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>, and ESMTP ETRN. 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.<P>
101 Fetchmail is fast and lightweight. It packs all its standard
102 features (POP3, IMAP, and ETRN support) in ${fetchmailsize}K of core on a
103 Pentium under Linux.<p>
105 Fetchmail is <a href="http://www.opensource.org">open-source</a>
106 software. The openness of the sources is your strongest possible
107 assurance of quality and reliability.<P>
109 <H1>Where to find out more about fetchmail:</H1>
111 See the <a href="fetchmail-features.html">Fetchmail Feature List</a> for more
112 about what fetchmail does.<p>
114 See the on-line <a href="fetchmail-man.html">manual page</a> for
115 basics. (Sorry about the flat presentation, but
116 the man2html shipped with RH6.0 chokes and dies on the fetchmail man page.<p>
118 See the <a href="fetchmail-FAQ.html">HTML Fetchmail FAQ</A> for
119 troubleshooting help.<p>
121 See the <a href="design-notes.html">Fetchmail Design Notes</a>
122 for discussion of some of the design choices in fetchmail.<P>
124 <H1>How to get fetchmail:</H1>
126 You can get any of the following leading-edge resources here:
128 <LI> <a href="fetchmail-$version.tar.gz">
129 Gzipped source archive of fetchmail $version</a>
130 <LI> <a href="fetchmail-$version-1.i386.rpm">
131 Intel binary RPM of fetchmail $version (uses $glibc)</a>
132 <LI> <a href="fetchmail-$version-1.src.rpm">
133 Source RPM of fetchmail $version</a>
136 MD5 <a href="checksums">checksums</a> are available for these files.<p>
139 if [ $version != $goldvers ]
141 cat >>index.html <<EOF
143 Or you can get the last \`gold' version, $goldname:
145 <LI> <a href="fetchmail-$goldvers.tar.gz">
146 Gzipped source archive of fetchmail $goldname</a>
147 <LI> <a href="fetchmail-$goldvers-1.i386.rpm">
148 Intel binary RPM of fetchmail $goldname (uses glibc)</a>
149 <LI> <a href="fetchmail-$goldvers-1.alpha.rpm">
150 Alpha binary RPM of fetchmail $goldname (uses glibc)</a>
151 <LI> <a href="fetchmail-$goldvers-1.src.rpm">
152 Source RPM of fetchmail $goldname</a>
154 For differences between the leading-edge $version and gold $goldname versions,
155 see the distribution <a href="NEWS">NEWS</a> file.<p>
159 cat >>index.html <<EOF
160 (Note that the binary RPMs don't have the POP2, OTP, IPv6, Kerberos,
161 GSSAPI, Compuserve RPA, Microsoft NTLM, or GNU gettext
162 internationalization support compiled in. To get any of these you
163 will have to build from sources.)<p>
165 The latest version of fetchmail is also carried in the
166 <a href="http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/mail/pop/!INDEX.html">
167 Metalab remote mail tools directory</a>.
169 <H1>Getting help with fetchmail:</H1>
171 There is a fetchmail-friends list for people who want to discuss fixes
172 and improvements in fetchmail and help co-develop it. It's at <a
173 href="mailto:fetchmail-friends@ccil.org">fetchmail-friends@ccil.org</a>.
174 There is also an announcements-only list, <em>fetchmail-announce@ccil.org</em>.<P>
176 Both lists are SmartList reflectors; sign up in the usual way with a
177 message containing the word "subscribe" in the subject line sent to
178 <a href="mailto:fetchmail-friends-request@ccil.org?subject=subscribe">
179 fetchmail-friends-request@ccil.org</a> or
180 <a href="mailto:fetchmail-announce-request@ccil.org?subject=subscribe">
181 fetchmail-announce-request@ccil.org</a>. (Similarly, "unsubscribe"
182 in the Subject line unsubscribes you, and "help" returns general list help) <p>
184 Note: before submitting a question to the list, <strong>please read
185 the <a href="fetchmail-FAQ.html">FAQ</a></strong> (especially item <a
186 href="http:fetchmail-FAQ.html#G3">G3</a> on how to report bugs). We
187 tend to get the same three newbie questions over and over again. The
188 FAQ covers them like a blanket.<P>
190 Fetchmail was written and is maintained by <a
191 href="../index.html">Eric S. Raymond</a>. There are some designated
192 backup maintainers (<a href="mailto:funk+@osu.edu">Rob Funk</a>, <a
193 href="mailto:alberty@apexxtech.com">Al Youngwerth</a>, <a
194 href="mailto:imdave@mcs.net">Dave Bodenstab</a>). Other backup
195 maintainers may be added in the future, in order to ensure continued
196 support should Eric S. Raymond drop permanently off the net for any
199 <H1>Who uses fetchmail:</H1>
201 Fetchmail entered full production status with the 2.0.0 version in
202 November 1996 after about five months of evolution from the ancestral
203 <IT>popclient</IT> utility. It has since come into extremely wide use
204 in the Internet/Unix/Linux community. The Red Hat, Debian and
205 S.u.S.e. Linux distributions and their derivatives all include it. A
206 customized version is used at Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link. Several
207 large ISPs are known to recommend it to Unix-using SLIP and PPP
210 Over seven hundred people have participated on the fetchmail beta list
211 (at time of current release there were $subscribers on the friends and
212 announce lists). While it's hard to count the users of open-source
213 software, we can estimate based on (a) population figures at the WELL
214 and other known fetchmail sites, (b) the size of the Linux-using ISP
215 customer base, and (c) the volume of fetchmail-related talk on USENET.
216 These estimates suggest that daily fetchmail users number well into
217 the tens of thousands, and possibly over a hundred thousand.<p>
219 <H1>The sociology of fetchmail:</H1>
221 The fetchmail development project was a sociological experiment as well
222 as a technical effort. I ran it as a test of some theories about why the
223 Linux development model works.<P>
226 HREF="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/">The
227 Cathedral And The Bazaar</A>, about these theories and the project.
228 I developed the line of analysis it suggested in two later essays.
229 These papers became quite popular and (to my continuing astonishment) may
230 have actually helped change the world. Chase the title link, above,
231 for links to all three papers.<P>
233 I have done some analysus on the information in the project NEWS file.
234 You can view a <a href="history.html">statistical history</a> showing
235 levels of participation and release frequency over time.<p>
237 <H1>Recent releases and where fetchmail is going:</H1>
239 Fetchmail is now sufficiently stable and effective that I'm getting
240 very little pressure to fix things or add features. Development has
241 slowed way down, release frequency has dropped off, and we're
242 basically in maintainance mode. Barring any urgent bug fixes, my
243 intention is to leave 5.0.0 alone for several months.<p>
245 Major changes or additions therefore seem unlikely until there are
246 significant changes in or additions to the related protocol RFCs. One
247 development that would stimulate a new release almost instantly is the
248 deployment of a standard lightweight encrypted authentication method
249 for IMAP sessions.<p>
251 <H1>Where you can use fetchmail:</H1>
253 The fetchmail code was developed under Linux, but has also been
254 extensively tested under 4.4BSD, SunOS, Solaris, AIX, and NEXTSTEP. It
255 should be readily portable to other Unix variants (it requires only
256 POSIX plus BSD sockets, and uses GNU autoconf).<P>
258 Fetchmail is supported only for Unix by its official maintainers.
259 However, it is reported to build and run correctly under AmigaOS,
260 Rhapsody, and QNX as well. <p>
262 <H1>Related resources</H1>
264 Jochen Hayek is developing a set of
265 <a href="http://www.ACM.org/~Jochen_Hayek/JHimap_utils/">
266 IMAP tools in Python</a> that read your .fetchmailrc file and are
267 designed to work with fetchmail. Jochen's tools can report selected
268 header lines, or move incoming messages to named mailboxes based on
269 the contents of headers.<p>
271 Scott Bronson has written a fetchmnail plugin (actually, a specialist
273 href="http://www.trestle.com/linux/trestlemail/">trestlemail</a> that
274 helps redirect multidrop mail.<p>
276 Hugo Rabson has written a script called \`hotmole' that can retrieve
277 Hotmail mail via the web using Lynx. The script is available on <a
278 href="http://www.jin-sei-kai.demon.co.uk/hugo/linux.html"> Hugo
279 Rabson's Linux page</a>.<P>
281 <H1>Fetchmail's funniest fan letter:</H1>
283 <A HREF="funny.html">This letter</A> still cracks me up whenever I reread it.
285 <H1>The fetchmail button:</H1>
287 If you use fetchmail and like it, here's a nifty fetchmail button you
288 can put on your web page:<P>
290 <center><img src="fetchmail.png"></center><P>
292 Thanks to <a href="http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~smatus1/">Steve
293 Matuszek</a> for the graphic design. The hand in the button (and the
294 larger top-of-page graphic) was actually derived from a color scan of
295 the fetchmail author's hand. <P>
297 <H1>Fetchmail mirror sites:</H1>
299 There is a FTP mirror of the fetchmail FTP directory (not this WWW
300 home site, just the current sources and RPM) in Japan at
301 <a href="ftp://ftp.win.or.jp/pub/network/mail/fetchmail">
302 ftp://ftp.win.or.jp/pub/network/mail/fetchmail</a>.<P>
304 <H1>Reviews and Awards</H1>
306 Fetchmail was DaveCentral's Best Of Linux winner for
307 <a href="http://linux.davecentral.com/bol_19990630.html">June 30 1999</a>.
310 <table width="100%" cellpadding=0><tr>
311 <td width="30%">Back to
312 <a href="http://$WWWVIRTUAL/~esr/software.html">Software</a>
313 <td width="30%" align=center>Up to <a href="http://$WWWVIRTUAL/~esr/sitemap.html">Site Map</a>
314 <td width="30%" align=right>$date
317 <P><ADDRESS>Eric S. Raymond <A HREF="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com"><esr@snark.thyrsus.com></A></ADDRESS>
322 # The following sets edit modes for GNU EMACS