INSTALL Instructions for fetchmail
-If you have installed binaries (e.g. from an RPM) you can skip to step 4.
+If you have installed binaries (e.g. from an RPM) you can skip to step 5.
If you are a Linux system packager, be aware that the build process generates
-an RPM spec file at fetchmail.spec.
+an RPM spec file at fetchmail.spec, and you can "make rpm" to generate an
+RPM and SRPM.
The Frequently Asked Questions list, included as the file FAQ in this
distributions, answers the most common questions about configuring and
running fetchmail.
-1. CONFIGURE
+1. USEFUL THINGS TO INSTALL FIRST
+
+If you want support for RFC1938-compliant one-time passwords, you'll
+need to install Craig Metz's OPIE libraries first. Then configure
+with --enable-OPIE, and fetchmail build process will detect them and
+compile appropriately.
+
+Note: there is no point in doing this unless your server is
+OTP-enabled. To test this, telnet to the server port and give it
+a valid USER id. If the OK response includes the string "otp-",
+you should install OPIE.
+
+The OPIE library sources are available at ftp://ftp.inner.net/pub/opie.
+
+2. CONFIGURE
Installing fetchmail is easy. From within this directory, type:
The configure script accepts certain standard configuration options.
These include --prefix, --exec-prefix, --bindir, --infodir, --mandir,
-and --srcdir. Do `config --help' for more.
+and --srcdir. Do `configure --help' for more.
+
+POP2 support is no longer compiled in by default, as POP2 is way obsolete
+and there don't seem to be any live servers for it anymore. You can
+configure it back in if you want with `configure --enable-POP2', but
+leaving it out cuts the executable's size slightly.
+
+Specifying --with-kerberos=DIR will tell the fetchmail build process to
+look in DIR for Kerberos support. Configure normally looks in /usr/kerberos
+and /usr/athena; if you specify this option with an argument it will look
+in DIR first.
+
+Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be good standardization of where
+Kerberos lives. If your configuration doesn't match one of the four
+that fetchmail's configure.in knows about, you may find you have to
+hand-hack the Makefile a bit.
+
+If you want to build for debugging,
+
+ CFLAGS=-g LDFLAGS=" " ./configure
+
+will do that.
If you're running QNX, edit the distributed Makefile directly. The
QNX values for various macros are there but commented out; all you
have to do is uncomment them.
-2. MAKE
+3. MAKE
You may find you need flex at version 2.5.3 or greater to build
-fetchmail. The stock lex distributed with Linux does not work -- it
-yields a parser which core-dumps on syntax errors.
+fetchmail. The stock lex distributed with some versions of Linux does
+not work -- it yields a parser which core-dumps on syntax errors. You
+can get flex at the GNU ftp site, ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu.
Run
This should compile fetchmail for your system.
-3. INSTALL
+4. INSTALL
Lastly, become root and run
make install
This will install fetchmail. By default, fetchmail will be installed
-in /usr/local/bin, with the man page in /usr/local/man/man1. If you
-wish to change these defaults, edit the Makefile AFTER you run
-"configure" but BEFORE you run "make install." You can easily choose
-a prefix other than /usr/local, or you can choose completely different
-directories for each item.
+in /usr/local/bin, with the man page in /usr/local/man/man1. You can
+use the configure options --bindir and --mandir to change these.
-NOTE: If you are using an MTA other than sendmail (such as qmail or exim),
-see the FAQ (section T) for discussion of any special configuration steps
-that may be necessary.
+NOTE: If you are using an MTA other than sendmail (such as qmail,
+exim, or smail), see the FAQ (section T) for discussion of any special
+configuration steps that may be necessary.
-4. SET UP A RUN CONTROL FILE
+5. SET UP A RUN CONTROL FILE
-See the man page or the file sample.rcfile for a description of how to
+See the man page and the file sample.rcfile for a description of how to
configure your individual preferences.
If you're upgrading from popclient, see question F4 in the FAQ file.
-5. TEST
+6. TEST
I strongly recommend that your first fetchmail run use the -v and -k
options, in case there is something not quite right with your server,
your local delivery configuration or your port 25 listener. Also,
beware of aliases that direct your local mail back to the server host!
-This software is known to work with the qpop/popper series of
-freeware POP3 servers; also with the IMAP2bis and IMAP4 servers that are
-distributed with Pine from the University of Washington.
-
-6. REPORTING BUGS
+This software is known to work with the qpop/popper series of freeware
+POP3 servers; also with the IMAP2bis and IMAP4 servers that are
+distributed with Pine from the University of Washington; also with the
+Cyrus IMAP server from CMU. This covers all the servers normally
+hosted on Linux and *BSD systems. It also works with Microsoft Exchange,
+despiite the fact that Microsoft Exchange is extremely broken (returns
+incorrect message lengths in LIST responses).
-You should read the FAQ file question G1 before reporting a bug.
+7. REPORTING BUGS
-7. USE IT
+You should read the FAQ file question G3 before reporting a bug.
-Enjoy!
+8. USE IT
+Once you've verified your configuration, you can start fetchmail to
+run in background and forget about it. Enjoy!
projects / ~andy / fetchmail / blobdiff