fetchmail README
-fetchmail is a full-featured, robust, well-documented POP2, POP3,
-APOP, and IMAP batch mail retrieval/forwarding utility intended to be
-used over on-demand TCP/IP links (such as SLIP or PPP connections).
-It retrieves mail from remote mail servers and forwards it to your
-local (client) machine's delivery system, so it can then be be read by
+Fetchmail is a free, full-featured, robust, well-documented remote
+mail retrieval and forwarding utility intended to be used over
+on-demand TCP/IP links (such as SLIP or PPP connections). It
+retrieves mail from remote mail servers and forwards it to your local
+(client) machine's delivery system, so it can then be be read by
normal mail user agents such as elm(1) or Mail(1).
-The fetchmail code was developed under Linux, but has also been
-extensively tested under 4.4BSD, Solaris and NEXTSTEP. It should be
-readily portable to other Unix variants (it uses GNU autoconf). It
-has also been ported to QNX; to build under QNX, see the header
-comments in the Makefile.
-
-For those of you already familiar with previous versions, here are the
-major new features since 3.0:
-
- ** Support for ESMTP 8BITMIME and SIZE options
-
-There have also been numerous improvements in multidrop mailbox handling.
-Under many circumstances fetchmail can now determine a mail message's
-envelope address from its headers, making multidrop forwarding more reliable.
-
-Here are fetchmail's main features. Those unique to fetchmail
-(relative to fetchpop1.9, PopTart-0.9.3, get-mail, gwpop, pimp-1.0,
-pop-perl5-1.2, popc, popmail-1.6 and upop) are marked with **.
-
- * **POP2, POP3, **APOP, **RPOP, **IMAP2bis, **IMAP4 support.
-
- ** Support for Kerberos user authentication (either MIT or Cygnus).
-
- ** Host is auto-probed for a working server if no protocol is
- specified for the connection. Thus you don't need to know
- what servers are running on your mail host in advance; the
- verbose option will tell you which one succeeds.
-
- ** Delivery via via SMTP to the client machine's port 25. This
- means the retrieved mail automatically goes to the system
- default MDA as if it were normal sender-initiated SMTP mail.
-
- ** Configurable timeout to detect if server connection is dropped.
-
- ** Support for retrieving and forwarding from multi-drop mailboxes
- that is guaranteed not to cause mail loops.
-
- ** Support for secure use with ssh.
+Fetchmail supports all standard mail-retrieval protocols in use on the
+Internet: POP2, POP3, RPOP, APOP, KPOP, IMAP2bis, IMAP4, IMAP4rev1
+ESMTP ETRN, and ODMR. Fetchmail also fully supports authentication
+via GSSAPI, Kerberos 4 and 5, RFC1938 one-time passwords, Compuserve's
+POP3 with RPA, Microsoft's NTLM, Demon Internet's SDPS, or CRAM-MD5
+authentication a la RFC2195. Fetchmail also supports end-to-end
+encryption with OpenSSL.
- ** Mailserver passwords can be parsed out of your .netrc file.
-
- ** When forwarding mail via SMTP, fetchmail respects the 571
- "spam filter" response and discards any mail that triggers it.
-
- ** Transaction and error logging may optionally be done via syslog.
-
- ** (Linux only) Security option to permit fetchmail to poll a host
- only when a point-to-point link to a particular IP address is up.
-
- ** RPOP support is back.
-
- * Easy control via command line or free-format run control file.
-
- * Daemon mode -- fetchmail can be run in background to poll
- one or more hosts at a specified interval.
-
- * From:, To:, Cc:, and Reply-To: headers are rewritten so that
- usernames relative to the fetchmail host become fully-qualified
- Internet addresses. This enables replies to work correctly.
- (Would be unique to fetchmail if I hadn't added it to fetchpop.)
-
- * Strict conformance to relevant RFCs and good debugging options.
- You could use fetchmail to test and debug server implementatations.
-
- * Message and header processing are 8-bit clean.
-
- * Carefully written, comprehensive and up-to-date man page describing
- not only modes of operation but also (**) how to diagnose the most
- common kinds of problems and what to do about deficient servers
+The fetchmail code was developed under Linux, but has also been
+extensively tested under the BSD variants, AIX, HP-UX versions 9 and
+10, SunOS, Solaris, NEXTSTEP, OSF 3.2, IRIX, and Rhapsody.
- * Rugged, simple, and well-tested code -- the author relies on it
- every day and it has never lost mail, not even in experimental
- versions.
+It should be readily portable to other Unix variants (it uses GNU
+autoconf). It has been ported to LynxOS and BeOS and will build there
+without special action. It has also been ported to QNX; to build
+under QNX, see the header comments in the Makefile. It is reported to
+build and run under AmigaOS.
- * Large user community -- fetchmail has a large user base (the
- author's beta list includes about two hundred people). This
- means feedback is rapid, bugs get found and fixed rapidly.
+See the distribution files FEATURES for a full list of features, NEWS
+for detailed information on recent changes, NOTES for design notes, and
+TODO for a list of things that still need doing.
The fetchmail code appears to be stable and free of bugs affecting
normal operation (that is, retrieving from POP3 or IMAP in single-drop
mode and forwarding via SMTP to sendmail). It will probably undergo
substantial change only if and when support for a new retrieval
-protocol or authentication mode is added. See the distribution files
-NEWS for detailed information on recent changes and NOTES for design
-notes.
-
-You can easily fetch the latest version of fetchmail via FTP from the
-following FTP directory:
+protocol or authentication mode is added.
- ftp://ftp.ccil.org/pub/esr/fetchmail
+If you want to hack on this code, a list of known bugs and to-do items
+can be found in the file todo.html.
-Or you can get it from Eric's home page:
+You can get the code from the fetchmail home page:
- http://www.ccil.org/~esr
+ http://fetchmail.berlios.de/
-Just chase the link to Eric's Freeware Collection. Besides fetchmail, it
-includes a tasty selection of Web authoring tools, programmer's aids,
-graphics libraries, compilers for bizarre languages, games, and
-miscellaneous interesting hacks. Enjoy!
+Enjoy!
- -- esr
+ -- esr, ma
projects / ~andy / fetchmail / blobdiff