2 .\" ** The above line should force tbl to be used as a preprocessor **
4 .\" Man page for fetchmail
6 .\" For license terms, see the file COPYING in this directory.
9 fetchmail \- fetch mail from a POP, IMAP, ETRN, or ODMR-capable server
12 \fBfetchmail\fR [\fIoption...\fR] [\fImailserver...\fR]
18 is a mail-retrieval and forwarding utility; it fetches mail from
19 remote mailservers and forwards it to your local (client) machine's
20 delivery system. You can then handle the retrieved mail using normal
21 mail user agents such as \fImutt\fR(1), \fIelm\fR(1) or \fIMail\fR(1).
22 The \fIfetchmail\fR utility can be run in a daemon mode to repeatedly
23 poll one or more systems at a specified interval.
27 program can gather mail from servers supporting any of the common
28 mail-retrieval protocols: POP2, POP3, IMAP2bis, IMAP4, and IMAPrev1.
29 It can also use the ESMTP ETRN extension and ODMR. (The RFCs describing all
30 these protocols are listed at the end of this manual page.)
34 is primarily intended to be used over on-demand TCP/IP links (such as
35 SLIP or PPP connections), it may also be useful as a message transfer
36 agent for sites which refuse for security reasons to permit
37 (sender-initiated) SMTP transactions with sendmail.
39 As each message is retrieved \fIfetchmail\fR normally delivers it via SMTP to
40 port 25 on the machine it is running on (localhost), just as though it
41 were being passed in over a normal TCP/IP link. The mail will then be
42 delivered locally via your system's MDA (Mail Delivery Agent, usually
43 \fIsendmail\fR(8) but your system may use a different one such
44 as \fIsmail\fR, \fImmdf\fR, \fIexim\fR, or \fIqmail\fR). All the
45 delivery-control mechanisms (such as \fI.forward\fR files) normally
46 available through your system MDA and local delivery agents will
47 therefore work automatically.
49 If no port 25 listener is available, but your fetchmail configuration
50 was told about a reliable local MDA, it will use that MDA for local
51 delivery instead. At build time, fetchmail normally looks for
60 is available, it will assist you in setting up and editing a
61 fetchmailrc configuration. It runs under X and requires that the
62 language Python and the Tk toolkit be present on your system. If
63 you are first setting up fetchmail for single-user mode, it is
64 recommended that you use Novice mode. Expert mode provides
65 complete control of fetchmail configuration, including the
66 multidrop features. In either case, the `Autoprobe' button
67 will tell you the most capable protocol a given mailserver
68 supports, and warn you of potential problems with that server.
73 is controlled by command-line options and a run control file,
74 .IR ~/.fetchmailrc\fR ,
75 the syntax of which we describe in a later section (this file is what
76 the \fIfetchmailconf\fR program edits). Command-line options override
80 Each server name that you specify following the options on the
81 command line will be queried. If you don't specify any servers
82 on the command line, each `poll' entry in your
86 To facilitate the use of
88 in scripts and pipelines, it returns an appropriate exit code upon
89 termination -- see EXIT CODES below.
91 The following options modify the behavior of \fIfetchmail\fR. It is
92 seldom necessary to specify any of these once you have a
93 working \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file set up.
95 Almost all options have a corresponding keyword which can be used to
100 Some special options are not covered here, but are documented instead
101 in sections on AUTHENTICATION and DAEMON MODE which follow.
105 Displays the version information for your copy of
107 No mail fetch is performed.
108 Instead, for each server specified, all the option information
109 that would be computed if
111 were connecting to that server is displayed. Any non-printables in
112 passwords or other string names are shown as backslashed C-like
113 escape sequences. This option is useful for verifying that your
114 options are set the way you want them.
117 Return a status code to indicate whether there is mail waiting,
118 without actually fetching or deleting mail (see EXIT CODES below).
119 This option turns off daemon mode (in which it would be useless). It
120 doesn't play well with queries to multiple sites, and doesn't work
121 with ETRN or ODMR. It will return a false positive if you leave read but
122 undeleted mail in your server mailbox and your fetch protocol can't
123 tell kept messages from new ones. This means it will work with IMAP,
124 not work with POP2, and may occasionally flake out under POP3.
127 Silent mode. Suppresses all progress/status messages that are
128 normally echoed to standard output 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
166 mailserver before retrieving new messages. This option does not work
167 with ETRN or ODMR. Warning: if your local MTA hangs and fetchmail is
168 aborted, the next time you run fetchmail, it will delete mail that was
169 never delivered to you. What you probably want is the default
170 setting: if you don't specify `-k', then fetchmail will automatically
171 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>
403 (Keyword: mda) You can force mail to be passed to an MDA directly
404 (rather than forwarded to port 25) with the --mda or -m option. To
405 avoid losing mail, use this option only with MDAs like procmail or
406 sendmail that return a nonzero status on disk-full and other
407 resource-exhaustion errors; the nonzero status tells fetchmail that
408 delivery failed and prevents the message from being deleted off the
409 server. If \fIfetchmail\fR is running as root, it sets its userid to
410 that of the target user while delivering mail through an MDA. Some
411 possible MDAs are "/usr/sbin/sendmail -i -f %F %T", "/usr/bin/deliver"
412 and "/usr/bin/procmail -d %T" (but the latter is usually redundant as
413 it's what SMTP listeners normally forward to). Local delivery
414 addresses will be inserted into the MDA command wherever you place a
415 %T; the mail message's From address will be inserted where you place
416 an %F. In both cases the addresses are enclosed in single quotes ('),
417 after removing any single quotes they may contain, before the MDA
418 command is passed to the shell. Do \fInot\fR use an MDA invocation
419 like "sendmail -i -t" that dispatches on the contents of To/Cc/Bcc, it
420 will create mail loops and bring the just wrath of many postmasters
421 down upon your head. Also, do \fInot\fR try to combine multidrop
422 mode with an MDA such as procmail that can only accept one addressee;
427 Cause delivery via LMTP (Local Mail Transfer Protocol). A service
428 port \fImust\fR be explicitly specified (with a slash suffix) on each
429 host in the smtphost hunt list if this option is selected; the
430 default port 25 will (in accordance with RFC 2033) not be accepted.
432 .B \-\-bsmtp <filename>
434 Append fetched mail to a BSMTP file. This simply contains the SMTP
435 commands that would normally be generated by fetchmail when passing
436 mail to an SMTP listener daemon. An argument of `-' causes the mail
437 to be written to standard output. Note that fetchmail's
438 reconstruction of MAIL FROM and RCPT TO lines is not guaranteed
439 correct; the caveats discussed under THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP
440 MAILBOXES below apply.
441 .SS Resource Limit Control Options
443 .B \-l <maxbytes> | \-\-limit <maxbytes>
444 (Keyword: limit) Takes a maximum octet size argument. Messages larger
445 than this size will not be fetched and will be left on the server (in
446 foreground sessions, the progress messages will note that they are
447 "oversized"). If the fetch protocol permits (in particular, under
448 IMAP or POP3 without the fetchall option) the message will not be
449 marked seen An explicit --limit of 0 overrides any limits set in your
450 run control file. This option is intended for those needing to
451 strictly control fetch time due to expensive and variable phone rates.
452 Combined with --flush, it can be used to delete oversized messages
453 waiting on a server. In daemon mode, oversize notifications are
454 mailed to the calling user (see the --warnings option). This option
455 does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
457 .B \-w <interval> | \-\-warnings <interval>
459 Takes an interval in seconds. When you call
461 with a `limit' option in daemon mode, this controls the interval at
462 which warnings about oversized messages are mailed to the calling user
463 (or the user specified by the `postmaster' option). One such
464 notification is always mailed at the end of the the first poll that
465 the oversized message is detected. Thereafter, renotification is
466 suppressed until after the warning interval elapses (it will take
467 place at the end of the first following poll).
469 .B \-b <count> | \-\-batchlimit <count>
470 (Keyword: batchlimit)
471 Specify the maximum number of messages that will be shipped to an SMTP
472 listener before the connection is deliberately torn down and rebuilt
473 (defaults to 0, meaning no limit). An explicit --batchlimit of 0
474 overrides any limits set in your run control file. While
475 \fBsendmail\fR(8) normally initiates delivery of a message immediately
476 after receiving the message terminator, some SMTP listeners are not so
477 prompt. MTAs like \fIsmail\fR(8) may wait till the
478 delivery socket is shut down to deliver. This may produce annoying
479 delays when \fIfetchmail\fR is processing very large batches. Setting
480 the batch limit to some nonzero size will prevent these delays. This
481 option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
483 .B \-B <number> | \-\-fetchlimit <number>
484 (Keyword: fetchlimit)
485 Limit the number of messages accepted from a given server in a single
486 poll. By default there is no limit. An explicit --fetchlimit of 0
487 overrides any limits set in your run control file.
488 This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
490 .B \-\-fetchsizelimit <number>
491 (Keyword: fetchsizelimit)
492 Limit the number of sizes of messages accepted from a given server in
493 a single transaction. This option is useful in reducing the delay in
494 downloading the first mail when there are too many mails in the
495 mailbox. By default, the limit is 100. If set to 0, sizes of all
496 messages are downloaded at the start.
497 This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR. For POP3, the only valid
500 .B \-\-fastuidl <number>
502 Do a binary instead of linear search for the first unseen UID. Binary
503 search avoids downloading the UIDs of all mails. This saves time
504 (especially in daemon mode) where downloading the same set of UIDs in
505 each poll is a waste of bandwidth. The number `n' indicates how rarely
506 a linear search should be done. In daemon mode, linear search is used
507 once followed by binary searches in `n-1' polls if `n' is greater than
508 1; binary search is always used if `n' is 1; linear search is always
509 used if `n' is 0. In non-daemon mode, binary search is used if `n' is
510 1; otherwise linear search is used.
511 This option works with POP3 only.
513 .B \-e <count> | \-\-expunge <count>
515 Arrange for deletions to be made final after a given number of
516 messages. Under POP2 or POP3, fetchmail cannot make deletions final
517 without sending QUIT and ending the session -- with this option on,
518 fetchmail will break a long mail retrieval session into multiple
519 subsessions, sending QUIT after each sub-session. This is a good
520 defense against line drops on POP3 servers that do not do the
521 equivalent of a QUIT on hangup. Under IMAP,
523 normally issues an EXPUNGE command after each deletion in order to
524 force the deletion to be done immediately. This is safest when your
525 connection to the server is flaky and expensive, as it avoids
526 resending duplicate mail after a line hit. However, on large
527 mailboxes the overhead of re-indexing after every message can slam the
528 server pretty hard, so if your connection is reliable it is good to do
529 expunges less frequently. Also note that some servers enforce a delay
530 of a few seconds after each quit, so fetchmail may not be able to get
531 back in immediately after an expunge -- you may see "lock busy" errors
532 if this happens. If you specify this option to an integer N,
535 to only issue expunges on every Nth delete. An argument of zero
536 suppresses expunges entirely (so no expunges at all will be done until
537 the end of run). This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
538 .SS Authentication Options
540 .B \-u <name> | \-\-username <name>
541 (Keyword: user[name])
542 Specifies the user identification to be used when logging in to the mailserver.
543 The appropriate user identification is both server and user-dependent.
544 The default is your login name on the client machine that is running
546 See USER AUTHENTICATION below for a complete description.
548 .B \-I <specification> | \-\-interface <specification>
550 Require that a specific interface device be up and have a specific local
551 or remote IP address (or range) before polling. Frequently
553 is used over a transient point-to-point TCP/IP link established directly
554 to a mailserver via SLIP or PPP. That is a relatively secure channel.
555 But when other TCP/IP routes to the mailserver exist (e.g. when the link
556 is connected to an alternate ISP), your username and password may be
557 vulnerable to snooping (especially when daemon mode automatically polls
558 for mail, shipping a clear password over the net at predictable
559 intervals). The --interface option may be used to prevent this. When
560 the specified link is not up or is not connected to a matching IP
561 address, polling will be skipped. The format is:
564 interface/iii.iii.iii.iii/mmm.mmm.mmm.mmm
567 The field before the first slash is the interface name (i.e. sl0, ppp0
568 etc.). The field before the second slash is the acceptable IP address.
569 The field after the second slash is a mask which specifies a range of
570 IP addresses to accept. If no mask is present 255.255.255.255 is
571 assumed (i.e. an exact match). This option is currently only supported
572 under Linux and FreeBSD. Please see the
574 section for below for FreeBSD specific information.
576 .B \-M <interface> | --monitor <interface>
578 Daemon mode can cause transient links which are automatically taken down
579 after a period of inactivity (e.g. PPP links) to remain up
580 indefinitely. This option identifies a system TCP/IP interface to be
581 monitored for activity. After each poll interval, if the link is up but
582 no other activity has occurred on the link, then the poll will be
583 skipped. However, when fetchmail is woken up by a signal, the
584 monitor check is skipped and the poll goes through unconditionally.
585 This option is currently only supported under Linux and FreeBSD.
590 options to work for non root users under FreeBSD, the fetchmail binary
591 must be installed SGID kmem. This would be a security hole, but
592 fetchmail runs with the effective GID set to that of the kmem group
594 when interface data is being collected.
597 (Keyword: auth[enticate])
598 This option permits you to specify an authentication type (see USER
599 AUTHENTICATION below for details). The possible values are \fBany\fR,
600 \&`\fBpassword\fR', `\fBkerberos_v5\fR' and `\fBkerberos\fR' (or, for
601 excruciating exactness, `\fBkerberos_v4\fR'), \fRgssapi\fR,
602 \fIcram-md5\fR, \fIotp\fR, \fIntlm\fR, and \fBssh\fR. When \fBany\fR (the
603 default) is specified, fetchmail tries first methods that don't
604 require a password (GSSAPI, KERBEROS_IV); then it looks for methods
605 that mask your password (CRAM-MD5, X-OTP, NTLM); and only if the server
606 doesn't support any of those will it ship your password en clair.
607 Other values may be used to force various authentication methods
608 (\fBssh\fR suppresses authentication). Any value other than
609 \fIpassword\fR, \fIcram-md5\fR, \fIntlm\fR or \fIotp\fR suppresses fetchmail's
610 normal inquiry for a password. Specify \fIssh\fR when you are using
611 an end-to-end secure connection such as an ssh tunnel; specify
612 \fRgssapi\fR or \fBkerberos_v4\fR if you are using a protocol variant
613 that employs GSSAPI or K4. Choosing KPOP protocol automatically
614 selects Kerberos authentication. This option does not work with ETRN.
615 .SS Miscellaneous Options
617 .B \-f <pathname> | \-\-fetchmailrc <pathname>
618 Specify a non-default name for the
620 run control file. The pathname argument must be either "-" (a single
621 dash, meaning to read the configuration from standard input) or a
622 filename. Unless the --version option is also on, a named file
623 argument must have permissions no more open than 0600 (u=rw,g=,o=) or
626 .B \-i <pathname> | \-\-idfile <pathname>
628 Specify an alternate name for the .fetchids file used to save POP3
631 .B \-n | \-\-norewrite
632 (Keyword: no rewrite)
635 edits RFC-822 address headers (To, From, Cc, Bcc, and Reply-To) in
636 fetched mail so that any mail IDs local to the server are expanded to
637 full addresses (@ and the mailserver hostname are appended). This enables
638 replies on the client to get addressed correctly (otherwise your
639 mailer might think they should be addressed to local users on the
640 client machine!). This option disables the rewrite. (This option is
641 provided to pacify people who are paranoid about having an MTA edit
642 mail headers and want to know they can prevent it, but it is generally
643 not a good idea to actually turn off rewrite.)
644 When using ETRN or ODMR, the rewrite option is ineffective.
646 .B \-E <line> | \-\-envelope <line>
648 This option changes the header
650 assumes will carry a copy of the mail's envelope address. Normally
651 this is `X-Envelope-To' but as this header is not standard, practice
652 varies. See the discussion of multidrop address handling below. As a
653 special case, `envelope "Received"' enables parsing of sendmail-style
654 Received lines. This is the default, and it should not be necessary
655 unless you have globally disabled Received parsing with `no envelope'
656 in the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file.
658 .B \-Q <prefix> | \-\-qvirtual <prefix>
660 The string prefix assigned to this option will be removed from the user
661 name found in the header specified with the \fIenvelope\fR option
662 (\fIbefore\fR doing multidrop name mapping or localdomain checking,
663 if either is applicable). This option is useful if you are using
665 to collect the mail for an entire domain and your ISP (or your mail
666 redirection provider) is using qmail.
667 One of the basic features of qmail is the
671 message header. Whenever qmail delivers a message to a local mailbox
672 it puts the username and hostname of the envelope recipient on this
673 line. The major reason for this is to prevent mail loops. To set up
674 qmail to batch mail for a disconnected site the ISP-mailhost will have
675 normally put that site in its `Virtualhosts' control file so it will
676 add a prefix to all mail addresses for this site. This results in mail
677 .\" The \&@\& tries to stop HTML converters from making a mailto URL here.
678 sent to 'username\&@\&userhost.userdom.dom.com' having a
679 \&`Delivered-To:' line of the form:
681 Delivered-To: mbox-userstr-username\&@\&userhost.userdom.dom.com
683 The ISP can make the 'mbox-userstr-' prefix anything they choose
684 but a string matching the user host name is likely.
685 By using the option `envelope Delivered-To:' you can make fetchmail reliably
686 identify the original envelope recipient, but you have to strip the
687 `mbox-userstr-' prefix to deliver to the correct user.
688 This is what this option is for.
693 file, interpret any command-line options specified, and dump a
694 configuration report to standard output. The configuration report is
695 a data structure assignment in the language Python. This option
696 is meant to be used with an interactive
702 .SH USER AUTHENTICATION AND ENCRYPTION
703 All modes except ETRN require authentication of the client to the server.
704 Normal user authentication in
706 is very much like the authentication mechanism of
708 The correct user-id and password depend upon the underlying security
709 system at the mailserver.
711 If the mailserver is a Unix machine on which you have an ordinary user
712 account, your regular login name and password are used with
714 If you use the same login name on both the server and the client machines,
715 you needn't worry about specifying a user-id with the
717 option \-\- the default behavior is to use your login name on the
718 client machine as the user-id on the server machine. If you use a
719 different login name on the server machine, specify that login name
722 option. e.g. if your login name is 'jsmith' on a machine named 'mailgrunt',
727 fetchmail -u jsmith mailgrunt
729 The default behavior of
731 is to prompt you for your mailserver password before the connection is
732 established. This is the safest way to use
734 and ensures that your password will not be compromised. You may also specify
735 your password in your
737 file. This is convenient when using
739 in daemon mode or with scripts.
741 If you do not specify a password, and
743 cannot extract one from your
745 file, it will look for a
747 file in your home directory before requesting one interactively; if an
748 entry matching the mailserver is found in that file, the password will
749 be used. Fetchmail first looks for a match on poll name; if it finds none,
750 it checks for a match on via name. See the
752 man page for details of the syntax of the
754 file. (This feature may allow you to avoid duplicating password
755 information in more than one file.)
757 On mailservers that do not provide ordinary user accounts, your user-id and
758 password are usually assigned by the server administrator when you apply for
759 a mailbox on the server. Contact your server administrator if you don't know
760 the correct user-id and password for your mailbox account.
762 Early versions of POP3 (RFC1081, RFC1225) supported a crude form of
763 independent authentication using the
765 file on the mailserver side. Under this RPOP variant, a fixed
766 per-user ID equivalent to a password was sent in clear over a link to
767 a reserved port, with the command RPOP rather than PASS to alert the
768 server that it should do special checking. RPOP is supported
771 (you can specify `protocol RPOP' to have the program send `RPOP'
772 rather than `PASS') but its use is strongly discouraged. This
773 facility was vulnerable to spoofing and was withdrawn in RFC1460.
775 RFC1460 introduced APOP authentication. In this variant of POP3,
776 you register an APOP password on your server host (the program
777 to do this with on the server is probably called \fIpopauth\fR(8)). You
778 put the same password in your
782 logs in, it sends a cryptographically secure hash of your password and
783 the server greeting time to the server, which can verify it by
784 checking its authorization database.
786 If your \fIfetchmail\fR was built with Kerberos support and you specify
787 Kerberos authentication (either with --auth or the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
788 option \fBauthenticate kerberos_v4\fR) it will try to get a Kerberos
789 ticket from the mailserver at the start of each query. Note: if
790 either the pollnane or via name is `hesiod', fetchmail will try to use
791 Hesiod to look up the mailserver.
793 If you use POP3 or IMAP with GSSAPI authentication, \fIfetchmail\fR will
794 expect the server to have RFC1731- or RFC1734-conformant GSSAPI
795 capability, and will use it. Currently this has only been tested over
796 Kerberos V, so you're expected to already have a ticket-granting
797 ticket. You may pass a username different from your principal name
798 using the standard \fB--user\fR command or by the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
801 If your IMAP daemon returns the PREAUTH response in its greeting line,
802 fetchmail will notice this and skip the normal authentication step.
803 This can be useful, e.g. if you start imapd explicitly using ssh.
804 In this case you can declare the authentication value `ssh' on that
805 site entry to stop \fI.fetchmail\fR from asking you for a password
808 If you are using POP3, and the server issues a one-time-password
809 challenge conforming to RFC1938, \fIfetchmail\fR will use your
810 password as a pass phrase to generate the required response. This
811 avoids sending secrets over the net unencrypted.
813 Compuserve's RPA authentication (similar to APOP) is supported. If you
814 compile in the support, \fIfetchmail\fR will try to perform an RPA pass-phrase
815 authentication instead of sending over the password en clair if it
816 detects "@compuserve.com" in the hostname.
818 If you are using IMAP, Microsoft's NTLM authentication (used by Microsoft
819 Exchange) is supported. If you compile in the support, \fIfetchmail\fR
820 will try to perform an NTLM authentication (instead of sending over the
821 password en clair) whenever the server returns AUTH=NTLM in its
822 capability response. Specify a user option value that looks like
823 `user@domain': the part to the left of the @ will be passed as the
824 username and the part to the right as the NTLM domain.
826 If you are using IPsec, the -T (--netsec) option can be used to pass
827 an IP security request to be used when outgoing IP connections are
828 initialized. You can also do this using the `netsec' server option
829 in the .fetchmailrc file. In either case, the option value is a
830 string in the format accepted by the net_security_strtorequest()
831 function of the inet6_apps library.
833 You can access SSL encrypted services by specifying the --ssl option.
834 You can also do this using the "ssl" server option in the .fetchmailrc
835 file. With SSL encryption enabled, queries are initiated over a connection
836 after negotiating an SSL session. Some services, such as POP3 and IMAP,
837 have different well known ports defined for the SSL encrypted services.
838 The encrypted ports will be selected automatically when SSL is enabled and
839 no explicit port is specified.
841 When connecting to an SSL encrypted server, the server presents a certificate
842 to the client for validation. The certificate is checked to verify that
843 the common name in the certificate matches the name of the server being
844 contacted and that the effective and expiration dates in the certificate
845 indicate that it is currently valid. If any of these checks fail, a warning
846 message is printed, but the connection continues. The server certificate
847 does not need to be signed by any specific Certifying Authority and may
848 be a "self-signed" certificate.
850 Some SSL encrypted servers may request a client side certificate. A client
851 side public SSL certificate and private SSL key may be specified. If
852 requested by the server, the client certificate is sent to the server for
853 validation. Some servers may require a valid client certificate and may
854 refuse connections if a certificate is not provided or if the certificate
855 is not valid. Some servers may require client side certificates be signed
856 by a recognized Certifying Authority. The format for the key files and
857 the certificate files is that required by the underlying SSL libraries
858 (OpenSSL in the general case).
860 A word of care about the use of SSL: While above mentioned
861 setup with self-signed server certificates retrieved over the wires
862 can protect you from a passive eavesdropper it doesn't help against an
863 active attacker. It's clearly an improvement over sending the
864 passwords in clear but you should be aware that a man-in-the-middle
865 attack is trivially possible (in particular with tools such as dsniff,
866 http://www.monkey.org/~dugsong/dsniff/). Use of an ssh tunnel (see
867 below for some examples) is preferable if you care seriously about the
868 security of your mailbox.
871 also supports authentication to the ESMTP server on the client side
872 according to RFC 2554. You can specify a name/password pair to be
873 used with the keywords `esmtpname' and `esmtppassword'; the former
874 defaults to the username of the calling user.
878 .B \-\-daemon <interval>
883 in daemon mode. You must specify a numeric argument which is a
884 polling interval in seconds.
888 puts itself in background and runs forever, querying each specified
889 host and then sleeping for the given polling interval.
895 will, therefore, poll all the hosts described in your
897 file (except those explicitly excluded with the `skip' verb) once
898 every fifteen minutes.
900 It is possible to set a polling interval
903 file by saying `set daemon <interval>', where <interval> is an
904 integer number of seconds. If you do this, fetchmail will always
905 start in daemon mode unless you override it with the command-line
906 option --daemon 0 or -d0.
908 Only one daemon process is permitted per user; in daemon mode,
910 makes a per-user lockfile to guarantee this.
912 Normally, calling fetchmail with a daemon in the background sends a
913 wakeup signal to the daemon, forcing it to poll mailservers
914 immediately. (The wakeup signal is SIGHUP if fetchmail is running as
915 root, SIGUSR1 otherwise.) The wakeup action also clears any `wedged'
916 flags indicating that connections have wedged due to failed
917 authentication or multiple timeouts.
921 will kill a running daemon process instead of waking it up (if there
924 notifies you). If the --quit option is the only command-line option,
925 that's all there is to it.
927 The quit option may also be mixed with other command-line options; its
928 effect is to kill any running daemon before doing what the other
929 options specify in combination with the rc file.
934 .B \-\-logfile <filename>
935 option (keyword: set logfile) allows you to redirect status messages
936 emitted while detached into a specified logfile (follow the
937 option with the logfile name). The logfile is opened for append, so
938 previous messages aren't deleted. This is primarily useful for
939 debugging configurations.
943 option (keyword: set syslog) allows you to redirect status and error
944 messages emitted to the
946 system daemon if available.
947 Messages are logged with an id of \fBfetchmail\fR, the facility \fBLOG_MAIL\fR,
948 and priorities \fBLOG_ERR\fR, \fBLOG_ALERT\fR or \fBLOG_INFO\fR.
949 This option is intended for logging status and error messages which
950 indicate the status of the daemon and the results while fetching mail
952 Error messages for command line options and parsing the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
953 file are still written to stderr, or to the specified log file.
956 option turns off use of
958 assuming it's turned on in the
963 .B \-\-logfile <file>
968 or --nodetach option suppresses backgrounding and detachment of the
969 daemon process from its control terminal. This is primarily useful
970 for debugging. Note that this also causes the logfile option to be
971 ignored (though perhaps it shouldn't).
973 Note that while running in daemon mode polling a POP2 or IMAP2bis server,
974 transient errors (such as DNS failures or sendmail delivery refusals)
975 may force the fetchall option on for the duration of the next polling
976 cycle. This is a robustness feature. It means that if a message is
977 fetched (and thus marked seen by the mailserver) but not delivered
978 locally due to some transient error, it will be re-fetched during the
979 next poll cycle. (The IMAP logic doesn't delete messages until
980 they're delivered, so this problem does not arise.)
982 If you touch or change the
984 file while fetchmail is running in daemon mode, this will be detected
985 at the beginning of the next poll cycle. When a changed
987 is detected, fetchmail rereads it and restarts from scratch (using
988 exec(2); no state information is retained in the new instance). Note also
989 that if you break the
991 file's syntax, the new instance will softly and silently vanish away
994 .SH ADMINISTRATIVE OPTIONS
997 .B \-\-postmaster <name>
998 option (keyword: set postmaster) specifies the last-resort username to
999 which multidrop mail is to be forwarded if no matching local recipient
1000 can be found. Normally this is just the user who invoked
1002 If the invoking user is root, then the default of this option is
1003 the user `postmaster'. Setting postmaster to the empty string causes
1004 such mail to be discarded.
1008 option suppresses the normal action of bouncing errors back to the
1009 sender in an RFC1894-conformant error message. If nobounce is on, the
1010 message will go to the postmaster instead.
1014 option (keyword: set invisible) tries to make fetchmail invisible.
1015 Normally, fetchmail behaves like any other MTA would -- it generates a
1016 Received header into each message describing its place in the chain of
1017 transmission, and tells the MTA it forwards to that the mail came from
1018 the machine fetchmail itself is running on. If the invisible option
1019 is on, the Received header is suppressed and fetchmail tries to spoof
1020 the MTA it forwards to into thinking it came directly from the
1025 option (keyword: set showdots) forces fetchmail to show progress dots
1026 even if the current tty is not stdout (for example logfiles).
1027 Starting with fetchmail version 5.3.0,
1028 progress dots are only shown on stdout by default.
1032 option, you can ask fetchmail to add information to the Received
1033 header on the form "polling {label} account {user}", where {label} is
1034 the account label (from the specified rcfile, normally ~/.fetchmailrc)
1035 and {user} is the username which is used to log on to the mail
1036 server. This header can be used to make filtering email where no
1037 useful header information is available and you want mail from
1038 different accounts sorted into different mailboxes (this could, for
1039 example, occur if you have an account on the same server running a
1040 mailing list, and are subscribed to the list using that account). The
1041 default is not adding any such header. In
1043 this is called `tracepolls'.
1045 .SH RETRIEVAL FAILURE MODES
1046 The protocols \fIfetchmail\fR uses to talk to mailservers are next to
1047 bulletproof. In normal operation forwarding to port 25, no message is
1048 ever deleted (or even marked for deletion) on the host until the SMTP
1049 listener on the client side has acknowledged to \fIfetchmail\fR that
1050 the message has been either accepted for delivery or rejected due to a
1053 When forwarding to an MDA, however, there is more possibility
1054 of error. Some MDAs are `safe' and reliably return a nonzero status
1055 on any delivery error, even one due to temporary resource limits.
1058 program is like this; so are most programs designed as mail transport
1063 These programs give back a reliable positive acknowledgement and
1064 can be used with the mda option with no risk of mail loss. Unsafe
1065 MDAs, though, may return 0 even on delivery failure. If this
1066 happens, you will lose mail.
1068 The normal mode of \fIfetchmail\fR is to try to download only `new'
1069 messages, leaving untouched (and undeleted) messages you have already
1070 read directly on the server (or fetched with a previous \fIfetchmail
1071 --keep\fR). But you may find that messages you've already read on the
1072 server are being fetched (and deleted) even when you don't specify
1073 --all. There are several reasons this can happen.
1075 One could be that you're using POP2. The POP2 protocol includes no
1076 representation of `new' or `old' state in messages, so \fIfetchmail\fR
1077 must treat all messages as new all the time. But POP2 is obsolete, so
1080 Under POP3, blame RFC1725. That version of the POP3 protocol
1081 specification removed the LAST command, and some POP servers follow it
1082 (you can verify this by invoking \fIfetchmail -v\fR to the mailserver
1083 and watching the response to LAST early in the query). The
1084 \fIfetchmail\fR code tries to compensate by using POP3's UID feature,
1085 storing the identifiers of messages seen in each session until the
1086 next session, in the \fI.fetchids\fR file. But this doesn't track
1087 messages seen with other clients, or read directly with a mailer on
1088 the host but not deleted afterward. A better solution would be to
1091 Another potential POP3 problem might be servers that insert messages
1092 in the middle of mailboxes (some VMS implementations of mail are
1093 rumored to do this). The \fIfetchmail\fR code assumes that new
1094 messages are appended to the end of the mailbox; when this is not true
1095 it may treat some old messages as new and vice versa. The only
1096 real fix for this problem is to switch to IMAP.
1098 Yet another POP3 problem is that if they can't make tempfiles in the
1099 user's home directory, some POP3 servers will hand back an
1100 undocumented response that causes fetchmail to spuriously report "No
1103 The IMAP code uses the presence or absence of the server flag \eSeen
1104 to decide whether or not a message is new. Under Unix, it counts on
1105 your IMAP server to notice the BSD-style Status flags set by mail user
1106 agents and set the \eSeen flag from them when appropriate. All Unix
1107 IMAP servers we know of do this, though it's not specified by the IMAP
1108 RFCs. If you ever trip over a server that doesn't, the symptom will
1109 be that messages you have already read on your host will look new to
1110 the server. In this (unlikely) case, only messages you fetched with
1111 \fIfetchmail --keep\fR will be both undeleted and marked old.
1113 In ETRN and ODMR modes, \fIfetchmail\fR does not actually retrieve messages;
1114 instead, it asks the server's SMTP listener to start a queue flush
1115 to the client via SMTP. Therefore it sends only undelivered messages.
1118 Many SMTP listeners allow administrators to set up `spam filters' that
1119 block unsolicited email from specified domains. A MAIL FROM or DATA line that
1120 triggers this feature will elicit an SMTP response which
1121 (unfortunately) varies according to the listener.
1125 return an error code of 571. This return value
1126 is blessed by RFC1893 as "Delivery not authorized, message refused".
1128 According to RFC2821, the correct thing to return in this situation is
1129 550 "Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable" (the draft adds
1130 "[E.g., mailbox not found, no access, or command rejected for policy
1133 Older versions of the
1135 MTA return 501 "Syntax error in parameters or arguments".
1139 MTA runs 554 as an antispam response.
1142 may reject code with a 500 response (followed by an enhanced status
1143 code that contains more information).
1147 treats as antispam responses and discards
1148 the message can be set with the `antispam' option. This is one of the
1150 three circumstance under which fetchmail ever discards mail (the others
1151 are the 552 and 553 errors described below, and the suppression of
1152 multidropped messages with a message-ID already seen).
1156 is fetching from an IMAP server, the antispam response will be detected and
1157 the message rejected immediately after the headers have been fetched,
1158 without reading the message body. Thus, you won't pay for downloading
1159 spam message bodies.
1161 By default, the list of antispam responses is empty.
1163 If the \fIspambounce\fR option is on, mail that is spam-blocked
1164 triggers an RFC1892 bounce message informing the originator that we do
1165 not accept mail from it.
1167 .SH SMTP/ESMTP ERROR HANDLING
1168 Besides the spam-blocking described above, fetchmail takes special
1169 actions on the following SMTP/ESMTP error responses
1171 452 (insufficient system storage)
1172 Leave the message in the server mailbox for later retrieval.
1174 552 (message exceeds fixed maximum message size)
1175 Delete the message from the server. Send bounce-mail to the
1178 553 (invalid sending domain)
1179 Delete the message from the server. Don't even try to send
1180 bounce-mail to the originator.
1182 Other errors trigger bounce mail back to the originator.
1184 .SH THE RUN CONTROL FILE
1185 The preferred way to set up fetchmail is to write a
1186 \&\fI.fetchmailrc\fR file in your home directory (you may do this
1187 directly, with a text editor, or indirectly via \fIfetchmailconf\fR).
1188 When there is a conflict between the command-line arguments and the
1189 arguments in this file, the command-line arguments take precedence.
1191 To protect the security of your passwords, when --version is not on
1192 your \fI~/.fetchmailrc\fR may not have more than 0600 (u=rw,g=,o=) permissions;
1194 will complain and exit otherwise.
1196 You may read the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file as a list of commands to
1199 is called with no arguments.
1200 .SS Run Control Syntax
1202 Comments begin with a '#' and extend through the end of the line.
1203 Otherwise the file consists of a series of server entries or global
1204 option statements in a free-format, token-oriented syntax.
1206 There are four kinds of tokens: grammar keywords, numbers
1207 (i.e. decimal digit sequences), unquoted strings, and quoted strings.
1208 A quoted string is bounded by double quotes and may contain
1209 whitespace (and quoted digits are treated as a string). An unquoted
1210 string is any whitespace-delimited token that is neither numeric, string
1211 quoted nor contains the special characters `,', `;', `:', or `='.
1213 Any amount of whitespace separates tokens in server entries, but is
1214 otherwise ignored. You may use standard C-style escapes (\en, \et,
1215 \eb, octal, and hex) to embed non-printable characters or string
1216 delimiters in strings.
1218 Each server entry consists of one of the keywords `poll' or `skip',
1219 followed by a server name, followed by server options, followed by any
1220 number of user descriptions. Note: the most common cause of syntax
1221 errors is mixing up user and server options.
1223 For backward compatibility, the word `server' is a synonym for `poll'.
1225 You can use the noise keywords `and', `with',
1226 \&`has', `wants', and `options' anywhere in an entry to make
1227 it resemble English. They're ignored, but but can make entries much
1228 easier to read at a glance. The punctuation characters ':', ';' and
1229 \&',' are also ignored.
1232 The `poll' verb tells fetchmail to query this host when it is run with
1233 no arguments. The `skip' verb tells
1235 not to poll this host unless it is explicitly named on the command
1236 line. (The `skip' verb allows you to experiment with test entries
1237 safely, or easily disable entries for hosts that are temporarily down.)
1239 .SS Keyword/Option Summary
1240 Here are the legal options. Keyword suffixes enclosed in
1241 square brackets are optional. Those corresponding to command-line
1242 options are followed by `-' and the appropriate option letter.
1244 Here are the legal global options:
1248 Keyword Opt Function
1251 Set a background poll interval in seconds
1253 set postmaster \& T{
1254 Give the name of the last-resort mail recipient
1256 set no bouncemail \& T{
1257 Direct error mail to postmaster rather than sender
1259 set no spambounce \& T{
1263 Name of a file to dump error and status messages to
1266 Name of the file to store UID lists in
1269 Do error logging through syslog(3).
1272 Turn off error logging through syslog(3).
1274 set properties \& T{
1275 String value is ignored by fetchmail (may be used by extension scripts)
1279 Here are the legal server options:
1283 Keyword Opt Function
1286 Specify DNS name of mailserver, overriding poll name
1289 Specify protocol (case insensitive):
1290 POP2, POP3, IMAP, APOP, KPOP
1292 local[domains] \& T{
1293 Specify domain(s) to be regarded as local
1296 Specify TCP/IP service port
1298 auth[enticate] \& T{
1299 Set authentication type (default `any')
1302 Server inactivity timeout in seconds (default 300)
1305 Specify envelope-address header name
1308 Disable looking for envelope address
1311 Qmail virtual domain prefix to remove from user name
1314 Specify alternate DNS names of mailserver
1317 specify IP interface(s) that must be up for server poll to take place
1320 Specify IP address to monitor for activity
1323 Specify command through which to make server connections.
1326 Specify command through which to make listener connections.
1329 Enable DNS lookup for multidrop (default)
1332 Disable DNS lookup for multidrop
1335 Do comparison by IP address for multidrop
1338 Do comparison by name for multidrop (default)
1341 Force POP3 to use client-side UIDLs
1344 Turn off POP3 use of client-side UIDLs (default)
1347 Only check this site every N poll cycles; N is a numeric argument.
1350 Add poll tracing information to the Received header
1353 Pass in IPsec security option request.
1356 Set Kerberos principal (only useful with imap and kerberos)
1359 Set name for RFC2554 authentication to the ESMTP server.
1362 Set password for RFC2554 authentication to the ESMTP server.
1366 Here are the legal user options:
1370 Keyword Opt Function
1373 Set remote user name
1374 (local user name if name followed by `here')
1377 Connect local and remote user names
1380 Connect local and remote user names
1383 Specify remote account password
1386 Connect to server over the specified base protocol using SSL encryption
1389 Specify file for client side public SSL certificate
1392 Specify file for client side private SSL key
1395 Force ssl protocol for connection
1398 Specify remote folder to query
1401 Specify smtp host(s) to forward to
1404 Specify domains for which mail should be fetched
1407 Specify the domain to be put in RCPT TO lines
1410 Specify the user and domain to be put in RCPT TO lines
1413 Specify what SMTP returns are interpreted as spam-policy blocks
1416 Specify MDA for local delivery
1419 Specify BSMTP batch file to append to
1422 Command to be executed before each connection
1425 Command to be executed after each connection
1428 Don't delete seen messages from server
1431 Flush all seen messages before querying
1434 Fetch all messages whether seen or not
1437 Rewrite destination addresses for reply (default)
1440 Strip carriage returns from ends of lines
1443 Force carriage returns at ends of lines
1446 Force BODY=8BITMIME to ESMTP listener
1449 Strip Status and X-Mozilla-Status lines out of incoming mail
1452 Strip Delivered-To lines out of incoming mail
1455 Convert quoted-printable to 8-bit in MIME messages
1458 Idle waiting for new messages after each poll (IMAP only)
1461 Delete seen messages from server (default)
1464 Don't flush all seen messages before querying (default)
1467 Retrieve only new messages (default)
1470 Don't rewrite headers
1473 Don't strip carriage returns (default)
1476 Don't force carriage returns at EOL (default)
1479 Don't force BODY=8BITMIME to ESMTP listener (default)
1482 Don't drop Status headers (default)
1484 no dropdelivered \& T{
1485 Don't drop Delivered-To headers (default)
1488 Don't convert quoted-printable to 8-bit in MIME messages (default)
1491 Don't idle waiting for new messages after each poll (IMAP only)
1494 Set message size limit
1497 Set message size warning interval
1500 Max # messages to forward in single connect
1503 Max # messages to fetch in single connect
1505 fetchsizelimit \& T{
1506 Max # message sizes to fetch in single transaction
1509 Use binary search for first unseen message (POP3 only)
1512 Perform an expunge on every #th message (IMAP and POP3 only)
1515 String value is ignored by fetchmail (may be used by extension scripts)
1519 Remember that all user options must \fIfollow\fR all server options.
1521 In the .fetchmailrc file, the `envelope' string argument may be
1522 preceded by a whitespace-separated number. This number, if specified,
1523 is the number of such headers to skip (that is, an argument of 1
1524 selects the second header of the given type). This is sometime useful
1525 for ignoring bogus Received headers created by an ISP's local delivery
1527 .SS Keywords Not Corresponding To Option Switches
1529 The `folder' and `smtphost' options (unlike their command-line
1530 equivalents) can take a space- or comma-separated list of names
1533 All options correspond to the obvious command-line arguments, except
1534 the following: `via', `interval', `aka', `is', `to', `dns'/`no dns',
1535 `checkalias'/`no checkalias', `password', `preconnect', `postconnect',
1536 `localdomains', `stripcr'/`no stripcr', `forcecr'/`no forcecr',
1537 `pass8bits'/`no pass8bits' `dropstatus/no dropstatus',
1538 `dropdelivered/no dropdelivered', `mimedecode/no mimedecode', `idle/no
1539 idle', and `no envelope'.
1541 The `via' option is for if you want to have more
1542 than one configuration pointing at the same site. If it is present,
1543 the string argument will be taken as the actual DNS name of the
1544 mailserver host to query.
1545 This will override the argument of poll, which can then simply be a
1546 distinct label for the configuration (e.g. what you would give on the
1547 command line to explicitly query this host).
1549 The `interval' option (which takes a numeric argument) allows you to poll a
1550 server less frequently than the basic poll interval. If you say
1551 \&`interval N' the server this option is attached to will only be
1552 queried every N poll intervals.
1554 The `is' or `to' keywords associate the following local (client)
1555 name(s) (or server-name to client-name mappings separated by =) with
1556 the mailserver user name in the entry. If an is/to list has `*' as
1557 its last name, unrecognized names are simply passed through.
1559 A single local name can be used to support redirecting your mail when
1560 your username on the client machine is different from your name on the
1561 mailserver. When there is only a single local name, mail is forwarded
1562 to that local username regardless of the message's Received, To, Cc,
1563 and Bcc headers. In this case
1565 never does DNS lookups.
1567 When there is more than one local name (or name mapping) the
1568 \fIfetchmail\fR code does look at the Received, To, Cc, and Bcc
1569 headers of retrieved mail (this is `multidrop mode'). It looks for
1570 addresses with hostname parts that match your poll name or your `via',
1571 `aka' or `localdomains' options, and usually also for hostname parts
1572 which DNS tells it are aliases of the mailserver. See the discussion
1573 of `dns', `checkalias', `localdomains', and `aka' for details on how
1574 matching addresses are handled.
1576 If \fIfetchmail\fR cannot match any mailserver usernames or
1577 localdomain addresses, the mail will be bounced.
1578 Normally it will be bounced to the sender, but if `nobounce' is on
1579 it will go to the postmaster (which in turn defaults to being the
1582 The `dns' option (normally on) controls the way addresses from
1583 multidrop mailboxes are checked. On, it enables logic to check each
1584 host address that doesn't match an `aka' or `localdomains' declaration
1585 by looking it up with DNS. When a mailserver username is recognized
1586 attached to a matching hostname part, its local mapping is added to
1587 the list of local recipients.
1589 The `checkalias' option (normally off) extends the lookups performed
1590 by the `dns' keyword in multidrop mode, providing a way to cope with
1591 remote MTAs that identify themselves using their canonical name, while
1592 they're polled using an alias.
1593 When such a server is polled, checks to extract the envelope address
1596 reverts to delivery using the To/Cc/Bcc headers (See below
1597 `Header vs. Envelope addresses').
1598 Specifying this option instructs
1600 to retrieve all the IP addresses associated with both the poll name
1601 and the name used by the remote MTA and to do a comparison of the IP
1602 addresses. This comes in handy in situations where the remote server
1603 undergoes frequent canonical name changes, that would otherwise
1604 require modifications to the rcfile. `checkalias' has no effect if
1605 `no dns' is specified in the rcfile.
1607 The `aka' option is for use with multidrop mailboxes. It allows you
1608 to pre-declare a list of DNS aliases for a server. This is an
1609 optimization hack that allows you to trade space for speed. When
1611 while processing a multidrop mailbox, grovels through message headers
1612 looking for names of the mailserver, pre-declaring common ones can
1613 save it from having to do DNS lookups. Note: the names you give
1614 as arguments to `aka' are matched as suffixes -- if you specify
1615 (say) `aka netaxs.com', this will match not just a hostnamed
1616 netaxs.com, but any hostname that ends with `.netaxs.com'; such as
1617 (say) pop3.netaxs.com and mail.netaxs.com.
1619 The `localdomains' option allows you to declare a list of domains
1620 which fetchmail should consider local. When fetchmail is parsing
1621 address lines in multidrop modes, and a trailing segment of a host
1622 name matches a declared local domain, that address is passed through
1623 to the listener or MDA unaltered (local-name mappings are \fInot\fR
1626 If you are using `localdomains', you may also need to specify \&`no
1627 envelope', which disables \fIfetchmail\fR's normal attempt to deduce
1628 an envelope address from the Received line or X-Envelope-To header or
1629 whatever header has been previously set by `envelope'. If you set `no
1630 envelope' in the defaults entry it is possible to undo that in
1631 individual entries by using `envelope <string>'. As a special case,
1632 \&`envelope "Received"' restores the default parsing of
1635 The \fBpassword\fR option requires a string argument, which is the password
1636 to be used with the entry's server.
1638 The `preconnect' keyword allows you to specify a shell command to be
1639 executed just before each time
1641 establishes a mailserver connection. This may be useful if you are
1642 attempting to set up secure POP connections with the aid of
1644 If the command returns a nonzero status, the poll of that mailserver
1647 Similarly, the `postconnect' keyword similarly allows you to specify a
1648 shell command to be executed just after each time a mailserver
1649 connection is taken down.
1651 The `forcecr' option controls whether lines terminated by LF only are
1652 given CRLF termination before forwarding. Strictly speaking RFC821
1653 requires this, but few MTAs enforce the requirement it so this option
1654 is normally off (only one such MTA, qmail, is in significant use at
1657 The `stripcr' option controls whether carriage returns are stripped
1658 out of retrieved mail before it is forwarded. It is normally not
1659 necessary to set this, because it defaults to `on' (CR stripping
1660 enabled) when there is an MDA declared but `off' (CR stripping
1661 disabled) when forwarding is via SMTP. If `stripcr' and `forcecr' are
1662 both on, `stripcr' will override.
1664 The `pass8bits' option exists to cope with Microsoft mail programs that
1665 stupidly slap a "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit" on everything. With
1666 this option off (the default) and such a header present,
1668 declares BODY=7BIT to an ESMTP-capable listener; this causes problems for
1669 messages actually using 8-bit ISO or KOI-8 character sets, which will
1670 be garbled by having the high bits of all characters stripped. If
1671 \&`pass8bits' is on,
1673 is forced to declare BODY=8BITMIME to any ESMTP-capable listener. If
1674 the listener is 8-bit-clean (as all the major ones now are) the right
1675 thing will probably result.
1677 The `dropstatus' option controls whether nonempty Status and
1678 X-Mozilla-Status lines are retained in fetched mail (the default) or
1679 discarded. Retaining them allows your MUA to see what messages (if
1680 any) were marked seen on the server. On the other hand, it can
1681 confuse some new-mail notifiers, which assume that anything with a
1682 Status line in it has been seen. (Note: the empty Status lines
1683 inserted by some buggy POP servers are unconditionally discarded.)
1685 The `dropdelivered' option controls wether Delivered-To headers will
1686 be kept in fetched mail (the default) or discarded. These headers are
1687 added by Qmail and Postfix mailservers in order to avoid mail loops but
1688 may get in your way if you try to "mirror" a mailserver within the same
1689 domain. Use with caution.
1691 The `mimedecode' option controls whether MIME messages using the
1692 quoted-printable encoding are automatically converted into pure 8-bit
1693 data. If you are delivering mail to an ESMTP-capable, 8-bit-clean
1694 listener (that includes all of the major MTAs like sendmail), then
1695 this will automatically convert quoted-printable message headers and
1696 data into 8-bit data, making it easier to understand when reading
1697 mail. If your e-mail programs know how to deal with MIME messages,
1698 then this option is not needed. The mimedecode option is off by
1699 default, because doing RFC2047 conversion on headers throws away
1700 character-set information and can lead to bad results if the encoding
1701 of the headers differs from the body encoding.
1703 The `idle' option is intended to be used with IMAP servers supporting
1704 the RFC2177 IDLE command extension, but does not strictly require it.
1705 If it is enabled, and fetchmail detects that IDLE is supported, an
1706 IDLE will be issued at the end of each poll. This will tell the IMAP
1707 server to hold the connection open and notify the client when new mail
1708 is available. If IDLE is not supported, fetchmail will simulate it by
1709 periodically issuing NOOP. If you need to poll a link frequently, IDLE
1710 can save bandwidth by eliminating TCP/IP connects and LOGIN/LOGOUT
1711 sequences. On the other hand, an IDLE connection will eat almost all
1712 of your fetchmail's time, because it will never drop the connection
1713 and allow other pools to occur unless the server times out the IDLE.
1714 It also doesn't work with multiple folders; only the first folder will
1718 The `properties' option is an extension mechanism. It takes a string
1719 argument, which is ignored by fetchmail itself. The string argument may be
1720 used to store configuration information for scripts which require it.
1721 In particular, the output of `--configdump' option will make properties
1722 associated with a user entry readily available to a Python script.
1724 .SS Miscellaneous Run Control Options
1725 The words `here' and `there' have useful English-like
1726 significance. Normally `user eric is esr' would mean that
1727 mail for the remote user `eric' is to be delivered to `esr',
1728 but you can make this clearer by saying `user eric there is esr here',
1729 or reverse it by saying `user esr here is eric there'
1731 Legal protocol identifiers for use with the `protocol' keyword are:
1744 Legal authentication types are `any', `password', `kerberos', 'kereberos_v5'
1745 and `gssapi', `cram-md5', `otp', `ntlm', `ssh`.
1746 The `password' type specifies authentication by normal transmission of a
1747 password (the password may be plaintext or subject to
1748 protocol-specific encryption as in APOP); `kerberos' tells
1749 \fIfetchmail\fR to try to get a Kerberos ticket at the start of each
1750 query instead, and send an arbitrary string as the password; and
1751 `gssapi' tells fetchmail to use GSSAPI authentication. See the description
1752 of the `auth' keyword for more.
1754 Specifying `kpop' sets POP3 protocol over port 1109 with Kerberos V4
1755 authentication. These defaults may be overridden by later options.
1757 There are currently four global option statements; `set logfile'
1758 followed by a string sets the same global specified by --logfile. A
1759 command-line --logfile option will override this. Also, `set daemon'
1760 sets the poll interval as --daemon does. This can be overridden by a
1761 command-line --daemon option; in particular --daemon 0 can be used to
1762 force foreground operation. The `set postmaster' statement sets the
1763 address to which multidrop mail defaults if there are no local
1764 matches. Finally, `set syslog' sends log messages to syslogd(8).
1766 .SH INTERACTION WITH RFC 822
1767 When trying to determine the originating address of a message,
1768 fetchmail looks through headers in the following order:
1772 Resent-Sender: (ignored if it doesn't contain an @ or !)
1773 Sender: (ignored if it doesn't contain an @ or !)
1780 The originating address is used for logging, and to set the MAIL FROM
1781 address when forwarding to SMTP. This order is intended to cope
1782 gracefully with receiving mailing list messages in multidrop mode. The
1783 intent is that if a local address doesn't exist, the bounce message
1784 won't be returned blindly to the author or to the list itself, but
1785 rather to the list manager (which is less annoying).
1787 In multidrop mode, destination headers are processed as follows:
1788 First, fetchmail looks for the Received: header (or whichever one is
1789 specified by the `envelope' option) to determine the local
1790 recipient address. If the mail is addressed to more than one recipient,
1791 the Received line won't contain any information regarding recipient addresses.
1793 Then fetchmail looks for the Resent-To:, Resent-Cc:, and Resent-Bcc:
1794 lines. If they exists, they should contain the final recipients and
1795 have precedence over their To:/Cc:/Bcc: counterparts. If the Resent-*
1796 lines doesn't exist, the To:, Cc:, Bcc: and Apparently-To: lines are
1797 looked for. (The presence of a Resent-To: is taken to imply that the
1798 person referred by the To: address has already received the original
1801 .SH CONFIGURATION EXAMPLES
1802 Note that although there are password declarations in a good many
1803 of the examples below, this is mainly for illustrative purposes.
1804 We recommend stashing account/password pairs in your $HOME/.netrc
1805 file, where they can be used not just by fetchmail but by ftp(1) and
1811 poll SERVERNAME protocol PROTOCOL username NAME password PASSWORD
1817 poll pop.provider.net protocol pop3 username "jsmith" password "secret1"
1820 Or, using some abbreviations:
1823 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" password "secret1"
1826 Multiple servers may be listed:
1829 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" pass "secret1"
1830 poll other.provider.net proto pop2 user "John.Smith" pass "My^Hat"
1833 Here's a version of those two with more whitespace and some noise words:
1836 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3
1837 user "jsmith", with password secret1, is "jsmith" here;
1838 poll other.provider.net proto pop2:
1839 user "John.Smith", with password "My^Hat", is "John.Smith" here;
1842 This version is much easier to read and doesn't cost significantly
1843 more (parsing is done only once, at startup time).
1846 If you need to include whitespace in a parameter string, enclose the
1847 string in double quotes. Thus:
1850 poll mail.provider.net with proto pop3:
1851 user "jsmith" there has password "u can't krak this"
1852 is jws here and wants mda "/bin/mail"
1855 You may have an initial server description headed by the keyword
1856 `defaults' instead of `poll' followed by a name. Such a record
1857 is interpreted as defaults for all queries to use. It may be overwritten
1858 by individual server descriptions. So, you could write:
1863 poll pop.provider.net
1865 poll mail.provider.net
1866 user "jjsmith" there has password "secret2"
1869 It's possible to specify more than one user per server (this is only
1870 likely to be useful when running fetchmail in daemon mode as root).
1871 The `user' keyword leads off a user description, and every user specification
1872 in a multi-user entry must include it. Here's an example:
1875 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 port 3111
1876 user "jsmith" with pass "secret1" is "smith" here
1877 user jones with pass "secret2" is "jjones" here keep
1880 This associates the local username `smith' with the pop.provider.net
1881 username `jsmith' and the local username `jjones' with the
1882 pop.provider.net username `jones'. Mail for `jones' is kept on the
1883 server after download.
1885 Here's what a simple retrieval configuration for a multi-drop mailbox
1889 poll pop.provider.net:
1890 user maildrop with pass secret1 to golux 'hurkle'='happy' snark here
1893 This says that the mailbox of account `maildrop' on the server is a
1894 multi-drop box, and that messages in it should be parsed for the
1895 server user names `golux', `hurkle', and `snark'. It further
1896 specifies that `golux' and `snark' have the same name on the
1897 client as on the server, but mail for server user `hurkle' should be
1898 delivered to client user `happy'.
1900 Here's an example of another kind of multidrop connection:
1903 poll pop.provider.net localdomains loonytoons.org toons.org:
1904 user maildrop with pass secret1 to * here
1907 This also says that the mailbox of account `maildrop' on the server is
1908 a multi-drop box. It tells fetchmail that any address in the
1909 loonytoons.org or toons.org domains (including subdomain addresses like
1910 `joe@daffy.loonytoons.org') should be passed through to the local SMTP
1911 listener without modification. Be careful of mail loops if you do this!
1913 Here's an example configuration using ssh and the plugin option. The
1914 queries are made directly on the stdin and stdout of imapd via ssh.
1915 Note that in this setup, IMAP authentication can be skipped.
1918 poll mailhost.net with proto imap:
1919 plugin "ssh %h /usr/sbin/imapd" auth ssh;
1920 user esr is esr here
1923 .SH THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP MAILBOXES
1924 Use the multiple-local-recipients feature with caution -- it can bite.
1925 All multidrop features are ineffective in ETRN and ODMR modes.
1927 Also, note that in multidrop mode duplicate mails are suppressed. A
1928 piece of mail is considered duplicate if it has the same message-ID as
1929 the message immediately preceding and more than one addressee. Such
1930 runs of messages may be generated when copies of a message addressed
1931 to multiple users are delivered to a multidrop box.
1933 .SS Header vs. Envelope addresses
1934 The fundamental problem is that by having your mailserver toss several
1935 peoples' mail in a single maildrop box, you may have thrown away
1936 potentially vital information about who each piece of mail was
1937 actually addressed to (the `envelope address', as opposed to the
1938 header addresses in the RFC822 To/Cc/Bcc headers). This `envelope
1939 address' is the address you need in order to reroute mail properly.
1943 can deduce the envelope address. If the mailserver MTA is
1945 and the item of mail had just one recipient, the MTA will have written
1946 a `by/for' clause that gives the envelope addressee into its Received
1947 header. But this doesn't work reliably for other MTAs, nor if there is
1948 more than one recipient. By default, \fIfetchmail\fR looks for
1949 envelope addresses in these lines; you can restore this default with
1950 -E "Received" or \&`envelope Received'.
1952 Alternatively, some SMTP listeners and/or mail servers insert a header
1953 in each message containing a copy of the envelope addresses. This
1954 header (when it exists) is often `X-Envelope-To'. Fetchmail's
1955 assumption about this can be changed with the -E or `envelope' option.
1956 Note that writing an envelope header of this kind exposes the names of
1957 recipients (including blind-copy recipients) to all receivers of the
1958 messages; it is therefore regarded by some administrators as a
1959 security/privacy problem.
1961 A slight variation of the `X-Envelope-To' header is the `Delivered-To' put
1962 by qmail to avoid mail loops. It will probably prefix the user name with a
1963 string that normally matches the user's domain. To remove this prefix you
1964 can use the -Q or `qvirtual' option.
1966 Sometimes, unfortunately, neither of these methods works. When they
1967 all fail, fetchmail must fall back on the contents of To/Cc/Bcc
1968 headers to try to determine recipient addressees -- and these are not
1969 reliable. In particular, mailing-list software often ships mail with
1970 only the list broadcast address in the To header.
1974 cannot deduce a recipient address that is local, and the intended
1975 recipient address was anyone other than fetchmail's invoking user,
1976 mail will get lost. This is what makes the multidrop feature risky.
1978 A related problem is that when you blind-copy a mail message, the Bcc
1979 information is carried \fIonly\fR as envelope address (it's not put
1980 in the headers fetchmail can see unless there is an X-Envelope
1981 header). Thus, blind-copying to someone who gets mail over a
1982 fetchmail link will fail unless the the mailserver host routinely
1983 writes X-Envelope or an equivalent header into messages in your maildrop.
1985 .SS Good Ways To Use Multidrop Mailboxes
1986 Multiple local names can be used to administer a mailing list from the
1987 client side of a \fIfetchmail\fR collection. Suppose your name is
1988 \&`esr', and you want to both pick up your own mail and maintain a mailing
1989 list called (say) "fetchmail-friends", and you want to keep the alias
1990 list on your client machine.
1992 On your server, you can alias \&`fetchmail-friends' to `esr'; then, in
1993 your \fI.fetchmailrc\fR, declare \&`to esr fetchmail-friends here'.
1994 Then, when mail including `fetchmail-friends' as a local address
1995 gets fetched, the list name will be appended to the list of
1996 recipients your SMTP listener sees. Therefore it will undergo alias
1997 expansion locally. Be sure to include `esr' in the local alias
1998 expansion of fetchmail-friends, or you'll never see mail sent only to
1999 the list. Also be sure that your listener has the "me-too" option set
2000 (sendmail's -oXm command-line option or OXm declaration) so your name
2001 isn't removed from alias expansions in messages you send.
2003 This trick is not without its problems, however. You'll begin to see
2004 this when a message comes in that is addressed only to a mailing list
2005 you do \fInot\fR have declared as a local name. Each such message
2006 will feature an `X-Fetchmail-Warning' header which is generated
2007 because fetchmail cannot find a valid local name in the recipient
2008 addresses. Such messages default (as was described above) to being
2009 sent to the local user running
2011 but the program has no way to know that that's actually the right thing.
2013 .SS Bad Ways To Abuse Multidrop Mailboxes
2014 Multidrop mailboxes and
2016 serving multiple users in daemon mode do not mix. The problem, again, is
2017 mail from mailing lists, which typically does not have an individual
2018 recipient address on it. Unless
2020 can deduce an envelope address, such mail will only go to the account
2021 running fetchmail (probably root). Also, blind-copied users are very
2022 likely never to see their mail at all.
2024 If you're tempted to use
2026 to retrieve mail for multiple users from a single mail drop via POP or
2027 IMAP, think again (and reread the section on header and envelope
2028 addresses above). It would be smarter to just let the mail sit in the
2029 mailserver's queue and use fetchmail's ETRN or ODMR modes to trigger
2030 SMTP sends periodically (of course, this means you have to poll more
2031 frequently than the mailserver's expiry period). If you can't arrange
2032 this, try setting up a UUCP feed.
2034 If you absolutely \fImust\fR use multidrop for this purpose, make sure
2035 your mailserver writes an envelope-address header that fetchmail can
2036 see. Otherwise you \fIwill\fR lose mail and it \fIwill\fR come back
2039 .SS Speeding Up Multidrop Checking
2040 Normally, when multiple users are declared
2042 extracts recipient addresses as described above and checks each host
2043 part with DNS to see if it's an alias of the mailserver. If so, the
2044 name mappings described in the to ... here declaration are done and
2045 the mail locally delivered.
2047 This is the safest but also slowest method. To speed it up,
2048 pre-declare mailserver aliases with `aka'; these are checked before
2049 DNS lookups are done. If you're certain your aka list contains
2051 DNS aliases of the mailserver (and all MX names pointing at it)
2052 you can declare `no dns' to suppress DNS lookups entirely and
2053 \fIonly\fR match against the aka list.
2056 To facilitate the use of
2058 in shell scripts, an exit code is returned to give an indication
2059 of what occurred during a given connection.
2061 The exit codes returned by
2065 One or more messages were successfully retrieved (or, if the -c option
2066 was selected, were found waiting but not retrieved).
2068 There was no mail awaiting retrieval. (There may have been old mail still
2069 on the server but not selected for retrieval.)
2071 An error was encountered when attempting to open a socket to retrieve
2072 mail. If you don't know what a socket is, don't worry about it --
2073 just treat this as an 'unrecoverable error'. This error can also be
2074 because a protocol fetchmail wants to use is not listed in /etc/services.
2076 The user authentication step failed. This usually means that a bad
2077 user-id, password, or APOP id was specified. Or it may mean that you
2078 tried to run fetchmail under circumstances where it did not have
2079 standard input attached to a terminal and could not prompt for a
2082 Some sort of fatal protocol error was detected.
2084 There was a syntax error in the arguments to
2087 The run control file had bad permissions.
2089 There was an error condition reported by the server. Can also
2092 timed out while waiting for the server.
2094 Client-side exclusion error. This means
2096 either found another copy of itself already running, or failed in such
2097 a way that it isn't sure whether another copy is running.
2099 The user authentication step failed because the server responded "lock
2100 busy". Try again after a brief pause! This error is not implemented
2101 for all protocols, nor for all servers. If not implemented for your
2102 server, "3" will be returned instead, see above. May be returned when
2103 talking to qpopper or other servers that can respond with "lock busy"
2104 or some similar text containing the word "lock".
2108 run failed while trying to do an SMTP port open or transaction.
2110 Fatal DNS error. Fetchmail encountered an error while performing
2111 a DNS lookup at startup and could not proceed.
2113 BSMTP batch file could not be opened.
2115 Poll terminated by a fetch limit (see the --fetchlimit option).
2117 Server busy indication.
2119 Server timed out during an IMAP IDLE.
2121 Internal error. You should see a message on standard error with
2126 queries more than one host, return status is 0 if \fIany\fR query
2127 successfully retrieved mail. Otherwise the returned error status is
2128 that of the last host queried.
2133 default run control file
2136 default location of file associating hosts with last message IDs seen
2137 (used only with newer RFC1725-compliant POP3 servers supporting the
2141 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (non-root mode).
2144 your FTP run control file, which (if present) will be searched for
2145 passwords as a last resort before prompting for one interactively.
2147 /var/run/fetchmail.pid
2148 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, Linux systems).
2151 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, systems without /var/run).
2154 If the FETCHMAILUSER variable is set, it is used as the name of the
2155 calling user (default local name) for purposes such as mailing error
2156 notifications. Otherwise, if either the LOGNAME or USER variable is
2157 correctly set (e.g. the corresponding UID matches the session user ID)
2158 then that name is used as the default local name. Otherwise
2159 \fBgetpwuid\fR(3) must be able to retrieve a password entry for the
2160 session ID (this elaborate logic is designed to handle the case of
2161 multiple names per userid gracefully).
2163 If the environment variable FETCHMAILHOME is set to a valid and
2164 existing directory name, the .fetchmailrc and .fetchids and
2165 \&.fetchmail.pid files are put there instead of in the invoking user's
2166 home directory (and lose the leading dots on their names). The
2167 \&.netrc file is looked for in the the invoking user's home directory
2168 regardless of FETCHMAILHOME's setting.
2170 If the HOME_ETC variable is set, file $HOME_ETC/.fetchmailrc is used
2171 instead of ~/.fetchmailrc.
2176 daemon is running as root, SIGHUP wakes it up from its sleep phase and
2177 forces a poll of all non-skipped servers (this is in accordance with
2178 the usual conventions for system daemons).
2182 is running in daemon mode as non-root, use SIGUSR1 to wake it (this is
2183 so SIGHUP due to logout can retain the default action of killing it).
2187 in foreground while a background fetchmail is running will do
2188 whichever of these is appropriate to wake it up.
2190 .SH BUGS AND KNOWN PROBLEMS
2191 The mda and plugin options interact badly. In order to collect error
2192 status from the MDA, fetchmail has to change its normal signal
2193 handling so that dead plugin processes don't get reaped until the end
2194 of the poll cycle. This can cause resource starvation if too many
2195 zombies accumulate. So either don't deliver to a MDA using plugins or
2196 risk being overrun by an army of undead.
2198 The RFC822 address parser used in multidrop mode chokes on some
2199 @-addresses that are technically legal but bizarre. Strange uses of
2200 quoting and embedded comments are likely to confuse it.
2202 In a message with multiple envelope headers, only the last one
2203 processed will be visible to fetchmail. To get around this, use a
2204 mailserver-side filter that consolidates the contents of all envelope
2205 headers into a single one (procmail, mailagent, or maildrop can be
2206 programmed to do this fairly easily).
2208 Use of some of these protocols requires that the program send
2209 unencrypted passwords over the TCP/IP connection to the mailserver.
2210 This creates a risk that name/password pairs might be snaffled with a
2211 packet sniffer or more sophisticated monitoring software. Under Linux
2212 and FreeBSD, the --interface option can be used to restrict polling to
2213 availability of a specific interface device with a specific local or
2214 remote IP address, but snooping is still possible if (a) either host
2215 has a network device that can be opened in promiscuous mode, or (b)
2216 the intervening network link can be tapped. We recommend the use of
2218 tunnelling to not only shroud your passwords but encrypt the entire
2221 Use of the %F or %T escapes in an mda option could open a security
2222 hole, because they pass text manipulable by an attacker to a shell
2223 command. Potential shell characters are replaced by `_' before
2224 execution. The hole is further reduced by the fact that fetchmail
2225 temporarily discards any suid privileges it may have while running the
2226 MDA. For maximum safety, however, don't use an mda command containing
2227 %F or %T when fetchmail is run from the root account itself.
2229 Fetchmail's method of sending bouncemail and spam bounces requires that
2230 port 25 of localhost be available for sending mail via SMTP.
2234 while a background instance is running and break the syntax, the
2235 background instance will die silently. Unfortunately, it can't
2236 die noisily because we don't yet know whether syslog should be enabled.
2237 On some systems, fetchmail dies quietly even if there is no syntax
2238 error; this seems to have something to do with buggy terminal ioctl
2241 The -f - option (reading a configuration from stdin) is incompatible
2242 with the plugin option.
2244 The UIDL code is generally flaky and tends to lose its state on errors
2245 and line drops (so that old messages are re-seen). If this happens to
2246 you, switch to IMAP4.
2248 The `principal' option only handles Kerberos IV, not V.
2250 Send comments, bug reports, gripes, and the like to the
2251 fetchmail-friends list <fetchmail-friends@lists.ccil.org>. An HTML FAQ is
2252 available at the fetchmail home page; surf to
2253 http://www.catb.org/~esr/fetchmail or do a WWW search for pages with
2254 `fetchmail' in their titles.
2257 Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>. Too many other people to
2258 name here have contributed code and patches.
2259 This program is descended from and replaces
2261 by Carl Harris <ceharris@mal.com>; the internals have become quite different,
2262 but some of its interface design is directly traceable to that
2266 mutt(1), elm(1), mail(1), sendmail(8), popd(8), imapd(8), netrc(5)
2267 .SH APPLICABLE STANDARDS
2270 RFC 821, RFC2821, RFC 1869, RFC 1652, RFC 1870, RFC 1983, RFC 1985,
2274 RFC 822, RFC2822, RFC 1123, RFC 1892, RFC 1894.
2280 RFC 1081, RFC 1225, RFC 1460, RFC 1725, RFC1734, RFC 1939, RFC 1957,
2284 RFC 1460, RFC 1725, RFC 1939.
2293 RFC 1730, RFC 1731, RFC 1732, RFC 2060, RFC 2061, RFC 2195, RFC 2177,
projects / ~andy / fetchmail / blob