- README for fetchmail
+ fetchmail README
-fetchmail is a full-featured, robust, well-documented POP2, POP3, APOP, and
-IMAP batch mail retrieval 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, where it can then be be read by normal mail user agents such as
-elm(1) or Mail(1).
+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 program was originally developed (under the name popclient) by
-Carl Harris <ceharris@mal.com> and now maintained by Eric S. Raymond
-<esr@thyrsus.com>. See the file NEWS for a version history.
+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.
-The fetchmail code was developed under Linux and should be readily portable
-to other UNIX systems (it uses GNU autoconf). It has also been ported to
-QNX; to build under QNX, see the header comments in the Makefile.
+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.
-You can find the latest version of fetchmail from Eric's home page
+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.
- http://www.ccil.org/~esr
+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.
-Features of fetchmail include:
+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.
- * POP2, POP3, APOP, RPOP and IMAP support with auto-probing for a
- server on the host if no protocol is specified.
+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.
- * Easy control via command line or free-format run control file.
+You can get the code from the fetchmail home page:
- * Daemon mode -- fetchmail can be run in background to poll
- one or more hosts at a specified interval.
+ http://fetchmail.berlios.de/
- * Delivery via via SMTP to the client machine's port 25 (or
- optionally via either file-append with mandatory locking or an
- MDA you specify).
+Enjoy!
- * 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.
-
-There is a man page at fetchmail.man. A sample rc file is at sample.rcfile.
-For a release history, see the file NEWS.
- -- esr
+ -- esr, ma
projects / ~andy / fetchmail / blobdiff