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.
-1. CONFIGURE
+The Frequently Asked Questions list, included as the file FAQ in this
+distributions, answers the most common questions about configuring and
+running fetchmail.
+
+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 and *make sure
+they're on the normal library path* where configure will find them. 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. You need version 2.32 or better.
+
+The OPIE library sources are available at ftp://ftp.inner.net/pub/opie.
+You can also find OPIE and IPV6-capable servers there.
+
+Building in IPv6 support or the IPsec patches REQUIRES that Craig
+Metz's inet6-apps kit be installed; the IPsec patches require that the
+kit be built with network security API support enabled. The kit can be
+gotten from ftp.ipv6.inner.net:/pub/ipv6 (via IPv6) or ftp.inner.net
+/pub/ipv6 (via IPv4).
+
+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.
+
+Support for CompuServe's RPA authentication method (rather similar to
+APOP) is available but also not included in the standard build. You
+can compile it in with `configure --enable-RPA'.
+
+Support for authentication using RFC1731 GSSAPI is available
+but also not included by default. You can compile it in with
+`configure --with-gssapi', which looks for GSSAPI support in standard
+locations (/usr, /usr/local). If you set --with-GSSAPI=DIR
+you can direct the build to look for GSSAPI support under DIR.
+
+If you want to build for debugging,
+
+ CFLAGS=-g LDFLAGS=" " ./configure
+
+will do that.
+
+To enable multilingual support using GNU gettext,
+
+ configure --prefix=/usr --enable-nls
+
+The prefix argument is needed to generate the makefiles in the po directory
+correctly; otherwise, they'll install the internationalization stuff in
+/usr/local where fetchmail can't see it.
+
+Advanced configuration:
+
+Specifying --with-kerberos=DIR or --with-kerberos5=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.
+
+You may also want to hand-hack the Makefile if you're writing a custom
+or bleeding-edge resolver library. In that case you will probably
+want to add -lresolv or whatever to the definition of LOADLIBS.
+
+It is also possible to explicitly condition out the support for
+POP3, IMAP, and ETRN (with configure arguments of --disable-POP3,
+--disable-IMAP, and --disable-ETRN respectively). However, none
+of these wins back more that 3 to 4K on an Intel box.
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 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.
-Next run
+Run
make
-This will compile fetchmail for your system. Note that in order to
-build it, you'll need either flex at version 2.5.3 org greater, or lex.
+This should compile fetchmail for your system. If fetchmail fails to build
+properly, see the FAQ section B on build-time problems.
-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 exim, you must configure it to accept local
-addresses as valid RCPT TO lines.
+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.
-Note: if you have been using popclient (the ancestor of this program)
-at version 3.0b6 or later, do this
-
-(cd ~; mv ~/.poprc ~/.fetchmailrc)
-
-in order to migrate. Be aware that some of popclient's unnecessary
-options have been removed (see the NOTES file for explanation). You
-can't deliver to a local mail file anymore, and using an MDA for delivery
-is discouraged. If you throw those options away, fetchmail will now forward
-your mail into your system's normal Internet-mail delivery path.
-
-If you use an MDA with popclient or an older version of fetchmail that
-requires %s in the MDA string in order to substitute in a local
-delivery address, remove it. One consequences of the internal changes
-to support multi-drop mailboxes is that local delivery addresses will
-be appended to the end of the command in the obvious way.
+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 imapd servers that are
-distributed with Pine from the University of Washington. Other
-POP3 servers have been known to give it indigestion. Test carefully!
-If you have problems, switch to imap.
+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,
+despite the fact that Microsoft Exchange is extremely broken (returns
+incorrect message lengths in LIST responses).
-If you're going to use multi-drop mailboxes, test with particular care.
-This code was very difficult to test and should be considered experimental.
+7. REPORTING BUGS
-6. 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