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.
+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.
- * 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
+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.
- * Rugged, simple, and well-tested code -- the author relies on it
- every day and it has never lost mail, not even in experimental
- versions.
+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.
- * 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.
+The INSTALL file describes how to configure and install fetchmail.
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