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`
13 set -- `ls -ks fetchmail`
15 set -- `(cd /lib; ls libc-*)`
16 glibc=`echo $1 | sed 's/libc-\(.*\)\.so/\1/'`
21 # Compute MD5 checksums for security audit
23 for file in fetchmail-$version.tar.gz fetchmail-$version-1.i386.rpm fetchmail-$version-1.src.rpm
25 md5sum $file >>checksums
28 if [ $version != $goldvers ]
30 for file in /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/fetchmail-$goldvers.tar.gz /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/fetchmail-$goldvers-1.i386.rpm /usr/src/redhat/SRPMS/fetchmail-$goldvers-1.src.rpm
32 md5sum $file | sed -e "s: .*/: :" >>checksums
36 # Cryptographically sign checksums
38 gpg --clearsign checksums
39 mv checksums.asc checksums
40 gpg --detach-sign --armor fetchmail-$version.tar.gz
44 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
45 "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
46 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
48 <title>Fetchmail Home Page</title>
49 <link rev=made href=mailto:esr@snark.thyrsus.com />
50 <meta name="description" content="The fetchmail home page." />
51 <meta name="keywords" content="fetchmail, POP, POP3, IMAP, IMAP2bis, IMAP4, IMAP4rev1, ETRN, OTP, RPA" />
54 <table width="100%" cellpadding=0 summary="Canned page header"><tr>
55 <td width="30%">Back to
56 <a href="http://$WWWVIRTUAL/~esr/software.html">Software</a>
57 <td width="30%" align=center>Up to <a href="http://$WWWVIRTUAL/~esr/sitemap.html">Site Map</a>
58 <td width="30%" align=right>$date
62 <table border="10" summary="framed fetchmail logo">
65 <center><img src="bighand.png" alt="fetchmail logo" /></center>
69 <h1>The fetchmail Home Page</h1>
72 <p><b>Note: if you are a stranded fetchmail.com user, we're sorry but
73 we have nothing to do with that site and cannot help you. It's just an
74 unfortunate coincidence of names.</b></p>
76 <h1>What fetchmail does:</h1>
78 <p>Fetchmail is a full-featured, robust, well-documented
79 remote-mail retrieval and forwarding utility intended to be used over
80 on-demand TCP/IP links (such as SLIP or PPP connections). It supports
81 every remote-mail protocol now in use on the Internet: POP2, POP3,
82 RPOP, APOP, KPOP, all flavors of <a
83 href="http://www.imap.org">IMAP</a>, ETRN, and ODMR. It can even
84 support IPv6 and IPSEC.</p>
86 <p>Fetchmail retrieves mail from remote mail servers and forwards it via
87 SMTP, so it can then be read by normal mail user agents such as <a
88 href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a>, elm(1) or BSD Mail.
89 It allows all your system MTA's filtering, forwarding, and aliasing
90 facilities to work just as they would on normal mail.</p>
92 <p>Fetchmail offers better security than any other Unix remote-mail
93 client. It supports APOP, KPOP, OTP, Compuserve RPA, Microsoft NTLM,
94 and IMAP RFC1731 encrypted authentication methods including CRAM-MD5
95 to avoid sending passwords en clair. It can be configured to support
96 end-to-end encryption via tunneling with <a
97 href="http://www.openssh.com/">ssh, the Secure Shell</a>.</p>
99 <p>Fetchmail can be used as a POP/IMAP-to-SMTP gateway for an entire DNS
100 domain, collecting mail from a single drop box on an ISP and
101 SMTP-forwarding it based on header addresses. (We don't really
102 recommend this, though, as it may lose important envelope-header
103 information. ETRN or a UUCP connection is better.)</p>
105 <p>Fetchmail can be started automatically and silently as a system daemon
106 at boot time. When running in this mode with a short poll interval,
107 it is pretty hard for anyone to tell that the incoming mail link is
108 not a full-time "push" connection.</p>
110 <p>Fetchmail is easy to configure. You can edit its dotfile directly, or
111 use the interactive GUI configurator (fetchmailconf) supplied with the
112 fetchmail distribution. It is also directly supported in linuxconf
113 versions 1.16r8 and later.</p>
115 <p>Fetchmail is fast and lightweight. It packs all its standard
116 features (POP3, IMAP, and ETRN support) in ${fetchmailsize}K of core on a
117 Pentium under Linux.</p>
119 <p>Fetchmail is <a href="http://www.opensource.org">open-source</a>
120 software. The openness of the sources is your strongest possible
121 assurance of quality and reliability.</p>
123 <h1>Where to find out more about fetchmail:</h1>
125 <p>See the <a href="fetchmail-features.html">Fetchmail Feature List</a> for more
126 about what fetchmail does.</p>
128 <p>See the on-line <a href="fetchmail-man.html">manual page</a> for
131 <p>See the <a href="fetchmail-FAQ.html">HTML Fetchmail FAQ</a> for
132 troubleshooting help.</p>
134 <p>See the <a href="design-notes.html">Fetchmail Design Notes</a>
135 for discussion of some of the design choices in fetchmail.</p>
137 <p>See the project's <a href="todo.html">To-Do list</a> for indications
138 of known problems and requested features.</p>
140 <h1>How to get fetchmail:</h1>
142 <p>You can get any of the following leading-edge resources here:</p>
144 <li> <a href="fetchmail-$version.tar.gz">
145 Gzipped source archive of fetchmail $version</a>
146 <li> <a href="fetchmail-$version-1.i386.rpm">
147 Intel binary RPM of fetchmail $version (uses $glibc)</a>
148 <li> <a href="fetchmail-$version-1.src.rpm">
149 Source RPM of fetchmail $version</a>
152 <p>The <a href="fetchmail-$version.tar.gz.asc">detached GPG
153 signature</a> for the binary tarball can be used to check it for
154 correctness, with the command</p>
157 gpg --verify fetchmail-$version.tar.gz.asc fetchmail-$version.tar.gz
160 <p>MD5 <a href="checksums">checksums</a> are available for these files; the
161 checksum file is cryptographically signed and can be verified with the
165 gpg --verify checksums.asc
170 if [ $version != $goldvers ]
172 cat >>index.html <<EOF
174 <p>Or you can get the last \`gold' version, $goldname:</p>
176 <li> <a href="fetchmail-$goldvers.tar.gz">
177 Gzipped source archive of fetchmail $goldname</a>
178 <li> <a href="fetchmail-$goldvers-1.i386.rpm">
179 Intel binary RPM of fetchmail $goldname (uses glibc)</a>
180 <li> <a href="fetchmail-$goldvers-1.alpha.rpm">
181 Alpha binary RPM of fetchmail $goldname (uses glibc)</a>
182 <li> <a href="fetchmail-$goldvers-1.src.rpm">
183 Source RPM of fetchmail $goldname</a>
185 <p>The <a href="fetchmail-$goldvers.tar.gz.asc">detached GPG signature</a> for the
186 binary tarball can be used to check it for correctness, with the command</p>
189 gpg --verify fetchmail-$goldvers.tar.gz.asc fetchmail-$goldvers.tar.gz
192 <p>For differences between the leading-edge $version and gold $goldname versions,
193 see the distribution <a href="NEWS">NEWS</a> file.</p>
197 cat >>index.html <<EOF
198 <p>(Note that the binary RPMs don't have the POP2, OTP, IPv6, Kerberos,
199 GSSAPI, Compuserve RPA, Microsoft NTLM, or GNU gettext
200 internationalization support compiled in. To get any of these you
201 will have to build from sources.)</p>
203 <p>The latest version of fetchmail is also carried in the
204 <a href="http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/mail/pop/!INDEX.html">
205 Metalab remote mail tools directory</a>.</p>
207 <h1>Getting help with fetchmail:</h1>
209 <p>There is a fetchmail-friends list for people who want to discuss fixes
210 and improvements in fetchmail and help co-develop it. It's a MailMan
211 list, which you can sign up for at
212 <a href="http://lists.ccil.org/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-friends">
213 fetchmail-friends@ccil.org</a>.
214 There is also an announcements-only list,
215 <a href="http://lists.ccil.org/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-announce">
216 fetchmail-announce@lists.ccil.org</a>.</p>
218 <p>Note: before submitting a question to the list, <strong>please read
219 the <a href="fetchmail-FAQ.html">FAQ</a></strong> (especially item <a
220 href="http:fetchmail-FAQ.html#G3">G3</a> on how to report bugs). We
221 tend to get the same three newbie questions over and over again. The
222 FAQ covers them like a blanket.</p>
224 <p>Fetchmail was written and is maintained by <a
225 href="../index.html">Eric S. Raymond</a>. There are some designated
226 backup maintainers (<a href="mailto:funk+@osu.edu">Rob Funk</a>, <a
227 href="http://www.dallas.net/~fox/">David DeSimone aka Fuzzy Fox</a>,
228 <a href="mailto:imdave@mcs.net">Dave Bodenstab</a>). Other backup
229 maintainers may be added in the future, in order to ensure continued
230 support should Eric S. Raymond drop permanently off the net for any
233 <h1>You can help improve fetchmail:</h1>
235 <p>I welcome your code contributions. But even if you don't write code,
236 you can help fetchmail improve.</p>
238 <p>If you administer a site that runs a post-office server, you may be
239 able help improve fetchmail by lending me a test account on your site.
240 Note that I do not need a shell account for this purpose, just a
241 maildrop. Nor am I interested in collecting maildrops per se --
242 what I'm collecting is different <em>kinds of servers</em>.</p>
244 <p>Before each release, I run a test harness that sends date-stamped
245 test mail to each site on my regression-test list, then tries to
246 retrieve it. Please take a look at my <a href="testservers.html">
247 list of test servers</a>. If you can lend me an account on a kind
248 of server that is <em>not</em> already on this list, please do.</p>
250 <h1>Who uses fetchmail:</h1>
252 <p>Fetchmail entered full production status with the 2.0.0 version in
253 November 1996 after about five months of evolution from the ancestral
254 <code>popclient</code> utility. It has since come into extremely wide use
255 in the Internet/Unix/Linux community. The Red Hat, Debian and
256 Suse Linux distributions and their derivatives all include it. A
257 customized version is used at Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link. Several
258 large ISPs are known to recommend it to Unix-using SLIP and PPP
261 <p>Somewhere around a thousand people have participated on the fetchmail
262 beta lists (at time of current release there were $subscribers on the
263 friends and announce lists). While it's hard to count the users of
264 open-source software, we can estimate based on (a) population figures
265 at the WELL and other known fetchmail sites, (b) the size of the
266 Linux-using ISP customer base, and (c) the volume of fetchmail-related
267 talk on USENET. These estimates suggest that daily fetchmail users
268 number well into the hundreds of thousands, and possibly over a million.</p>
270 <h1>The sociology of fetchmail:</h1>
272 <p>The fetchmail development project was a sociological experiment as well
273 as a technical effort. I ran it as a test of some theories about why the
274 Linux development model works.</p>
276 <p>I wrote a paper, <a
277 href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/">The
278 Cathedral And The Bazaar</a>, about these theories and the project.
279 I developed the line of analysis it suggested in two later essays.
280 These papers became quite popular and (to my continuing astonishment) may
281 have actually helped change the world. Chase the title link, above,
282 for links to all three papers.</p>
284 <p>I have done some analysis on the information in the project NEWS file.
285 You can view a <a href="history.html">statistical history</a> showing
286 levels of participation and release frequency over time.</p>
288 <h1>Recent releases and where fetchmail is going:</h1>
290 <p>Fetchmail is now sufficiently stable and effective that I'm getting
291 very little pressure to fix things or add features. Development has
292 slowed way down, release frequency has dropped off, and we're
293 basically in maintainance mode.</p>
295 <p>Major changes or additions therefore seem unlikely until there are
296 significant changes in or additions to the related protocol RFCs. One
297 development that would stimulate a new release almost instantly is the
298 deployment of a standard lightweight encrypted authentication method
299 for IMAP sessions.</p>
301 <h1>Where you can use fetchmail:</h1>
303 <p>The fetchmail code was developed under Linux, but has also been
304 extensively tested under 4.4BSD, SunOS, Solaris, AIX, and NEXTSTEP. It
305 should be readily portable to other Unix variants (it requires only
306 POSIX plus BSD sockets, and uses GNU autoconf).</p>
308 <p>Fetchmail is supported only for Unix by its official maintainers.
309 However, it is reported to build and run correctly under BeOS,
310 AmigaOS, Rhapsody, and QNX as well.</p>
312 <h1>Related resources:</h1>
314 <p>Jochen Hayek is developing a set of
315 <a href="http://www.ACM.org/~Jochen_Hayek/JHimap_utils/">
316 IMAP tools in Python</a> that read your .fetchmailrc file and are
317 designed to work with fetchmail. Jochen's tools can report selected
318 header lines, or move incoming messages to named mailboxes based on
319 the contents of headers.</p>
321 <p>Scott Bronson has written a fetchmail plugin (actually, a specialist
323 href="http://www.trestle.com/linux/trestlemail/">trestlemail</a> that
324 helps redirect multidrop mail.</p>
326 <p>Donncha O Caoihm has written a Perl script called
327 <a href="http://cork.linux.ie/projects/install-sendmail/">install-sendmail</a>
328 that assists you in installing sendmail and fetchmail together.</p>
330 <p>Peter Hawkins has written a script called <a
331 href="http://www.hawkins.emu.id.au/gotmail/">gotmail</a>
332 that can retrieve Hotmail. Another script,
333 <a href="http://yosucker.sourceforge.net">yosucker</a>, can retrieve
336 <p>A hacker identifying himself simply as \`Steines' has written a
337 filter which rewrites the to-line with a line which only includes
338 receipients for a given domain and renames the old to-line. It also
339 rewrites the domain-part of addresses if the offical domain is
340 different from the local domain. You can find it <a
341 href="http://www.steines.com/mailf/">here</a>.</p>
343 <h1>Fetchmail's funniest fan letter:</h1>
345 <a href="funny.html">This letter</a> still cracks me up whenever I reread it.
347 <h1>The fetchmail button:</h1>
349 <p>If you use fetchmail and like it, here's a nifty fetchmail button you
350 can put on your web page:</p>
352 <center><img src="fetchmail.png" alt="fetchmail logo" /></center>
354 <p>Thanks to <a href="http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~smatus1/">Steve
355 Matuszek</a> for the graphic design. The hand in the button (and the
356 larger top-of-page graphic) was actually derived from a color scan of
357 the fetchmail author's hand.</p>
359 <h1>Fetchmail mirror sites:</h1>
361 <p>There is a FTP mirror of the current sources and RPMs in Japan at
362 <a href="ftp://ftp.win.ne.jp/pub/network/mail/fetchmail">
363 ftp://ftp.win.ne.jp/pub/network/mail/fetchmail</a>.
365 <h1>Reviews and Awards</h1>
367 <p>Fetchmail was DaveCentral's Best Of Linux winner for
368 <a href="http://linux.davecentral.com/bol_19990630.html">June 30 1999</a>.</p>
370 <p>Fetchmail was a five-star Editor's Pick at Softlandindia.</p>
373 <table width="100%" cellpadding=0 summary="Canned page footer"><tr>
374 <td width="30%">Back to
375 <a href="http://$WWWVIRTUAL/~esr/software.html">Software</a>
376 <td width="30%" align=center>Up to <a href="http://$WWWVIRTUAL/~esr/sitemap.html">Site Map</a>
377 <td width="30%" align=right>$date
381 <address>Eric S. Raymond <a href="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com"><esr@snark.thyrsus.com></a></address>
386 # The following sets edit modes for GNU EMACS