to be discarded.
980 option suppresses the normal action of bouncing errors back to the
981 sender in an RFC1894-conformant error message. If nobounce is on, the
982 message will go to the postmaster instead.
986 option (keyword: set invisible) tries to make fetchmail invisible.
987 Normally, fetchmail behaves like any other MTA would -- it generates a
988 Received header into each message describing its place in the chain of
989 transmission, and tells the MTA it forwards to that the mail came from
990 the machine fetchmail itself is running on. If the invisible option
991 is on, the Received header is suppressed and fetchmail tries to spoof
992 the MTA it forwards to into thinking it came directly from the
997 option (keyword: set showdots) forces fetchmail to show progress dots
998 even if the current tty is not stdout (for example logfiles).
999 Starting with fetchmail version 5.3.0,
1000 progress dots are only shown on stdout by default.
1004 option, you can ask fetchmail to add information to the Received
1005 header on the form "polling {label} account {user}", where {label} is
1006 the account label (from the specified rcfile, normally ~/.fetchmailrc)
1007 and {user} is the username which is used to log on to the mail
1008 server. This header can be used to make filtering email where no
1009 useful header information is available and you want mail from
1010 different accounts sorted into different mailboxes (this could, for
1011 example, occur if you have an account on the same server running a
1012 mailing list, and are subscribed to the list using that account). The
1013 default is not adding any such header. In
1015 this is called `tracepolls'.
1017 .SH RETRIEVAL FAILURE MODES
1018 The protocols \fIfetchmail\fR uses to talk to mailservers are next to
1019 bulletproof. In normal operation forwarding to port 25, no message is
1020 ever deleted (or even marked for deletion) on the host until the SMTP
1021 listener on the client side has acknowledged to \fIfetchmail\fR that
1022 the message has been either accepted for delivery or rejected due to a
1025 When forwarding to an MDA, however, there is more possibility
1026 of error. Some MDAs are `safe' and reliably return a nonzero status
1027 on any delivery error, even one due to temporary resource limits.
1030 program is like this; so are most programs designed as mail transport
1035 These programs give back a reliable positive acknowledgement and
1036 can be used with the mda option with no risk of mail loss. Unsafe
1037 MDAs, though, may return 0 even on delivery failure. If this
1038 happens, you will lose mail.
1040 The normal mode of \fIfetchmail\fR is to try to download only `new'
1041 messages, leaving untouched (and undeleted) messages you have already
1042 read directly on the server (or fetched with a previous \fIfetchmail
1043 --keep\fR). But you may find that messages you've already read on the
1044 server are being fetched (and deleted) even when you don't specify
1045 --all. There are several reasons this can happen.
1047 One could be that you're using POP2. The POP2 protocol includes no
1048 representation of `new' or `old' state in messages, so \fIfetchmail\fR
1049 must treat all messages as new all the time. But POP2 is obsolete, so
1052 Under POP3, blame RFC1725. That version of the POP3 protocol
1053 specification removed the LAST command, and some POP servers follow it
1054 (you can verify this by invoking \fIfetchmail -v\fR to the mailserver
1055 and watching the response to LAST early in the query). The
1056 \fIfetchmail\fR code tries to compensate by using POP3's UID feature,
1057 storing the identifiers of messages seen in each session until the
1058 next session, in the \fI.fetchids\fR file. But this doesn't track
1059 messages seen with other clients, or read directly with a mailer on
1060 the host but not deleted afterward. A better solution would be to
1063 Another potential POP3 problem might be servers that insert messages
1064 in the middle of mailboxes (some VMS implementations of mail are
1065 rumored to do this). The \fIfetchmail\fR code assumes that new
1066 messages are appended to the end of the mailbox; when this is not true
1067 it may treat some old messages as new and vice versa. The only
1068 real fix for this problem is to switch to IMAP.
1070 Yet another POP3 problem is that if they can't make tempfiles in the
1071 user's home directory, some POP3 servers will hand back an
1072 undocumented response that causes fetchmail to spuriously report "No
1075 The IMAP code uses the presence or absence of the server flag \eSeen
1076 to decide whether or not a message is new. Under Unix, it counts on
1077 your IMAP server to notice the BSD-style Status flags set by mail user
1078 agents and set the \eSeen flag from them when appropriate. All Unix
1079 IMAP servers we know of do this, though it's not specified by the IMAP
1080 RFCs. If you ever trip over a server that doesn't, the symptom will
1081 be that messages you have already read on your host will look new to
1082 the server. In this (unlikely) case, only messages you fetched with
1083 \fIfetchmail --keep\fR will be both undeleted and marked old.
1085 In ETRN and ODMR modes, \fIfetchmail\fR does not actually retrieve messages;
1086 instead, it asks the server's SMTP listener to start a queue flush
1087 to the client via SMTP. Therefore it sends only undelivered messages.
1090 Many SMTP listeners allow administrators to set up `spam filters' that
1091 block unsolicited email from specified domains. A MAIL FROM or DATA line that
1092 triggers this feature will elicit an SMTP response which
1093 (unfortunately) varies according to the listener.
1097 return an error code of 571. This return value
1098 is blessed by RFC1893 as "Delivery not authorized, message refused".
1100 According to RFC2821, the correct thing to return in this situation is
1101 550 "Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable" (the draft adds
1102 "[E.g., mailbox not found, no access, or command rejected for policy
1105 Older versions of the
1107 MTA return 501 "Syntax error in parameters or arguments".
1111 MTA runs 554 as an antispam response.
1114 may reject code with a 500 response (followed by an enhanced status
1115 code that contains more information).
1119 treats as antispam responses and discards
1120 the message can be set with the `antispam' option. This is one of the
1122 three circumstance under which fetchmail ever discards mail (the others
1123 are the 552 and 553 errors described below, and the suppression of
1124 multidropped messages with a message-ID already seen).
1128 is fetching from an IMAP server, the antispam response will be detected and
1129 the message rejected immediately after the headers have been fetched,
1130 without reading the message body. Thus, you won't pay for downloading
1131 spam message bodies.
1133 By default, the list of antispam responses is empty.
1135 If the \fIspambounce\fR option is on, mail that is spam-blocked
1136 triggers an RFC1892 bounce message informing the originator that we do
1137 not accept mail from it.
1139 .SH SMTP/ESMTP ERROR HANDLING
1140 Besides the spam-blocking described above, fetchmail takes special
1141 actions on the following SMTP/ESMTP error responses
1143 452 (insufficient system storage)
1144 Leave the message in the server mailbox for later retrieval.
1146 552 (message exceeds fixed maximum message size)
1147 Delete the message from the server. Send bounce-mail to the
1150 553 (invalid sending domain)
1151 Delete the message from the server. Don't even try to send
1152 bounce-mail to the originator.
1154 Other errors trigger bounce mail back to the originator.
1156 .SH THE RUN CONTROL FILE
1157 The preferred way to set up fetchmail is to write a
1158 \&\fI.fetchmailrc\fR file in your home directory (you may do this
1159 directly, with a text editor, or indirectly via \fIfetchmailconf\fR).
1160 When there is a conflict between the command-line arguments and the
1161 arguments in this file, the command-line arguments take precedence.
1163 To protect the security of your passwords, when --version is not on
1164 your \fI~/.fetchmailrc\fR may not have more than 0600 (u=rw,g=,o=) permissions;
1166 will complain and exit otherwise.
1168 You may read the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file as a list of commands to
1171 is called with no arguments.
1172 .SS Run Control Syntax
1174 Comments begin with a '#' and extend through the end of the line.
1175 Otherwise the file consists of a series of server entries or global
1176 option statements in a free-format, token-oriented syntax.
1178 There are four kinds of tokens: grammar keywords, numbers
1179 (i.e. decimal digit sequences), unquoted strings, and quoted strings.
1180 A quoted string is bounded by double quotes and may contain
1181 whitespace (and quoted digits are treated as a string). An unquoted
1182 string is any whitespace-delimited token that is neither numeric, string
1183 quoted nor contains the special characters `,', `;', `:', or `='.
1185 Any amount of whitespace separates tokens in server entries, but is
1186 otherwise ignored. You may use standard C-style escapes (\en, \et,
1187 \eb, octal, and hex) to embed non-printable characters or string
1188 delimiters in strings.
1190 Each server entry consists of one of the keywords `poll' or `skip',
1191 followed by a server name, followed by server options, followed by any
1192 number of user descriptions. Note: the most common cause of syntax
1193 errors is mixing up user and server options.
1195 For backward compatibility, the word `server' is a synonym for `poll'.
1197 You can use the noise keywords `and', `with',
1198 \&`has', `wants', and `options' anywhere in an entry to make
1199 it resemble English. They're ignored, but but can make entries much
1200 easier to read at a glance. The punctuation characters ':', ';' and
1201 \&',' are also ignored.
1204 The `poll' verb tells fetchmail to query this host when it is run with
1205 no arguments. The `skip' verb tells
1207 not to poll this host unless it is explicitly named on the command
1208 line. (The `skip' verb allows you to experiment with test entries
1209 safely, or easily disable entries for hosts that are temporarily down.)
1211 .SS Keyword/Option Summary
1212 Here are the legal options. Keyword suffixes enclosed in
1213 square brackets are optional. Those corresponding to command-line
1214 options are followed by `-' and the appropriate option letter.
1216 Here are the legal global options:
1220 Keyword Opt Function
1223 Set a background poll interval in seconds
1225 set postmaster \& T{
1226 Give the name of the last-resort mail recipient
1228 set no bouncemail \& T{
1229 Direct error mail to postmaster rather than sender
1231 set no spambounce \& T{
1235 Name of a file to dump error and status messages to
1238 Name of the file to store UID lists in
1241 Do error logging through syslog(3).
1244 Turn off error logging through syslog(3).
1246 set properties \& T{
1247 String value is ignored by fetchmail (may be used by extension scripts)
1251 Here are the legal server options:
1255 Keyword Opt Function
1258 Specify DNS name of mailserver, overriding poll name
1261 Specify protocol (case insensitive):
1262 POP2, POP3, IMAP, APOP, KPOP
1264 local[domains] \& T{
1265 Specify domain(s) to be regarded as local
1268 Specify TCP/IP service port
1270 auth[enticate] \& T{
1271 Set authentication type (default `any')
1274 Server inactivity timeout in seconds (default 300)
1277 Specify envelope-address header name
1280 Disable looking for envelope address
1283 Qmail virtual domain prefix to remove from user name
1286 Specify alternate DNS names of mailserver
1289 specify IP interface(s) that must be up for server poll to take place
1292 Specify IP address to monitor for activity
1295 Specify command through which to make server connections.
1298 Specify command through which to make listener connections.
1301 Enable DNS lookup for multidrop (default)
1304 Disable DNS lookup for multidrop
1307 Do comparison by IP address for multidrop
1310 Do comparison by name for multidrop (default)
1313 Force POP3 to use client-side UIDLs
1316 Turn off POP3 use of client-side UIDLs (default)
1319 Only check this site every N poll cycles; N is a numeric argument.
1322 Pass in IPsec security option request.
1325 Set Kerberos principal (only useful with imap and kerberos)
1328 Set name for RFC2554 authentication to the ESMTP server.
1331 Set password for RFC2554 authentication to the ESMTP server.
1335 Here are the legal user options:
1339 Keyword Opt Function
1342 Set remote user name
1343 (local user name if name followed by `here')
1346 Connect local and remote user names
1349 Connect local and remote user names
1352 Specify remote account password
1355 Connect to server over the specified base protocol using SSL encryption
1358 Specify file for client side public SSL certificate
1361 Specify file for client side private SSL key
1364 Force ssl protocol for connection
1367 Specify remote folder to query
1370 Specify smtp host(s) to forward to
1373 Specify domains for which mail should be fetched
1376 Specify the domain to be put in RCPT TO lines
1379 Specify the user and domain to be put in RCPT TO lines
1382 Specify what SMTP returns are interpreted as spam-policy blocks
1385 Specify MDA for local delivery
1388 Specify BSMTP batch file to append to
1391 Command to be executed before each connection
1394 Command to be executed after each connection
1397 Don't delete seen messages from server
1400 Flush all seen messages before querying
1403 Fetch all messages whether seen or not
1406 Rewrite destination addresses for reply (default)
1409 Strip carriage returns from ends of lines
1412 Force carriage returns at ends of lines
1415 Force BODY=8BITMIME to ESMTP listener
1418 Strip Status and X-Mozilla-Status lines out of incoming mail
1421 Strip Delivered-To lines out of incoming mail
1424 Convert quoted-printable to 8-bit in MIME messages
1427 Idle waiting for new messages after each poll (IMAP only)
1430 Delete seen messages from server (default)
1433 Don't flush all seen messages before querying (default)
1436 Retrieve only new messages (default)
1439 Don't rewrite headers
1442 Don't strip carriage returns (default)
1445 Don't force carriage returns at EOL (default)
1448 Don't force BODY=8BITMIME to ESMTP listener (default)
1451 Don't drop Status headers (default)
1453 no dropdelivered \& T{
1454 Don't drop Delivered-To headers (default)
1457 Don't convert quoted-printable to 8-bit in MIME messages (default)
1460 Don't idle waiting for new messages after each poll (IMAP only)
1463 Set message size limit
1466 Set message size warning interval
1469 Max # messages to forward in single connect
1472 Max # messages to fetch in single connect
1475 Perform an expunge on every #th message (IMAP and POP3 only)
1478 Add poll tracing information to the Received header
1481 String value is ignored by fetchmail (may be used by extension scripts)
1485 Remember that all user options must \fIfollow\fR all server options.
1487 In the .fetchmailrc file, the `envelope' string argument may be
1488 preceded by a whitespace-separated number. This number, if specified,
1489 is the number of such headers to skip (that is, an argument of 1
1490 selects the second header of the given type). This is sometime useful
1491 for ignoring bogus Received headers created by an ISP's local delivery
1493 .SS Keywords Not Corresponding To Option Switches
1495 The `folder' and `smtphost' options (unlike their command-line
1496 equivalents) can take a space- or comma-separated list of names
1499 All options correspond to the obvious command-line arguments, except
1500 the following: `via', `interval', `aka', `is', `to', `dns'/`no dns',
1501 `checkalias'/`no checkalias', `password', `preconnect', `postconnect',
1502 `localdomains', `stripcr'/`no stripcr', `forcecr'/`no forcecr',
1503 `pass8bits'/`no pass8bits' `dropstatus/no dropstatus',
1504 `dropdelivered/no dropdelivered', `mimedecode/no mimedecode', `idle/no
1505 idle', and `no envelope'.
1507 The `via' option is for if you want to have more
1508 than one configuration pointing at the same site. If it is present,
1509 the string argument will be taken as the actual DNS name of the
1510 mailserver host to query.
1511 This will override the argument of poll, which can then simply be a
1512 distinct label for the configuration (e.g. what you would give on the
1513 command line to explicitly query this host).
1515 The `interval' option (which takes a numeric argument) allows you to poll a
1516 server less frequently than the basic poll interval. If you say
1517 \&`interval N' the server this option is attached to will only be
1518 queried every N poll intervals.
1520 The `is' or `to' keywords associate the following local (client)
1521 name(s) (or server-name to client-name mappings separated by =) with
1522 the mailserver user name in the entry. If an is/to list has `*' as
1523 its last name, unrecognized names are simply passed through.
1525 A single local name can be used to support redirecting your mail when
1526 your username on the client machine is different from your name on the
1527 mailserver. When there is only a single local name, mail is forwarded
1528 to that local username regardless of the message's Received, To, Cc,
1529 and Bcc headers. In this case
1531 never does DNS lookups.
1533 When there is more than one local name (or name mapping) the
1534 \fIfetchmail\fR code does look at the Received, To, Cc, and Bcc
1535 headers of retrieved mail (this is `multidrop mode'). It looks for
1536 addresses with hostname parts that match your poll name or your `via',
1537 `aka' or `localdomains' options, and usually also for hostname parts
1538 which DNS tells it are aliases of the mailserver. See the discussion
1539 of `dns', `checkalias', `localdomains', and `aka' for details on how
1540 matching addresses are handled.
1542 If \fIfetchmail\fR cannot match any mailserver usernames or
1543 localdomain addresses, the mail will be bounced.
1544 Normally it will be bounced to the sender, but if `nobounce' is on
1545 it will go to the postmaster (which in turn defaults to being the
1548 The `dns' option (normally on) controls the way addresses from
1549 multidrop mailboxes are checked. On, it enables logic to check each
1550 host address that doesn't match an `aka' or `localdomains' declaration
1551 by looking it up with DNS. When a mailserver username is recognized
1552 attached to a matching hostname part, its local mapping is added to
1553 the list of local recipients.
1555 The `checkalias' option (normally off) extends the lookups performed
1556 by the `dns' keyword in multidrop mode, providing a way to cope with
1557 remote MTAs that identify themselves using their canonical name, while
1558 they're polled using an alias.
1559 When such a server is polled, checks to extract the envelope address
1562 reverts to delivery using the To/Cc/Bcc headers (See below
1563 `Header vs. Envelope addresses').
1564 Specifying this option instructs
1566 to retrieve all the IP addresses associated with both the poll name
1567 and the name used by the remote MTA and to do a comparison of the IP
1568 addresses. This comes in handy in situations where the remote server
1569 undergoes frequent canonical name changes, that would otherwise
1570 require modifications to the rcfile. `checkalias' has no effect if
1571 `no dns' is specified in the rcfile.
1573 The `aka' option is for use with multidrop mailboxes. It allows you
1574 to pre-declare a list of DNS aliases for a server. This is an
1575 optimization hack that allows you to trade space for speed. When
1577 while processing a multidrop mailbox, grovels through message headers
1578 looking for names of the mailserver, pre-declaring common ones can
1579 save it from having to do DNS lookups. Note: the names you give
1580 as arguments to `aka' are matched as suffixes -- if you specify
1581 (say) `aka netaxs.com', this will match not just a hostnamed
1582 netaxs.com, but any hostname that ends with `.netaxs.com'; such as
1583 (say) pop3.netaxs.com and mail.netaxs.com.
1585 The `localdomains' option allows you to declare a list of domains
1586 which fetchmail should consider local. When fetchmail is parsing
1587 address lines in multidrop modes, and a trailing segment of a host
1588 name matches a declared local domain, that address is passed through
1589 to the listener or MDA unaltered (local-name mappings are \fInot\fR
1592 If you are using `localdomains', you may also need to specify \&`no
1593 envelope', which disables \fIfetchmail\fR's normal attempt to deduce
1594 an envelope address from the Received line or X-Envelope-To header or
1595 whatever header has been previously set by `envelope'. If you set `no
1596 envelope' in the defaults entry it is possible to undo that in
1597 individual entries by using `envelope <string>'. As a special case,
1598 \&`envelope "Received"' restores the default parsing of
1601 The \fBpassword\fR option requires a string argument, which is the password
1602 to be used with the entry's server.
1604 The `preconnect' keyword allows you to specify a shell command to be
1605 executed just before each time
1607 establishes a mailserver connection. This may be useful if you are
1608 attempting to set up secure POP connections with the aid of
1610 If the command returns a nonzero status, the poll of that mailserver
1613 Similarly, the `postconnect' keyword similarly allows you to specify a
1614 shell command to be executed just after each time a mailserver
1615 connection is taken down.
1617 The `forcecr' option controls whether lines terminated by LF only are
1618 given CRLF termination before forwarding. Strictly speaking RFC821
1619 requires this, but few MTAs enforce the requirement it so this option
1620 is normally off (only one such MTA, qmail, is in significant use at
1623 The `stripcr' option controls whether carriage returns are stripped
1624 out of retrieved mail before it is forwarded. It is normally not
1625 necessary to set this, because it defaults to `on' (CR stripping
1626 enabled) when there is an MDA declared but `off' (CR stripping
1627 disabled) when forwarding is via SMTP. If `stripcr' and `forcecr' are
1628 both on, `stripcr' will override.
1630 The `pass8bits' option exists to cope with Microsoft mail programs that
1631 stupidly slap a "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit" on everything. With
1632 this option off (the default) and such a header present,
1634 declares BODY=7BIT to an ESMTP-capable listener; this causes problems for
1635 messages actually using 8-bit ISO or KOI-8 character sets, which will
1636 be garbled by having the high bits of all characters stripped. If
1637 \&`pass8bits' is on,
1639 is forced to declare BODY=8BITMIME to any ESMTP-capable listener. If
1640 the listener is 8-bit-clean (as all the major ones now are) the right
1641 thing will probably result.
1643 The `dropstatus' option controls whether nonempty Status and
1644 X-Mozilla-Status lines are retained in fetched mail (the default) or
1645 discarded. Retaining them allows your MUA to see what messages (if
1646 any) were marked seen on the server. On the other hand, it can
1647 confuse some new-mail notifiers, which assume that anything with a
1648 Status line in it has been seen. (Note: the empty Status lines
1649 inserted by some buggy POP servers are unconditionally discarded.)
1651 The `dropdelivered' option controls wether Delivered-To headers will
1652 be kept in fetched mail (the default) or discarded. These headers are
1653 added by Qmail and Postfix mailservers in order to avoid mail loops but
1654 may get in your way if you try to "mirror" a mailserver within the same
1655 domain. Use with caution.
1657 The `mimedecode' option controls whether MIME messages using the
1658 quoted-printable encoding are automatically converted into pure 8-bit
1659 data. If you are delivering mail to an ESMTP-capable, 8-bit-clean
1660 listener (that includes all of the major MTAs like sendmail), then
1661 this will automatically convert quoted-printable message headers and
1662 data into 8-bit data, making it easier to understand when reading
1663 mail. If your e-mail programs know how to deal with MIME messages,
1664 then this option is not needed. The mimedecode option is off by
1665 default, because doing RFC2047 conversion on headers throws away
1666 character-set information and can lead to bad results if the encoding
1667 of the headers differs from the body encoding.
1669 The `idle' option is usable only with IMAP servers supporting the
1670 RFC2177 IDLE command extension. If it is enabled, and fetchmail
1671 detects that IDLE is supported, an IDLE will be issued at the end
1672 of each poll. This will tell the IMAP server to hold the connection
1673 open and notify the client when new mail is available. If you need to
1674 poll a link frequently, IDLE can save bandwidth by eliminating TCP/IP
1675 connects and LOGIN/LOGOUT sequences. On the other hand, an IDLE
1676 connection will eat almost all of your fetchmail's time, because it
1677 will never drop the connection and allow other pools to occur unless
1678 the server times out the IDLE. It also doesn't work with multiple
1679 folders; only the first folder will ever be polled.
1681 The `properties' option is an extension mechanism. It takes a string
1682 argument, which is ignored by fetchmail itself. The string argument may be
1683 used to store configuration information for scripts which require it.
1684 In particular, the output of `--configdump' option will make properties
1685 associated with a user entry readily available to a Python script.
1687 .SS Miscellaneous Run Control Options
1688 The words `here' and `there' have useful English-like
1689 significance. Normally `user eric is esr' would mean that
1690 mail for the remote user `eric' is to be delivered to `esr',
1691 but you can make this clearer by saying `user eric there is esr here',
1692 or reverse it by saying `user esr here is eric there'
1694 Legal protocol identifiers for use with the `protocol' keyword are:
1707 Legal authentication types are `any', `password', `kerberos', 'kereberos_v5'
1708 and `gssapi', `cram-md5', `otp', `ntlm', `ssh`.
1709 The `password' type specifies authentication by normal transmission of a
1710 password (the password may be plaintext or subject to
1711 protocol-specific encryption as in APOP); `kerberos' tells
1712 \fIfetchmail\fR to try to get a Kerberos ticket at the start of each
1713 query instead, and send an arbitrary string as the password; and
1714 `gssapi' tells fetchmail to use GSSAPI authentication. See the description
1715 of the `auth' keyword for more.
1717 Specifying `kpop' sets POP3 protocol over port 1109 with Kerberos V4
1718 authentication. These defaults may be overridden by later options.
1720 There are currently four global option statements; `set logfile'
1721 followed by a string sets the same global specified by --logfile. A
1722 command-line --logfile option will override this. Also, `set daemon'
1723 sets the poll interval as --daemon does. This can be overridden by a
1724 command-line --daemon option; in particular --daemon 0 can be used to
1725 force foreground operation. The `set postmaster' statement sets the
1726 address to which multidrop mail defaults if there are no local
1727 matches. Finally, `set syslog' sends log messages to syslogd(8).
1729 .SH INTERACTION WITH RFC 822
1730 When trying to determine the originating address of a message,
1731 fetchmail looks through headers in the following order:
1735 Resent-Sender: (ignored if it doesn't contain an @ or !)
1736 Sender: (ignored if it doesn't contain an @ or !)
1743 The originating address is used for logging, and to set the MAIL FROM
1744 address when forwarding to SMTP. This order is intended to cope
1745 gracefully with receiving mailing list messages in multidrop mode. The
1746 intent is that if a local address doesn't exist, the bounce message
1747 won't be returned blindly to the author or to the list itself, but
1748 rather to the list manager (which is less annoying).
1750 In multidrop mode, destination headers are processed as follows:
1751 First, fetchmail looks for the Received: header (or whichever one is
1752 specified by the `envelope' option) to determine the local
1753 recipient address. If the mail is addressed to more than one recipient,
1754 the Received line won't contain any information regarding recipient addresses.
1756 Then fetchmail looks for the Resent-To:, Resent-Cc:, and Resent-Bcc:
1757 lines. If they exists, they should contain the final recipients and
1758 have precedence over their To:/Cc:/Bcc: counterparts. If the Resent-*
1759 lines doesn't exist, the To:, Cc:, Bcc: and Apparently-To: lines are
1760 looked for. (The presence of a Resent-To: is taken to imply that the
1761 person referred by the To: address has already received the original
1764 .SH CONFIGURATION EXAMPLES
1765 Note that although there are password declarations in a good many
1766 of the examples below, this is mainly for illustrative purposes.
1767 We recommend stashing account/password pairs in your $HOME/.netrc
1768 file, where they can be used not just by fetchmail but by ftp(1) and
1774 poll SERVERNAME protocol PROTOCOL username NAME password PASSWORD
1780 poll pop.provider.net protocol pop3 username "jsmith" password "secret1"
1783 Or, using some abbreviations:
1786 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" password "secret1"
1789 Multiple servers may be listed:
1792 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" pass "secret1"
1793 poll other.provider.net proto pop2 user "John.Smith" pass "My^Hat"
1796 Here's a version of those two with more whitespace and some noise words:
1799 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3
1800 user "jsmith", with password secret1, is "jsmith" here;
1801 poll other.provider.net proto pop2:
1802 user "John.Smith", with password "My^Hat", is "John.Smith" here;
1805 This version is much easier to read and doesn't cost significantly
1806 more (parsing is done only once, at startup time).
1809 If you need to include whitespace in a parameter string, enclose the
1810 string in double quotes. Thus:
1813 poll mail.provider.net with proto pop3:
1814 user "jsmith" there has password "u can't krak this"
1815 is jws here and wants mda "/bin/mail"
1818 You may have an initial server description headed by the keyword
1819 `defaults' instead of `poll' followed by a name. Such a record
1820 is interpreted as defaults for all queries to use. It may be overwritten
1821 by individual server descriptions. So, you could write:
1826 poll pop.provider.net
1828 poll mail.provider.net
1829 user "jjsmith" there has password "secret2"
1832 It's possible to specify more than one user per server (this is only
1833 likely to be useful when running fetchmail in daemon mode as root).
1834 The `user' keyword leads off a user description, and every user specification
1835 in a multi-user entry must include it. Here's an example:
1838 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 port 3111
1839 user "jsmith" with pass "secret1" is "smith" here
1840 user jones with pass "secret2" is "jjones" here keep
1843 This associates the local username `smith' with the pop.provider.net
1844 username `jsmith' and the local username `jjones' with the
1845 pop.provider.net username `jones'. Mail for `jones' is kept on the
1846 server after download.
1848 Here's what a simple retrieval configuration for a multi-drop mailbox
1852 poll pop.provider.net:
1853 user maildrop with pass secret1 to golux 'hurkle'='happy' snark here
1856 This says that the mailbox of account `maildrop' on the server is a
1857 multi-drop box, and that messages in it should be parsed for the
1858 server user names `golux', `hurkle', and `snark'. It further
1859 specifies that `golux' and `snark' have the same name on the
1860 client as on the server, but mail for server user `hurkle' should be
1861 delivered to client user `happy'.
1863 Here's an example of another kind of multidrop connection:
1866 poll pop.provider.net localdomains loonytoons.org toons.org:
1867 user maildrop with pass secret1 to * here
1870 This also says that the mailbox of account `maildrop' on the server is
1871 a multi-drop box. It tells fetchmail that any address in the
1872 loonytoons.org or toons.org domains (including subdomain addresses like
1873 `joe@daffy.loonytoons.org') should be passed through to the local SMTP
1874 listener without modification. Be careful of mail loops if you do this!
1876 Here's an example configuration using ssh and the plugin option. The
1877 queries are made directly on the stdin and stdout of imapd via ssh.
1878 Note that in this setup, IMAP authentication can be skipped.
1881 poll mailhost.net with proto imap:
1882 plugin "ssh %h /usr/sbin/imapd" auth ssh;
1883 user esr is esr here
1886 .SH THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP MAILBOXES
1887 Use the multiple-local-recipients feature with caution -- it can bite.
1888 All multidrop features are ineffective in ETRN and ODMR modes.
1890 Also, note that in multidrop mode duplicate mails are suppressed. A
1891 piece of mail is considered duplicate if it has the same message-ID as
1892 the message immediately preceding and more than one addressee. Such
1893 runs of messages may be generated when copies of a message addressed
1894 to multiple users are delivered to a multidrop box.
1896 .SS Header vs. Envelope addresses
1897 The fundamental problem is that by having your mailserver toss several
1898 peoples' mail in a single maildrop box, you may have thrown away
1899 potentially vital information about who each piece of mail was
1900 actually addressed to (the `envelope address', as opposed to the
1901 header addresses in the RFC822 To/Cc/Bcc headers). This `envelope
1902 address' is the address you need in order to reroute mail properly.
1906 can deduce the envelope address. If the mailserver MTA is
1908 and the item of mail had just one recipient, the MTA will have written
1909 a `by/for' clause that gives the envelope addressee into its Received
1910 header. But this doesn't work reliably for other MTAs, nor if there is
1911 more than one recipient. By default, \fIfetchmail\fR looks for
1912 envelope addresses in these lines; you can restore this default with
1913 -E "Received" or \&`envelope Received'.
1915 Alternatively, some SMTP listeners and/or mail servers insert a header
1916 in each message containing a copy of the envelope addresses. This
1917 header (when it exists) is often `X-Envelope-To'. Fetchmail's
1918 assumption about this can be changed with the -E or `envelope' option.
1919 Note that writing an envelope header of this kind exposes the names of
1920 recipients (including blind-copy recipients) to all receivers of the
1921 messages; it is therefore regarded by some administrators as a
1922 security/privacy problem.
1924 A slight variation of the `X-Envelope-To' header is the `Delivered-To' put
1925 by qmail to avoid mail loops. It will probably prefix the user name with a
1926 string that normally matches the user's domain. To remove this prefix you
1927 can use the -Q or `qvirtual' option.
1929 Sometimes, unfortunately, neither of these methods works. When they
1930 all fail, fetchmail must fall back on the contents of To/Cc/Bcc
1931 headers to try to determine recipient addressees -- and these are not
1932 reliable. In particular, mailing-list software often ships mail with
1933 only the list broadcast address in the To header.
1937 cannot deduce a recipient address that is local, and the intended
1938 recipient address was anyone other than fetchmail's invoking user,
1939 mail will get lost. This is what makes the multidrop feature risky.
1941 A related problem is that when you blind-copy a mail message, the Bcc
1942 information is carried \fIonly\fR as envelope address (it's not put
1943 in the headers fetchmail can see unless there is an X-Envelope
1944 header). Thus, blind-copying to someone who gets mail over a
1945 fetchmail link will fail unless the the mailserver host routinely
1946 writes X-Envelope or an equivalent header into messages in your maildrop.
1948 .SS Good Ways To Use Multidrop Mailboxes
1949 Multiple local names can be used to administer a mailing list from the
1950 client side of a \fIfetchmail\fR collection. Suppose your name is
1951 \&`esr', and you want to both pick up your own mail and maintain a mailing
1952 list called (say) "fetchmail-friends", and you want to keep the alias
1953 list on your client machine.
1955 On your server, you can alias \&`fetchmail-friends' to `esr'; then, in
1956 your \fI.fetchmailrc\fR, declare \&`to esr fetchmail-friends here'.
1957 Then, when mail including `fetchmail-friends' as a local address
1958 gets fetched, the list name will be appended to the list of
1959 recipients your SMTP listener sees. Therefore it will undergo alias
1960 expansion locally. Be sure to include `esr' in the local alias
1961 expansion of fetchmail-friends, or you'll never see mail sent only to
1962 the list. Also be sure that your listener has the "me-too" option set
1963 (sendmail's -oXm command-line option or OXm declaration) so your name
1964 isn't removed from alias expansions in messages you send.
1966 This trick is not without its problems, however. You'll begin to see
1967 this when a message comes in that is addressed only to a mailing list
1968 you do \fInot\fR have declared as a local name. Each such message
1969 will feature an `X-Fetchmail-Warning' header which is generated
1970 because fetchmail cannot find a valid local name in the recipient
1971 addresses. Such messages default (as was described above) to being
1972 sent to the local user running
1974 but the program has no way to know that that's actually the right thing.
1976 .SS Bad Ways To Abuse Multidrop Mailboxes
1977 Multidrop mailboxes and
1979 serving multiple users in daemon mode do not mix. The problem, again, is
1980 mail from mailing lists, which typically does not have an individual
1981 recipient address on it. Unless
1983 can deduce an envelope address, such mail will only go to the account
1984 running fetchmail (probably root). Also, blind-copied users are very
1985 likely never to see their mail at all.
1987 If you're tempted to use
1989 to retrieve mail for multiple users from a single mail drop via POP or
1990 IMAP, think again (and reread the section on header and envelope
1991 addresses above). It would be smarter to just let the mail sit in the
1992 mailserver's queue and use fetchmail's ETRN or ODMR modes to trigger
1993 SMTP sends periodically (of course, this means you have to poll more
1994 frequently than the mailserver's expiry period). If you can't arrange
1995 this, try setting up a UUCP feed.
1997 If you absolutely \fImust\fR use multidrop for this purpose, make sure
1998 your mailserver writes an envelope-address header that fetchmail can
1999 see. Otherwise you \fIwill\fR lose mail and it \fIwill\fR come back
2002 .SS Speeding Up Multidrop Checking
2003 Normally, when multiple users are declared
2005 extracts recipient addresses as described above and checks each host
2006 part with DNS to see if it's an alias of the mailserver. If so, the
2007 name mappings described in the to ... here declaration are done and
2008 the mail locally delivered.
2010 This is the safest but also slowest method. To speed it up,
2011 pre-declare mailserver aliases with `aka'; these are checked before
2012 DNS lookups are done. If you're certain your aka list contains
2014 DNS aliases of the mailserver (and all MX names pointing at it)
2015 you can declare `no dns' to suppress DNS lookups entirely and
2016 \fIonly\fR match against the aka list.
2019 To facilitate the use of
2021 in shell scripts, an exit code is returned to give an indication
2022 of what occurred during a given connection.
2024 The exit codes returned by
2028 One or more messages were successfully retrieved (or, if the -c option
2029 was selected, were found waiting but not retrieved).
2031 There was no mail awaiting retrieval. (There may have been old mail still
2032 on the server but not selected for retrieval.)
2034 An error was encountered when attempting to open a socket to retrieve
2035 mail. If you don't know what a socket is, don't worry about it --
2036 just treat this as an 'unrecoverable error'. This error can also be
2037 because a protocol fetchmail wants to use is not listed in /etc/services.
2039 The user authentication step failed. This usually means that a bad
2040 user-id, password, or APOP id was specified. Or it may mean that you
2041 tried to run fetchmail under circumstances where it did not have
2042 standard input attached to a terminal and could not prompt for a
2045 Some sort of fatal protocol error was detected.
2047 There was a syntax error in the arguments to
2050 The run control file had bad permissions.
2052 There was an error condition reported by the server. Can also
2055 timed out while waiting for the server.
2057 Client-side exclusion error. This means
2059 either found another copy of itself already running, or failed in such
2060 a way that it isn't sure whether another copy is running.
2062 The user authentication step failed because the server responded "lock
2063 busy". Try again after a brief pause! This error is not implemented
2064 for all protocols, nor for all servers. If not implemented for your
2065 server, "3" will be returned instead, see above. May be returned when
2066 talking to qpopper or other servers that can respond with "lock busy"
2067 or some similar text containing the word "lock".
2071 run failed while trying to do an SMTP port open or transaction.
2073 Fatal DNS error. Fetchmail encountered an error while performing
2074 a DNS lookup at startup and could not proceed.
2076 BSMTP batch file could not be opened.
2078 Poll terminated by a fetch limit (see the --fetchlimit option).
2080 Server busy indication.
2082 Internal error. You should see a message on standard error with
2087 queries more than one host, return status is 0 if \fIany\fR query
2088 successfully retrieved mail. Otherwise the returned error status is
2089 that of the last host queried.
2094 default run control file
2097 default location of file associating hosts with last message IDs seen
2098 (used only with newer RFC1725-compliant POP3 servers supporting the
2102 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (non-root mode).
2105 your FTP run control file, which (if present) will be searched for
2106 passwords as a last resort before prompting for one interactively.
2108 /var/run/fetchmail.pid
2109 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, Linux systems).
2112 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, systems without /var/run).
2115 If the FETCHMAILUSER variable is set, it is used as the name of the
2116 calling user (default local name) for purposes such as mailing error
2117 notifications. Otherwise, if either the LOGNAME or USER variable is
2118 correctly set (e.g. the corresponding UID matches the session user ID)
2119 then that name is used as the default local name. Otherwise
2120 \fBgetpwuid\fR(3) must be able to retrieve a password entry for the
2121 session ID (this elaborate logic is designed to handle the case of
2122 multiple names per userid gracefully).
2124 If the environment variable FETCHMAILHOME is set to a valid and
2125 existing directory name, the .fetchmailrc and .fetchids and
2126 \&.fetchmail.pid files are put there instead of in the invoking user's
2127 home directory (and lose the leading dots on their names). The
2128 \&.netrc file is looked for in the the invoking user's home directory
2129 regardless of FETCHMAILHOME's setting.
2134 daemon is running as root, SIGHUP wakes it up from its sleep phase and
2135 forces a poll of all non-skipped servers (this is in accordance with
2136 the usual conventions for system daemons).
2140 is running in daemon mode as non-root, use SIGUSR1 to wake it (this is
2141 so SIGHUP due to logout can retain the default action of killing it).
2145 in foreground while a background fetchmail is running will do
2146 whichever of these is appropriate to wake it up.
2148 .SH BUGS AND KNOWN PROBLEMS
2149 The mda and plugin options interact badly. In order to collect error
2150 status from the MDA, fetchmail has to change its normal signal
2151 handling so that dead plugin processes don't get reaped until the end
2152 of the poll cycle. This can cause resource starvation if too many
2153 zombies accumulate. So either don't deliver to a MDA using plugins or
2154 risk being overrun by an army of undead.
2156 The RFC822 address parser used in multidrop mode chokes on some
2157 @-addresses that are technically legal but bizarre. Strange uses of
2158 quoting and embedded comments are likely to confuse it.
2160 In a message with multiple envelope headers, only the last one
2161 processed will be visible to fetchmail. To get around this, use a
2162 mailserver-side filter that consolidates the contents of all envelope
2163 headers into a single one (procmail, mailagent, or maildrop can be
2164 programmed to do this fairly easily).
2166 Use of some of these protocols requires that the program send
2167 unencrypted passwords over the TCP/IP connection to the mailserver.
2168 This creates a risk that name/password pairs might be snaffled with a
2169 packet sniffer or more sophisticated monitoring software. Under Linux
2170 and FreeBSD, the --interface option can be used to restrict polling to
2171 availability of a specific interface device with a specific local or
2172 remote IP address, but snooping is still possible if (a) either host
2173 has a network device that can be opened in promiscuous mode, or (b)
2174 the intervening network link can be tapped. We recommend the use of
2176 tunnelling to not only shroud your passwords but encrypt the entire
2179 Use of the %F or %T escapes in an mda option could open a security
2180 hole, because they pass text manipulable by an attacker to a shell
2181 command. Potential shell characters are replaced by `_' before
2182 execution. The hole is further reduced by the fact that fetchmail
2183 temporarily discards any suid privileges it may have while running the
2184 MDA. For maximum safety, however, don't use an mda command containing
2185 %F or %T when fetchmail is run from the root account itself.
2187 Fetchmail's method of sending bouncemail and spam bounces requires that
2188 port 25 of localhost be available for sending mail via SMTP.
2192 while a background instance is running and break the syntax, the
2193 background instance will die silently. Unfortunately, it can't
2194 die noisily because we don't yet know whether syslog should be enabled.
2195 On some systems, fetchmail dies quietly even if there is no syntax
2196 error; this seems to have something to do with buggy terminal ioctl
2199 The -f - option (reading a configuration from stdin) is incompatible
2200 with the plugin option.
2202 The UIDL code is generally flaky and tends to lose its state on errors
2203 and line drops (so that old messages are re-seen). If this happens to
2204 you, switch to IMAP4.
2206 The `principal' option only handles Kerberos IV, not V.
2208 Send comments, bug reports, gripes, and the like to the
2209 fetchmail-friends list <fetchmail-friends@lists.ccil.org>. An HTML FAQ is
2210 available at the fetchmail home page; surf to
2211 http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail or do a WWW search for pages with
2212 `fetchmail' in their titles.
2215 Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>. Too many other people to
2216 name here have contributed code and patches.
2217 This program is descended from and replaces
2219 by Carl Harris <ceharris@mal.com>; the internals have become quite different,
2220 but some of its interface design is directly traceable to that
2224 mutt(1), elm(1), mail(1), sendmail(8), popd(8), imapd(8), netrc(5)
2225 .SH APPLICABLE STANDARDS
2228 RFC 821, RFC2821, RFC 1869, RFC 1652, RFC 1870, RFC 1983, RFC 1985,
2232 RFC 822, RFC2822, RFC 1123, RFC 1892, RFC 1894.
2238 RFC 1081, RFC 1225, RFC 1460, RFC 1725, RFC1734, RFC 1939, RFC 1957,
2242 RFC 1460, RFC 1725, RFC 1939.
2251 RFC 1730, RFC 1731, RFC 1732, RFC 2060, RFC 2061, RFC 2195, RFC 2177,
projects / ~andy / fetchmail / blob