3 # indexgen.sh -- generate current version of fetchmail home page.
7 version=`sed -n <Makefile.in "/VERSION *= */s/VERSION *= *\([^ ]*\)/\1/p"`
8 date=`date "+%d %b %Y"`
10 set -- `timeseries | grep -v "%" | head -1`
12 set -- `ls -ks fetchmail`
14 set -- `(cd /lib; ls libc-*)`
15 glibc=`echo $1 | sed 's/libc-\(.*\)\.so/\1/'`
20 # Compute MD5 checksums for security audit
22 for file in fetchmail-$version.tar.gz fetchmail-$version-1.i386.rpm fetchmail-$version-1.src.rpm
24 md5sum $file >>checksums
27 if [ $version != $goldvers ]
29 for file in fetchmail-$goldvers.tar.gz fetchmail-$goldvers-1.i386.rpm fetchmail-$goldvers-1.src.rpm
31 md5sum $file >>checksums
36 <!doctype HTML public "-//W3O//DTD W3 HTML 3.2//EN">
39 <TITLE>Fetchmail Home Page</TITLE>
40 <link rev=made href=mailto:esr@snark.thyrsus.com>
41 <meta name="description" content="The fetchmail home page.">
42 <meta name="keywords" content="fetchmail, POP, POP3, IMAP, IMAP2bis, IMAP4, IMAP4rev1, ETRN, OTP, RPA">
45 <table width="100%" cellpadding=0><tr>
46 <td width="30%">Back to
47 <a href="http://$WWWVIRTUAL/~esr/software.html">Software</a>
48 <td width="30%" align=center>Up to <a href="http://$WWWVIRTUAL/~esr/sitemap.html">Site Map</a>
49 <td width="30%" align=right>$date
56 <center><img src="bighand.png"></center>
60 <H1>The fetchmail Home Page</H1>
63 <H1>What fetchmail does:</H1>
65 Fetchmail is a full-featured, robust, well-documented
66 remote-mail retrieval and forwarding utility intended to be used over
67 on-demand TCP/IP links (such as SLIP or PPP connections). It supports
68 every remote-mail protocol now in use on the Internet: POP2, POP3,
69 RPOP, APOP, KPOP, all flavors of <a
70 href="http://www.imap.org">IMAP</a>, ETRN, and ODMR. It can even
71 support IPv6 and IPSEC.<P>
73 Fetchmail retrieves mail from remote mail servers and forwards it via
74 SMTP, so it can then be be read by normal mail user agents such as <a
75 href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a>, elm(1) or BSD Mail.
76 It allows all your system MTA's filtering, forwarding, and aliasing
77 facilities to work just as they would on normal mail.<P>
79 Fetchmail offers better security than any other Unix remote-mail
80 client. It supports APOP, KPOP, OTP, Compuserve RPA, Microsoft NTLM,
81 and IMAP RFC1731 encrypted authentication methods to avoid sending
82 passwords en clair. It can be configured to support end-to-end
83 encryption via tunneling with <a href="http://www.cs.hut.fi/ssh/">ssh,
84 the Secure Shell</a><p>
86 Fetchmail can be used as a POP/IMAP-to-SMTP gateway for an entire DNS
87 domain, collecting mail from a single drop box on an ISP and
88 SMTP-forwarding it based on header addresses. (We don't really
89 recommend this, though, as it may lose important envelope-header
90 information. ETRN or a UUCP connection is better.)<p>
92 Fetchmail can be started automatically and silently as a system daemon
93 at boot time. When running in this mode with a short poll interval,
94 it is pretty hard for anyone to tell that the incoming mail link is
95 not a full-time "push" connection.<p>
97 Fetchmail is easy to configure. You can edit its dotfile directly, or
98 use the interactive GUI configurator (fetchmailconf) supplied with the
99 fetchmail distribution. It is also directly supported in linuxconf
100 versions 1.16r8 and later.<P>
102 Fetchmail is fast and lightweight. It packs all its standard
103 features (POP3, IMAP, and ETRN support) in ${fetchmailsize}K of core on a
104 Pentium under Linux.<p>
106 Fetchmail is <a href="http://www.opensource.org">open-source</a>
107 software. The openness of the sources is your strongest possible
108 assurance of quality and reliability.<P>
110 <H1>Where to find out more about fetchmail:</H1>
112 See the <a href="fetchmail-features.html">Fetchmail Feature List</a> for more
113 about what fetchmail does.<p>
115 See the on-line <a href="fetchmail-man.html">manual page</a> for
118 See the <a href="fetchmail-FAQ.html">HTML Fetchmail FAQ</A> for
119 troubleshooting help.<p>
121 See the <a href="design-notes.html">Fetchmail Design Notes</a>
122 for discussion of some of the design choices in fetchmail.<P>
124 See the project's <a href="todo.html">To-Do list</a> for indications
125 of known problems and requested features.<P>
127 <H1>How to get fetchmail:</H1>
129 You can get any of the following leading-edge resources here:
131 <LI> <a href="fetchmail-$version.tar.gz">
132 Gzipped source archive of fetchmail $version</a>
133 <LI> <a href="fetchmail-$version-1.i386.rpm">
134 Intel binary RPM of fetchmail $version (uses $glibc)</a>
135 <LI> <a href="fetchmail-$version-1.src.rpm">
136 Source RPM of fetchmail $version</a>
139 MD5 <a href="checksums">checksums</a> are available for these files.<p>
142 if [ $version != $goldvers ]
144 cat >>index.html <<EOF
146 Or you can get the last \`gold' version, $goldname:
148 <LI> <a href="fetchmail-$goldvers.tar.gz">
149 Gzipped source archive of fetchmail $goldname</a>
150 <LI> <a href="fetchmail-$goldvers-1.i386.rpm">
151 Intel binary RPM of fetchmail $goldname (uses glibc)</a>
152 <LI> <a href="fetchmail-$goldvers-1.alpha.rpm">
153 Alpha binary RPM of fetchmail $goldname (uses glibc)</a>
154 <LI> <a href="fetchmail-$goldvers-1.src.rpm">
155 Source RPM of fetchmail $goldname</a>
157 For differences between the leading-edge $version and gold $goldname versions,
158 see the distribution <a href="NEWS">NEWS</a> file.<p>
162 cat >>index.html <<EOF
163 (Note that the binary RPMs don't have the POP2, OTP, IPv6, Kerberos,
164 GSSAPI, Compuserve RPA, Microsoft NTLM, or GNU gettext
165 internationalization support compiled in. To get any of these you
166 will have to build from sources.)<p>
168 The latest version of fetchmail is also carried in the
169 <a href="http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/mail/pop/!INDEX.html">
170 Metalab remote mail tools directory</a>.
172 <H1>Getting help with fetchmail:</H1>
174 There is a fetchmail-friends list for people who want to discuss fixes
175 and improvements in fetchmail and help co-develop it. It's a MailMan
176 list, which you can sign up for at <a
177 <a href="http://lists.ccil.org/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-friends">
178 fetchmail-friends@ccil.org</a>.
179 There is also an announcements-only list,
180 <a href="http://lists.ccil.org/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-announce">
181 fetchmail-announce@lists.ccil.org</a>.<P>
183 Note: before submitting a question to the list, <strong>please read
184 the <a href="fetchmail-FAQ.html">FAQ</a></strong> (especially item <a
185 href="http:fetchmail-FAQ.html#G3">G3</a> on how to report bugs). We
186 tend to get the same three newbie questions over and over again. The
187 FAQ covers them like a blanket.<P>
189 Fetchmail was written and is maintained by <a
190 href="../index.html">Eric S. Raymond</a>. There are some designated
191 backup maintainers (<a href="mailto:funk+@osu.edu">Rob Funk</a>, <a
192 href="http://www.dallas.net/~fox/">David DeSimone aka Fuzzy Fox</a>,
193 <a href="mailto:imdave@mcs.net">Dave Bodenstab</a>). Other backup
194 maintainers may be added in the future, in order to ensure continued
195 support should Eric S. Raymond drop permanently off the net for any
198 <H1>Who uses fetchmail:</H1>
200 Fetchmail entered full production status with the 2.0.0 version in
201 November 1996 after about five months of evolution from the ancestral
202 <IT>popclient</IT> utility. It has since come into extremely wide use
203 in the Internet/Unix/Linux community. The Red Hat, Debian and
204 S.u.S.e. Linux distributions and their derivatives all include it. A
205 customized version is used at Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link. Several
206 large ISPs are known to recommend it to Unix-using SLIP and PPP
209 Over seven hundred people have participated on the fetchmail beta list
210 (at time of current release there were $subscribers on the friends and
211 announce lists). While it's hard to count the users of open-source
212 software, we can estimate based on (a) population figures at the WELL
213 and other known fetchmail sites, (b) the size of the Linux-using ISP
214 customer base, and (c) the volume of fetchmail-related talk on USENET.
215 These estimates suggest that daily fetchmail users number well into
216 the tens of thousands, and possibly over a hundred thousand.<p>
218 <H1>The sociology of fetchmail:</H1>
220 The fetchmail development project was a sociological experiment as well
221 as a technical effort. I ran it as a test of some theories about why the
222 Linux development model works.<P>
225 HREF="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/">The
226 Cathedral And The Bazaar</A>, about these theories and the project.
227 I developed the line of analysis it suggested in two later essays.
228 These papers became quite popular and (to my continuing astonishment) may
229 have actually helped change the world. Chase the title link, above,
230 for links to all three papers.<P>
232 I have done some analysis on the information in the project NEWS file.
233 You can view a <a href="history.html">statistical history</a> showing
234 levels of participation and release frequency over time.<p>
236 <H1>Recent releases and where fetchmail is going:</H1>
238 Fetchmail is now sufficiently stable and effective that I'm getting
239 very little pressure to fix things or add features. Development has
240 slowed way down, release frequency has dropped off, and we're
241 basically in maintainance mode. Barring any urgent bug fixes, my
242 intention is to leave 5.0.0 alone for several months.<p>
244 Major changes or additions therefore seem unlikely until there are
245 significant changes in or additions to the related protocol RFCs. One
246 development that would stimulate a new release almost instantly is the
247 deployment of a standard lightweight encrypted authentication method
248 for IMAP sessions.<p>
250 <H1>Where you can use fetchmail:</H1>
252 The fetchmail code was developed under Linux, but has also been
253 extensively tested under 4.4BSD, SunOS, Solaris, AIX, and NEXTSTEP. It
254 should be readily portable to other Unix variants (it requires only
255 POSIX plus BSD sockets, and uses GNU autoconf).<P>
257 Fetchmail is supported only for Unix by its official maintainers.
258 However, it is reported to build and run correctly under BeOS,
259 AmigaOS, Rhapsody, and QNX as well. <p>
261 <H1>Related resources</H1>
263 Jochen Hayek is developing a set of
264 <a href="http://www.ACM.org/~Jochen_Hayek/JHimap_utils/">
265 IMAP tools in Python</a> that read your .fetchmailrc file and are
266 designed to work with fetchmail. Jochen's tools can report selected
267 header lines, or move incoming messages to named mailboxes based on
268 the contents of headers.<p>
270 Scott Bronson has written a fetchmail plugin (actually, a specialist
272 href="http://www.trestle.com/linux/trestlemail/">trestlemail</a> that
273 helps redirect multidrop mail.<p>
275 Donncha O Caoihm has written a Perl script called
276 <a href="http://cork.linux.ie/projects/install-sendmail/">install-sendmail</a>
277 that assists you in installing sendmail and fetchmail together/<p>
279 Peter Hawkins has written a script called <a
280 href="http://hawkins.emu.id.au/gotmail/">gotmail</a>
281 that can retrieve Hotmail. <P>
283 <H1>Fetchmail's funniest fan letter:</H1>
285 <A HREF="funny.html">This letter</A> still cracks me up whenever I reread it.
287 <H1>The fetchmail button:</H1>
289 If you use fetchmail and like it, here's a nifty fetchmail button you
290 can put on your web page:<P>
292 <center><img src="fetchmail.png"></center><P>
294 Thanks to <a href="http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~smatus1/">Steve
295 Matuszek</a> for the graphic design. The hand in the button (and the
296 larger top-of-page graphic) was actually derived from a color scan of
297 the fetchmail author's hand. <P>
299 <H1>Fetchmail mirror sites:</H1>
301 There is a FTP mirror of the fetchmail FTP directory (not this WWW
302 home site, just the current sources and RPM) in Japan at
303 <a href="ftp://ftp.win.ne.jp/pub/network/mail/fetchmail">
304 ftp://ftp.win.or.jp/pub/network/mail/fetchmail</a>.<P>
306 <H1>Reviews and Awards</H1>
308 Fetchmail was DaveCentral's Best Of Linux winner for
309 <a href="http://linux.davecentral.com/bol_19990630.html">June 30 1999</a>.
312 <table width="100%" cellpadding=0><tr>
313 <td width="30%">Back to
314 <a href="http://$WWWVIRTUAL/~esr/software.html">Software</a>
315 <td width="30%" align=center>Up to <a href="http://$WWWVIRTUAL/~esr/sitemap.html">Site Map</a>
316 <td width="30%" align=right>$date
319 <P><ADDRESS>Eric S. Raymond <A HREF="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com"><esr@snark.thyrsus.com></A></ADDRESS>
324 # The following sets edit modes for GNU EMACS