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-<td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 1998/05/16 19:17:42 $
+<td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 1999/08/21 06:04:18 $
</table>
<HR>
<H1>Frequently Asked Questions About Fetchmail</H1>
<a href="#G9">G9. Is any special configuration needed to use a dynamic
IP address?</a><br>
<a href="#G10">G10. Is any special configuration needed to use firewalls?</a><br>
+<a href="#G11">G11. Is any special configuration needed to <em>send</em> mail?</a><br>
+
+<a href="#G12">G12. Is fetchmail Y2K-compliant?</a><br>
<h1>Build-time problems:</h1>
<a href="#C1">C1. Why do I need a .fetchmailrc when running as root on my own machine?</a><br>
<a href="#C2">C2. How can I arrange for a fetchmail daemon to get killed when I log out?</a><br>
<a href="#C3">C3. How do I know what interface and address to use with --interface?</a><br>
-<a href="#C4">C4. How can I get fetchmail to work with ssh?</a><br>
-<a href="#C5">C5. How can I set up support for sendmail's anti-spam 571 response?</a><br>
+<a href="#C4">C4. How can I set up support for sendmail's anti-spam features?</a><br>
-<h1>How to make fetchmail play nice with other software:</h1>
+<h1>How to make fetchmail play nice with various MTAs:</h1>
<a href="#T1">T1. How can I use fetchmail with sendmail?</a><br>
<a href="#T2">T2. How can I use fetchmail with qmail?</a><br>
<a href="#T4">T4. How can I use fetchmail with smail?</a><br>
<a href="#T5">T5. How can I use fetchmail with SCO's MMDF?</a><br>
<a href="#T6">T6. How can I use fetchmail with Lotus Notes?</a><br>
-<a href="#T7">T7. How can I use fetchmail with Microsoft Exchange?</a><br>
-<a href="#T8">T8. How can I use fetchmail with Compuserve RPA?</a><br>
-<a href="#T9">T9. How can I use fetchmail with HP OpenMail?</a><br>
-<a href="#T10>T10. How can I use fetchmail with SOCKS?</a><br>
-<a href="#T11>T11. How can I use fetchmail with IPv6 and IPsec?</a><br>
+
+<h1>How to make fetchmail work with various servers:</h1>
+
+<a href="#S1">S1. How can I use fetchmail with qpopper?</a><br>
+<a href="#S2">S2. How can I use fetchmail with Microsoft Exchange?</a><br>
+<a href="#S3">S3. How can I use fetchmail with Compuserve RPA?</a><br>
+<a href="#S4">S4. How can I use fetchmail with Demon Internet's SDPS?</a><br>
+<a href="#S5">S5. How can I use fetchmail with usa.net's servers?</a><br>
+<a href="#S6">S6. How can I use fetchmail with HP OpenMail?</a><br>
+<a href="#S7">S7. How can I use fetchmail with geocities POP3 servers?</a><br>
+<a href="#S8">S8. How can I use fetchmail with Hotmail?</a><br>
+<a href="#S9">S9. How can I use fetchmail with MSN?</a><br>
+<a href="#S10">S10. How can I use fetchmail with SpryNet?</a><br>
+
+<h1>How to set up well-known security and authentication methods:</h1>
+
+<a href="#K1">K1. How can I use fetchmail with SOCKS?</a><br>
+<a href="#K2">K2. How can I use fetchmail with IPv6 and IPsec?</a><br>
+<a href="#K3">K3. How can I get fetchmail to work with ssh?</a><br>
+<a href="#K4">K4. What do I have to do to use the IMAP-GSS protocol?</a><br>
+<a href="#K5">K5. How can I use fetchmail with SSL?</a><br>
<h1>Runtime fatal errors:</h1>
-<a href="#R1">R1. Fetchmail's initial gethostbyname call fails on my host.</a><br>
-<a href="#R2">R2. Fetchmail isn't working, and -v shows `SMTP connect failed' messages.</a><br>
-<a href="#R3">R3. When I try to configure an MDA, fetchmail doesn't work.</a><br>
-<a href="#R4">R4. Fetchmail dumps core when given an invalid rc file.</a><br>
-<a href="#R5">R5. Fetchmail dumps core in -V mode, but operates normally otherwise.</a><br>
-<a href="#R6">R6. Fetchmail dumps core when I use a .netrc file but works otherwise.</a><br>
-<a href="#R7">R7. Running fetchmail in daemon mode doesn't work.</a><br>
-<a href="#R8">R8. Fetchmail hangs when used with pppd.</a><br>
-<a href="#R9">R9. Fetchmail randomly dies with socket errors.</a><br>
+<a href="#R1">R1. Fetchmail isn't working, and -v shows `SMTP connect failed' messages.</a><br>
+<a href="#R2">R2. When I try to configure an MDA, fetchmail doesn't work.</a><br>
+<a href="#R3">R3. Fetchmail dumps core when given an invalid rc file.</a><br>
+<a href="#R4">R4. Fetchmail dumps core in -V mode, but operates normally otherwise.</a><br>
+<a href="#R5">R5. Running fetchmail in daemon mode doesn't work.</a><br>
+<a href="#R6">R6. Fetchmail hangs when used with pppd.</a><br>
+<a href="#R7">R7. Fetchmail randomly dies with socket errors.</a><br>
+<a href="#R8">R8. Fetchmail running as root stopped working after an OS upgrade</a><br>
+<a href="#R9">R9. Fetchmail is timing out after fetching certain
+messages but before deleting them</a><br>
<h1>Disappearing mail</h1>
<a href="#D1">D1. I think I've set up fetchmail correctly, but I'm not getting any mail.</a><br>
-<a href="#D2">D2. All my mail seems to disappear after an interrupt.</a><br>
-<a href="#D3">D3. Mail that was being fetched when I interrupted my fetchmail seems to have been vanished.</a></br>
+<a href="#D2">D2. All my mail seems to disappear after a dropped connection.</a><br>
+<a href="#D3">D3. Mail that was being fetched when I interrupted my fetchmail seems to have been vanished.</a><br>
<h1>Multidrop-mode problems:</h1>
<a href="#M3">M3. I tried to run a mailing list using multidrop, and I have a mail loop!</a><br>
<a href="#M4">M4. My multidrop fetchmail seems to be having DNS problems.</a><br>
<a href="#M5">M5. I'm seeing long DNS delays before each message is processed.</a><br>
-<a href="#M6">M6. How do I get multidrop mode to work with majordomo?</a>
+<a href="#M6">M6. How do I get multidrop mode to work with majordomo?</a><br>
+<a href="#M7">M7. Multidrop mode isn't parsing envelope addresses from
+my Received headers as it should.</a><br>
<h1>Mangled mail:</h1>
<a href="#X4">X4. My mail is being mangled in a new and different way.</a><br>
<a href="#X5">X5. Using POP3, retrievals seems to be fetching too much!</a><br>
-<h1>Other Problems:</h1>
+<h1>Other problems:</h1>
<a href="#O1">O1. The --logfile option doesn't work if the logfile doesn't exist.</a><br>
<a href="#O2">O2. Every time I get a POP or IMAP message the header is
<a href="#O4">O4. Why do deleted messages show up again when I take
a line hit while downloading?</a><br>
<a href="#O5">O5. Why is fetched mail being logged with my name, not the real From address?</a><br>
-<a href="#O6">O6. I'm seeing long sendmail delays at start of each poll cycle.</a><br>
+<a href="#O6">O6. I'm seeing long sendmail delays or hangs near the start of each poll cycle.</a><br>
<a href="#O7">O7. Why doesn't fetchmail deliver mail in date-sorted order?</a><br>
+<a href="#O8">O8. I'm using pppd. Why isn't my monitor option working?</a><br>
<h1>Answers:</h1>
<hr>
retrieval demand from those of a simple single-user ISP connection up
to mail retrieval and rerouting for an entire client domain.
Fetchmail is easy to configure, unobtrusive in operation, powerful,
-feature-rich, and well documented. Extensive testing by a large,
+feature-rich, and well documented. <P>
+
+Fetchmail is <a href="http://www.opensource.org">Open Source</a>
+software. The openness of the sources is the strongest assurance of
+quality you can have. Extensive peer review by a large,
multi-platform user community has shown that fetchmail is as near
bulletproof as the underlying protocols permit.<p>
+Fetchmail is licensed under the <a
+href="http://gnu.org//copyleft/gpl.html">GNU General Public
+License</a>.<p>
+
If you found this FAQ in the distribution, see the README for fetchmail's
full feature list.<p>
The latest HTML FAQ is available alongside the latest fetchmail
sources at the fetchmail home page:
<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail">
-http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail</a>. You can also find
+http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail</a>. You can also usually find
both in the <a
href="http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/mail/pop/!INDEX.html">POP
mail tools directory on Sunsite</a>.<p>
<ol>
<li>Your operating system and compiler version.
+<li>A copy of your POP or IMAP server's greeting line.
<li>The name and version of the SMTP listener or MDA you are forwarding to.
<li>Any command-line options you used.
<li>The output of fetchmail -V called with whatever other
So you'll probably save us both time if you upgrade and test with
the latest version <em>before</em> sending in a bug report.<P>
-It is helpful if you include your .fetchmailrc, but not necessary
-unless your symptom seems to involve an error in configuration parsing.<p>
+It is helpful if you include your .fetchmailrc file, but not necessary
+unless your symptom seems to involve an error in configuration
+parsing. If you do send in your .fetchmailrc, mask the passwords
+first! <p>
If fetchmail seems to run and fetch mail, but the headers look mangled
-(that is headers are missing, or blank lines are inserted in the
+(that is, headers are missing or blank lines are inserted in the
headers) then read the FAQ items in section <a href="#X1">X</a>
before submitting a bug report. Pay special attention to the item on
<a href="#generic_mangling">diagnosing mail mangling</a>. There are
look like fetchmail's fault, but you may be able to fix these by
tweaking your configuration.<P>
-A transcript of the failed session with -v on is almost always useful.
+A transcript of the failed session with -v -v (yes, that's
+<em>two</em> -v options, enabling debug mode) will almost always be useful.
It is very important that the transcript include your POP/IMAP server's
-greeting line, so I can identify it in case of server problems.<P>
+greeting line, so I can identify it in case of server problems. This
+transcript will not reveal your passwords, which are specially masked
+out precisely so the transcript can be passed around.<P>
If the bug involves a core dump or hang, a gdb stack trace is good to have.
(Bear in mind that you can attach gdb to a running but hung process by
(the most common one, which I used to get about four million times a week
and got <em>really</em> tired of, is for tin-like kill files).<p>
-You can do spam filtering better with procmail or mailagent on the
+You can do spam filtering better with procmail or maildrop on the
server side and (if you're the server sysadmin) sendmail.cf domain
exclusions. You can do other policy things better with the
<CODE>mda</CODE> option and script wrappers around fetchmail. If
Furthermore, since about version 4.3.0 fetchmail has passed out of active
development and been essentially stable. It is no longer my top
project, and I am going to be quite reluctant to add features that
-might either jeopardize its stability or or involve me in large
+might either jeopardize its stability or involve me in large
amounts of coding.<p>
All that said, if you have a feature idea that really is about a transport
<hr>
<h2><a name="G6">G6. So, what's this I hear about a fetchmail paper?</a></h2>
-Now it can be told! The fetchmail development was also a sociological
-experiment, an extended test to see if my theory about the critical
-
features of the Linux development model is correct.<p>
+The fetchmail development was also a sociological experiment, an
+extended test to see if my theory about the critical features of the
+Linux development model is correct.<p>
The experiment was a success. I wrote a paper about it titled <a
-href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral.html">The Cathedral
-and the Bazaar</a> which was first presented at Linux Kongress '97 in
-Bavaria and very well received there. It was also given at Atlanta
-Linux Expo, Linux Pro '97 in Warsaw, and the first Perl Conference,
-and will be an invited presentation at Usenix and UniForum '98. The
-folks at Netscape tell me it helped them decide to <a
+href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral.html">The
+Cathedral and the Bazaar</a> which was first presented at Linux
+Kongress '97 in Bavaria and very well received there. It was also
+given at Atlanta Linux Expo, Linux Pro '97 in Warsaw, and the first
+Perl Conference, at UniForum '98, and was the basis of an invited
+presentation at Usenix '98. The folks at Netscape tell me it helped
+them decide to <a
href="http://www.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease558.html"> give
-away the source for Netscape Communicator</a>
).<p>
+away the source for Netscape Communicator</a>.<p>
If you're reading a non-HTML dump of this FAQ, you can find the paper
on the Web with a search for that title.<p>
<hr>
<h2><a name="G7">G7. What is the best server to use with fetchmail?</a></h2>
+The short answer: IMAP4rev1 running over Unix.<P>
+
+Here's a longer answer: <P>
+
Fetchmail will work with any POP, IMAP, or ESMTP/ETRN server that
-conforms to the relevant RFCs (and even some oughtright broken ones
-like Microsoft Exchange). This doesn't mean it works equally well
-with all, however. POP2 servers, and POP3 servers without LAST, limit
-fetchmail's capabilities in various ways described on the manual
-page.<P>
+conforms to the relevant RFCs (and even some outright broken ones like
+<a href="#S2">Microsoft Exchange</a>). This doesn't mean it works
+equally well with all, however. POP2 servers, and POP3 servers
+without LAST, limit fetchmail's capabilities in various ways described
Most modern Unixes (and effectively all Linux/*BSD systems) come with
POP3 support preconfigured (but beware of the horribly broken POP3
server mentioned in <a href="#D2">D2</a>). An increasing minority
also feature IMAP (you can detect IMAP support by running fetchmail in
-AUTO mode).<P>
-
-If you have the option, we recommend using or installing IMAP4; it has
-the best facilities for tracking message "seen" states. It also
-recovers from interrupted connections more gracefully than POP3, and
-enables some significant performance optimizations.<P>
+AUTO mode, or by using the `Probe for a server' function in the
+fetchmailconf utility).<P>
+
+If you have the option, we recommend using or installing an IMAP4rev1
+server; it has the best facilities for tracking message `seen' states.
+It also recovers from interrupted connections more gracefully than
+POP3, and enables some significant performance optimizations.<P>
+
+Don't be fooled by NT/Exchange propaganda. M$ Exchange is just plain
+broken (see item <a href="#S2">S2</a>) and NT cannot handle the
+sustained load of a high-volume remote mail server. Even Microsoft
+itself knows better than to try this; their own Hotmail service runs
+over Solaris! For extended discussion, see John Kirch's excellent <a
+href="http://unix-vs-nt.org/kirch/">white paper</a> on Unix
+vs. NT performance.<P>
You can find sources for IMAP software at <a
-href="http://www.imap.org"> The IMAP Connection</a>; we like the
-open-source UW IMAP and Cyrus products. UW IMAP is the reference
-implementation of IMAP.<P>
+href="http://www.imap.org">The IMAP Connection</a>; we like the
+open-source <a href="ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/imap/">UW IMAP</a>
+server, which is the reference implementation of IMAP. UW IMAP's
+support for GSSAPI gives you a good way to authenticate without
+sending a password en clair.<P>
+
+Source for a high-quality supported implementation of POP is available
+from the <a href="ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com/eudora/servers/unix/popper/">Eudora
+FTP site</a>. Don't use 2.5, which has a rather restrictive license.
+The 2.5.2 version appears to restore the open-source license of
+previous versions.
+<P>
<hr>
<h2><a name="G8">G8. How can I avoid sending my password en clair?</a></h2>
might be snooped, it's better to use end-to-end encryption on your
whole mail stream so none of it can be read. One of the advantages of
fetchmail over conventional SMTP-push delivery is that you may be able
-to arrange this by using ssh(1); see <a href="#
C4">C4</a>.<P>
+to arrange this by using ssh(1); see <a href="#
K3">K3</a>.<P>
If ssh/sshd isn't available, or you find it too complicated for you to
set up, password encryption will at least keep a malicious cracker
from deleting your mail, and require him to either tap your connection
continuously or crack root on the server in order to read it.<P>
-You can deduce what encryptions your mail server has available by
+You can deduce what encryptions your mail server has available
by looking at the server greeting line (and, for IMAP, the
response to a CAPABILITY query). Do a <code>fetchmail -v</code>
to see these, or telnet direct to the server port (110 for POP3, 143 for
IMAP).<P>
The facility you are most likely to have available is APOP. This is a
-POP3 feature supported by many servers. If you see something in the
-greeting line that looks like an angle-bracket-enclosed Internet
-address with a numeric left-hand part, that's an APOP challenge (it
-will vary each time you log in). You can register a secret on the
-host (using <code>popauth(8)</code> or some program like it). Specify
-the secret as your password in your .fetchmailrc; it will be used to
-encrypt the current challenge, and the encrypted form will be sent
-back the the server for verification.<P>
+POP3 feature supported by many servers (fetchmailconf's autoprobe
+facility will detect it and tell you if you have it). If you see
+something in the greeting line that looks like an
+angle-bracket-enclosed Internet address with a numeric left-hand part,
+that's an APOP challenge (it will vary each time you log in). You can
+register a secret on the host (using <code>popauth(8)</code> or some
+program like it). Specify the secret as your password in your
+.fetchmailrc; it will be used to encrypt the current challenge, and
+the encrypted form will be sent back the the server for
+verification.<P>
Alternatively, you may have Kerberos available. This may require you
to set up some magic files in your home directory on your client
If you are fetching mail from a CompuServe POP3 account, you can use
their RPA authentication (which works much like APOP). See <a
-href="#
T7">T7</a> for details.<P>
+href="#
S3">S3</a> for details.<P>
Your POP3 server may have the RFC1938 OTP capability to use one-time
passwords (if it doesn't, you can get OTP patches for the 2.2 version
distribution INSTALL file), fetchmail will detect it also. When using
OTP, you will specify a password but it will not be sent en clair.<P>
-Sadly, there is at present (February 1998) no OTP or APOP-like
+Sadly, there is at present (July 1998) no OTP or APOP-like
facility generally available on IMAP servers. However, there do exist
patches which will OTP-enable the University of Washington IMAP
-daemon, version 4.1-BETA.<P>
+daemon, version 4.2-FINAL. And we have a report that the GSSAPI
+support in fetchmail works with the GSSAPI support in the most recent
+version of UW IMAP.<P>
You can get both POP3 and IMAP OTP patches from <a name="cmetz">Craig
Metz</A>, over FTP via either
the two will interoperate happily. They better, because this is how Craig gets
his mail ;-)<P>
-(One important win of OTP is that it's not subject to
ITAR restrictions.)<P>
+(One important win of OTP is that it's not subject to
EAR restrictions.)<P>
<hr>
<h2><a name="G9">G9. Is any special configuration needed to use a dynamic IP address?</a></h2>
Yes. In order to avoid giving indigestion to certain picky MTAs
(notably <a href="#T3">exim</a>), fetchmail always makes the RCPT TO
address it feeds the MTA a fully qualified one with a hostname part.
-Normally it does this by appending @ and your client machine's
-hostname.<P>
+Normally it does this by appending @ and "localhost", but when you are
+using Kerberos or ETRN mode it will append @ and your machine's
+fully-qualified domain name (FQDN).<P>
-This, however, can create problems when fetchmail is running in daemon
+Appending the FQDN can create problems when fetchmail is running in daemon
mode and outlasts the dynamic IP address assignment your client
machine had when it started up.<P>
`<code>interface</code>'. This option can be used to set the gateway
device and restrict the IP address range fetchmail will use. Such a
restriction is sometimes useful for security reasons, especially on
-multihomed sites. See <a href="
http:#C3">C3</a>.<P>
+multihomed sites. See <a href="#C3">C3</a>.<P>
I recommend against trying to set up the <code>interface</code> option
when initially developing your poll configuration -- it's never
indirecting TCP/IP through a firewall. You can find out about SOCKS,
and download the SOCKS software including server and client code, at
the <a href="http://www.socks.nec.com/">SOCKS distribution
+site</a>.<P>
The specific recipe for using fetchmail with a firewall is at <a
<hr>
<h2><a name="B1">B1. Lex bombs out while building the fetchmail lexer.</a></h2>
In the immortal words of Alan Cox the last time this came up: ``Take
the Solaris lex and stick it up the backside of a passing Sun
salesman, then install <a
-href="ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/~ftp/pub/gnu">flex</a> and use that. All
+href="ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/ftp/pub/gnu">flex</a> and use that. All
will be happier.''<P>
-I couldn't have put it better myself, and aren't going to try now.<P>
+I couldn't have put it better myself, and ain't going to try now.<P>
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="G11">G11. Is any special configuration needed to <em>send</em> mail?</a></h2>
+
+A user asks: but how do we send mail out to the POP3 server? Do I need
+to implement another tool or will fetchmail do this too?<p>
+
+Fetchmail only handles the receiving side. The sendmail or other
+preinstalled MTA on your client machine will handle sending mail
+automatically; it will ship mail that is submitted while the
+connection is active, and put mail that is submitted while
+the connection is inactive into the outgoing queue.<P>
+
+Normally, sendmail is also run periodically (every 15 minutes on most
+Linux systems) in a mode that tries to ship all the mail in the
+outgoing queue. If you have set up something like pppd to
+automatically dial out when your kernel is called to open a TCP/IP
+connection, this will ensure that the mail gets out.<P>
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="G12">G12. Is fetchmail Y2K-compliant?</a></h2>
+
+Fetchmail is fully Y2K-compliant.<P>
+
+Fetchmail could theoretically have problems when the 32-bit time_t's roll
+over in 2038, but I doubt it. Timestamps aren't used for anything but
+log entry generation.<P>
<hr>
<h2><a name="B2">B2. I get link failures when I try to build fetchmail.</a></h2>
<hr>
<h2><a name="F1">F1. Why does my old .fetchmailrc file no longer work?</a></h2>
+<h3>If your file predates 4.5.5</h3>
+
+If the <code>dns</code> option is on (the default), you may need to
+make sure that any hostname you specify (for mail hosts or for an SMTP
+target) is a canonical fully-qualified hostname). In order to avoid
+DNS overhead and complications, fetchmail no longer tries to derive
+the fetchmail client machine's canonical DNS name at startup.<P>
+
<h3>If your file predates 4.0.6:</h3>
Just after the `<CODE>via</CODE>' option was introduced, I realized
<hr>
<h2><a name="F2">F2. The .fetchmailrc parser won't accept my all-numeric user name.</a></h2>
-So put string quotes around it. :-)<p>
+Either upgrade to a post-5.0.5 fetchmail or put string quotes around it. :-)<p>
+
+The configuration file parser in older fetchmail versions treated any
+all-numeric token as a number, which confused it when it was
+expecting a name. String quoting forces the token's class.<p>
-The configuration file parser treats any all-numeric token as a
-number, which will confuse it when it's expecting a name. String
-quoting forces the token's class.<p>
+The lexical analyzer in 5.0.6 and beyond is smarter and assumes
+any token following "username" or "password" is a string.
<hr>
<h2><a name="F3">F3. The .fetchmailrc parser won't accept my host or username beginning with `no'.</a></h2>
-You're caught in an unfortunate crack between the newer-style syntax
-for negated options (`no keep', `no rewrite' etc.) and the older style
-run-on syntax (`nokeep', `norewrite' etc.).<p>
+See <a href="#F2">F2</a> You're caught in an unfortunate crack between
+the newer-style syntax for negated options (`no keep', `no rewrite'
+etc.) and the older style run-on syntax (`nokeep', `norewrite'
+etc.).<p>
-You can work around this easily. Just put string quotes around your
+Upgrade to a 5.0.6 or later fetchmail, or put string quotes around your
token.<p>
-I haven't fixed this because there is no good fix for it short of
-implementing a token pushback stack in the lexer. That's more
-additional complexity than I'm willing to add to banish a very
-marginal bug with an easy workaround.<p>
-
<hr>
<h2><a name="F4">F4. I'm migrating from popclient. How do I need to modify my .poprc?</a></h2>
It won't work if the second line is just "<CODE>user itz</CODE>". This is silly.<p>
-It seems fetchmail decides to RECP the `default local user' (ie. the
+It seems fetchmail decides to RECP the `default local user' (i.e. the
uid running fetchmail) unless there are local aliases, and the
-`default' aliases (itz-
>itz) don't count. They should.<p>
+`default' aliases (itz-
>itz) don't count. They should.<p>
Answer:<p>
<h2><a name="C2">C2. How can I arrange for a fetchmail daemon to get killed when I log out?</a></h2>
The easiest way to dispatch fetchmail on logout (which will work
-reliably onlif you have just one login going at any time) is to
+reliably only if you have just one login going at any time) is to
arrange for the command `fetchmail -q' to be called on logout. Under
bash, you can arrange this by putting `fetchmail -q' in the file
`~/.bash_logout'. Most csh variants execute `~/.logout' on logout.
accomplish this. Thank James Laferriere <babydr@nwrain.net> for
it.<p>
+Some people start up and shut down fetchmail using the ppp-up and
+ppp-down scripts of pppd.<p>
+
<hr>
<h2><a name="C3">C3. How do I know what interface and address to use with --interface?</a></h2>
</pre>
<hr>
-<h2><a name="C4">C4. How can I get fetchmail to work with ssh?</a></h2>
-
-We have two recipes for this. The first is a little easier to set up,
-but only supports one user at a time.<P>
+<h2><a name="C4">C4. How can I set up support for sendmail's anti-spam features?</a></h2>
-First, a lightly edited version of a recipe from Masafumi NAKANE:<p>
-
-1. You must have ssh (the ssh client) on the local host and sshd (ssh
-server) on the remote mail server. And you have to configure ssh so
-you can login to the sshd server host without a password. (Refer to ssh
-man page for several authentication methods.)<p>
+This answer covers versions of sendmail from 8.8.7 (the version
+installed in Red Hat 5.1) upwards. If you have an older version,
+upgrade to sendmail 8.9.<P>
-2. Add something like following to your .fetchmailrc file: <p>
-
-<pre>
-poll mailhost port 1234 via localhost with proto pop3:
- preconnect "ssh -f -L 1234:mailhost:110 mailhost sleep 20 </dev/null >/dev/null";
-</pre>
-
-(Note that 1234 can be an arbitrary port number. Privileged ports can
-be specified only by root.) The effect of this ssh command is to
-forward connections made to localhost port 1234 (in above example) to
-mailhost's 110.<p>
-
-This configuration will enable secure mail transfer. All the
-conversation between fetchmail and remote pop server will be
-encrypted.<p>
-
-If sshd is not running on the remote mail server, you can specify
-intermediate host running it. If you do this, however, communication
-between the machine running sshd and the POP server will not be encrypted.
-And the preconnect line would be like this:<p>
-
-<pre>
-preconnect "ssh -f -L 1234:mailhost:110 sshdhost sleep 20 </dev/null >/dev/null"
-</pre>
-
-You can work this trick with IMAP too, but the port number 110 in the
-above would need to become 143.<p>
-
-Second, a recipe from Charlie Brady <cbrady@ind.tansu.com.au>:<p>
-
-Charlie says: "The [previous] recipe certainly works, but
-the solution I post here is better in a few respects":
-
-<UL>
-<LI>this method will not fail if two or more users attempt to use fetchmail
- simultaneously.
-<LI>you are able to use the full facilities of tcpd to control access
-<LI>this method does not depend on the preconnect feature of fetchmail, so
- can be used for tunneling of other services as well.
-</UL>
-
-Here are the steps:
-
-<OL>
-<LI>
-Make sure that the "socket" program is installed on the server
-machine. Presently it lives at <a
-href="ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/linux/system/network/misc/socket-1.1.tar.gz">
-ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/linux/system/network/misc/socket-1.1.tar.gz</a>,
-but watch out for a change in version number.<P>
-<LI>
-Set up an unprivileged account on your system with a .ssh directory
-containing an SSH identity file "identity" with no pass phrase,
-"identity.pub" and "known_hosts" containing the host key of your
-mailhost. Let's call this account "noddy".
-<LI>
-On mailhost, set up no-password access for noddy@yourhost. Add to your
-SSH authorised_keys file:
+Stock sendmails can now do anti-spam exclusions based on a database of
+filter rules. The human-readable form of the database is at
+<tt>/etc/mail/deny</tt>. The database itself is at
+<tt>/etc/mail/deny.db</tt>.<P>
+The table itself uses email addresses, domain names, and network
+numbers as keys. For example,</P>
<PRE>
-command="socket localhost 110",no-port-forwarding 1024 ......
+spammer@aol.com REJECT
+cyberspammer.com REJECT
+192.168.212 REJECT
</PRE>
+<P>would refuse mail from spammer@aol.com, any user from
+cyberspammer.com (or any host within the cyberspammer.com domain), and
+any host on the 192.168.212.* network. (This feature can be used to
+do other things as well; see the <a
+href="http://www.sendmail.org/m4/anti-spam.html">sendmail
+documentation</a> for details)</P>
-where "<code>1024</code> ......" is the content of noddy's identity.pub file.
-<LI>
-Create a script /usr/local/bin/ssh.fm and make it executable:
-
-<PRE>
-#! /bin/sh
-exec ssh -q -C -l your.login.id -e none mailhost socket localhost 110
-</PRE>
-<LI>
-Add an entry in inetd.conf for whatever port you choose to use - say:
-
-<PRE>
-1234 stream tcp nowait noddy /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/local/bin/ssh.fm
-</PRE>
-<LI>
-Send a HUP signal to your inetd.
-</OL>
-
-Now just use localhost:1234 to access your POP server.<P>
-
-<hr>
-<h2><a name="C5">C5. How can I set up support for sendmail's anti-spam 571 response?</a></h2>
-
-Rachel Polanskis <r.polanskis@nepean.uws.edu.au> writes:<p>
-
-Basically you need to use the "check_*" rules in sendmail.
-These are rules introduced since version 8.8.2<p>
-
-The idea is to generate a list of domains and addresses that are placed into
-a file - I call mine "sendmail.rej" and you place just one domain
-or email address on each line. During the SMTP transaction, this file
-is checked and if there is a match, the message is refused, with
-a suitable "Service not available" message sent back to the sender.<p>
-
-With the feature enabled in fetchmail, the mail is simply deleted,
-with no further processing.<p>
-
-The only drawback when blocking spam with fetchmail is that you
-do not get the satisfaction of sending an error back to the sender.<p>
-
-To actually use the check_mail rules in sendmail 8.8.2 or better,
-you need to know how to generate a sendmail.cf file from the m4
-config files distributed with sendmail.<p>
-
-The actual rules can be found at the following URLS:<p>
-
-<a href="http://www.informatik.uni-kiel.de/%7Eca/email/check.html">
-http://www.informatik.uni-kiel.de/%7Eca/email/check.html</a><p>
-
-This one is by Claus Aßman, who has documented more of sendmail then
-I can digest!
-
-Remember, when copying these rulesets off the web, that there are tabs
-embedded in them, that may not be preserved. You <em>must</em> reintroduce
-these tabs into the rules to make them work properly. <p>
-
-Once you have your ruleset in place, and have generated a nice sendmail.cf
-file, and the list of blocked sites, try telneting to your
-SMTP port to test it, and send a message with a blocked address in it.<p>
-
-You should see a message similar to:<p>
+To actually set up the database, run
<pre>
- "571 unsolicited email is refused"
+makemap hash deny <deny
</pre>
+in /etc/mail.<P>
-Next, if you have access to a host that you can send mail from, that
-is <em>not</em> your mail host, add that host to your spamlist and
-restart sendmail.<p>
-
-Send a message to your mailing address from that host and then pop off
-the message with fetchmail, using the -v argument. You can monitor
-the SMTP transaction, and when the FROM address is parsed, if sendmail
-sees that it is an address in spamlist, fetchmail will flush and
-delete it.<p>
+To test, send a message to your mailing address from that host and
+then pop off the message with fetchmail, using the -v argument. You
+can monitor the SMTP transaction, and when the FROM address is parsed,
+if sendmail sees that it is an address in spamlist, fetchmail will
+flush and delete it.<p>
Under no circumstances put your <strong>mailhost</strong> or <strong>any host
you accept mail from</strong> using fetchmail into your reject file. You
<strong>will</strong> lose mail if you do this!!!<p>
-The check_ rules work, and they work well. Coupled with fetchmail's
-ability to respond to the appropriate error messages, you can be assured
-of never seeing a spam from any address you put in the reject list.<p>
-
-The only thing that is missing, as mentioned previously, is the ability
-to allow sendmail to process the message further and generate an error
-message to the sender. <p>
-
<hr>
<h2><a name="T1">T1. How can I use fetchmail with sendmail?</a></h2>
in sendmail's configuration, you can leave the <code>rewrite</code>
option off.<P>
+If your sendmail complains ``sendmail does not relay'', make sure
+your sendmail,cf file says
+
+<code>
+Cwlocalhost
+</code>
+
+so that sendmail recognizes `localhost' as a name of its host.<p>
+
+If you're mailing from another machine on your local network, also
+ensure that its IP address is listed in ip_allow or name in name_allow
+(usually in /etc/mail/)<p>
+
+If you find that your sendmail doesn't like the address
+`FETCHMAIL-DAEMON@localhost' (which is used in the bouncemail
+that fetchmail generates), you may have to set
+<code>FEATURE(accept_unqualified_senders)</code>.<P>
+
Günther Leber reports that Digital Unix sendmails won't work with
fetchmail. The symptom is an error message "<code>553 Local configuration
error, hostname not recognized as local</code>". The problem is that
they're seeing the result of a mail loop and suppress the mail. You
may be able to work around this by running in <code>--invisible</code> mode.<P>
+If you want to support multidrop mode, and you can get access to your
+mailserver's sendmail.cf file, it's a good idea to add this rule:<P>
+
+<pre>
+H?l?Delivered-To: $u
+</pre>
+
+and declare `<CODE>envelope "Delivered-To:"</CODE>'. This will cause the
+mailserver's sendmail to reliably write the appropriate envelope
+address into each message before fetchmail sees it, and tell fetchmail
+which header it is. With this change, multidrop mode should work
+reliably even when the Received header omits the envelope address
+(which will typically be the case when the message has multiple
+recipients). <P>
+
<hr>
<h2><a name="T2">T2. How can I use fetchmail with qmail?</a></h2>
The ISP can make the 'mbox-userstr-' prefix anything they choose
but a string matching the user host name is likely.<p>
-
+
To use this line you must:<p>
<ol>
in the alias directory (normally /var/qmail/alias) with the contents:<p>
<pre>
- | ../bin/qmail-inject -a -f"$SENDER" "${LOCAL#mbox-userstr-}@$HOST}"
+ | ../bin/qmail-inject -a -f"$SENDER" "${LOCAL#mbox-userstr-}@$HOST"
</pre>
Note this <em>does</em> require a modern /bin/sh.<p>
+Peter Wilson adds: <P>
+
+``My ISP uses "alias-unzzippedcom-" as the prefix, which means that I
+need to name my file ".qmail-unzzippedcom-default". This is due to
+qmail's assumption that a message sent to user-xyz is handled by the
+file ~user/.qmail-xyz (or ~user/.qmail-default).''<p>
+
Luca Olivetti adds:<P>
If you aren't using qmail locally, or you don't want to set up the
<hr>
<h2><a name="T3">T3. How can I use fetchmail with exim?</a></h2><p>
-By default, the exim listener enforces the the RFC1123 requirement
-that MAIL FROM and RCPT TO addresses you pass to it have to be canonical
-(e.g. with a fully qualified hostname part). <p>
+If you have <CODE>rewrite</CODE> on: <P>
+
+There is an RFC1123 requirement that MAIL FROM and RCPT TO addresses
+you pass to it have to be canonical (e.g. with a fully qualified
+hostname part). Therefore fetchmail tries to pass fully qualified
+RCPT TO addresses. But exim does not by default accept `localhost' as
+a fully qualified domain. This can be fixed.<P>
+
+In exim.conf, add `localhost' to your local_domains declaration if it's not
+already present. For example, the author's site at thyrsus.com would
+have a line reading:<P>
+
+<pre>
+ local_domains = thyrsus.com:localhost
+</pre>
+
+If you have <CODE>rewrite</CODE> off:<P>
-Fetchmail always passes fully qualified RCPT TO addresses. But
MAIL FROM is a potential problem if the MTAs upstream from your fetchmail
don't necessarily pass canonicalized From and Return-Path addresses,
and fetchmail's <CODE>rewrite</CODE> option is off. The specific case
single fetchmail session, smail sometimes delivers them in an
order other than received-date order. This can be annoying because it
scrambles conversational threads. This is not fetchmail's problem,
-it is an smail "feature" and has been reported to the maintainers
+it is an smail `feature' and has been reported to the maintainers
as a bug.<P>
Very recent smail versions require an <code>-smtp_hello_verify</code>
<h2><a name="T6">T6. How can I use fetchmail with Lotus Notes?</a></h2><p>
The Lotus Notes SMTP gateway tries to deduce when it should convert \n
-to \r\n, but its rules are not intuitive. Use `forcecr'.<P>
+to \r\n, but its rules are not the intuitive and correct-for-RFC822
+ones. Use `forcecr'.<P>
<hr>
-<h2><a name="T7">T7. How can I use fetchmail with Microsoft Exchange?</a></h2><p>
+<h2><a name="S1">S1. How can I use fetchmail with qpopper?</a></h2>
+
+Qualcomm's qpopper is probably the best-of-breed among POP3 servers, and
+is very widely deployed. Nevertheless, it has some problems which
+fetchmail exposes. We recommend using <a href="#G7">IMAP</a> instead if at
+all possible. If you must talk to qpopper, here are some problems to
+be aware of:<p>
+
+<h3>Problems with retrieving large messages from qpopper 2.53</h3>
+
+Tony Tang <a href="mailto:tyw@atnhk.com"><tyw@atnhk.com></a>
+reports that there is a bad intercation between fetchmail and qpopper
+2.5.3 under Red Hat Linux versions 5.0 to 5.2, kernels 2.0.34 to
+2.0.35. When fetching very large messages (over 700K) from 2.5.3,
+fetchmail will hang with a socket error.<p>
+
+This is probably not a fetchmail bug, but rather a symptom of some
+problem in the networking stack that qpopper's transmission pattern is
+tickling, as fetchpop (another Linux POP client) also displays the hang
+but Netscape running under Win95 does not. The problem can also be
+banished by <a
+href="http://www.eudora.com/freeware/qpop.html">upgrading to qpopper
+3.0b1</a>.<p>
+
+<h3>Bad interaction with fetchmail 4.4.2 to 4,4.7</h3>
+
+Versions of fetchmail from 4.4.2 through 4.4.7 had a bad interaction
+with Eudora qpopper versions 2.3 and later. See <a href="#X5">X5</a>
+for details. The solution is to upgrade your fetchmail.<p>
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="S2">S2. How can I use fetchmail with Microsoft Exchange?</a></h2>
M$ Exchange violates the POP3 RFCs. Its LIST command does not reveal
the real sizes of mail in the pop mailbox, but the sizes of the
compressed versions in the exchange mail database (thanks to Arjan De
Vet and Guido Van Rooij for alerting us to this problem).<P>
-Fetchmail works with M$ Exchange, despite this braindamage. Two
+Fetchmail works with M$ Exchange, despite this brain damage. Two
features are compromised. One is that the --limit option will not
work right (it will check against compressed and not actual sizes).
The other is that a too-small SIZE argument may be passed to your
problem unless the actual size of the message is above the listener's
configured length limit).<P>
-If you want these fixed, go bug the Evil Empire. Or, better yet,
-install a real operating system on your mailserver and run IMAP.<P>
+Somewhat belatedly, I've learned that there's supposed to be a
+registry bit that can fix this breakage:<P>
+
+<pre>
+HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MsExchangeIs\Parameters
+System\Pop3 Compatibility
+</pre>
+
+This is a bitmask that controls the variations from the standard protocol.
+The bits defined are:<P>
+
+<DL>
+<DT>0x00000001:
+<DD>Report exact message sizes for the LIST command
+<DT>0x00000002:
+<DD>Allow arbitrary linear whitespace between commands and arguments
+<DT>0x00000004:
+<DD>Enable the LAST command
+<DT>0x00000008:
+<DD>Allow an empty PASS command (needed for users with blank
+passwords, but illegal in the protocol)
+<DT>0x00000010:
+<DD>Relax the length restrictions for arguments to commands (protocol
+requires 40, but some user names may be longer than that).
+<DT>0x00000020:
+<DD>Allow spaces in the argument to the USER command.
+</DL>
+
+There's another one that may be useful to know about:<P>
+
+<pre>
+KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MsExchangeIs\Parameters
+System\Pop3 Performance
+</pre>
+
+<DL>
+<DT>0x00000001:
+<DD>Render messages to a temporary stream instead of sending directly
+from the database (should always be on)
+<DT>0x00000002:
+Flag unrenderable messages (instead of just failing commands)
+(should only be on if you are seeing the problems reported
+in KB Q168109)
+<DT>0x00000004:
+<DD>Return from the QUIT command before all messages have been deleted.
+</DL>
+
+The Microsoft pod-person who revealed this information to me admitted
+that he couldn't find it anywhere in their public knowledge base.<P>
+
+You can mess with these bits. Or, better yet, you can lose that
+brain-dead Microsoft crap and install a real operating system on your
+mailserver.<P>
<hr>
-<h2><a name="T8">T8. How can I use fetchmail with CompuServe RPA?</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="S3">S3. How can I use fetchmail with CompuServe RPA?</a></h2>
First, make sure your fetchmail has the RPA support compiled in.
Stock fetchmail binaries (such as you might get from an RPM) don't.
otherwise you'll have to build your own from sources (see the INSTALL
file in the source distribution for directions).<P>
-Give your RPA pass-phrase in lower case as your password. Add
+Give your CompuServe pass-phrase in lower case as your password. Add
`@compuserve.com' to your user ID so that it looks like `user
<UserID>@compuserve.com', where <UserID> can be either
your numerical userID or your E-mail nickname. An RPA-enabled
fetchmail will automatically check for csi.com in the POP server's
-greeting line. If that's found, it will query the server to see if it
+greeting line. If that's found, and your user ID ends with
+`@compuserve.com', it will query the server to see if it
is RPA-capable, and if so do an RPA transaction rather than a
plain-text password handshake.<P>
-<strong>Warning</strong> the verbose output of Fetchmail will show
+<strong>Warning:</strong> the debug (-v -v) output of fetchmail will show
your pass-phrase in Unicode!<P>
+These two .fetchmailrc entries show the difference between an RPA and
+non-RPA configuration:
+
+<pre>
+# This version will use RPA
+poll csi.com via "pop.site1.csi.com" with proto POP3 and options no dns
+ user "CSERVE_USER@compuserve.com" there with password "CSERVE_PASSWORD"
+ is LOCAL_USER here options fetchall stripcr
+
+# This version will not use RPA
+poll non-rpa.csi.com via "pop.site1.csi.com" with proto POP3 and options no dns
+ user "CSERVE_USER" there with password "CSERVE_POP3_PASSWORD"
+ is LOCAL_USER here options fetchall stripcr
+</pre>
+
<hr>
-<h2><a name="T9">T9. How can I use fetchmail with HP OpenMail?</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="S4">S4. How can I use fetchmail with Demon Internet's SDPS?</a></h2>
+
+<h3>Single-drop mode</h3>
+
+You can get fetchmail to download the email for just one user from
+Demon Internet's POP3 server by giving it a username consisting of your
+Demon user name followed by your account name, with an at-sign between
+them.<P>
+
+For example, to download email for the user <philh@vision25.demon.co.uk>,
+you could use the following .fetchmailrc file:<P>
+
+<pre>
+set postmaster "philh"
+poll pop3.demon.co.uk with protocol POP3:
+ user "philh@vision25" is philh
+</pre>
+
+<h3>Multi-drop mode</h3>
+
+Demon Internet's SDPS service is an implementation of POP3. All messages
+have a Received: header added when they enter the maildrop, like this:
+
+<pre>
+ Received: from punt-1.mail.demon.net by mailstore for fred@xyz.demon.co.uk
+ id 899963657:10:27896:0; Thu, 09 Jul 98 05:54:17 GMT
+</pre>
+
+To enable multi-drop mode you need to tell fetchmail that 'mailstore' is
+the name of the host which accepted the mail, and let it know the
+hostname part(s) of your E-mail address. The following example assumes
+that your hostname is xyz.demon.co.uk, and that you have also bought
+"mail forwarding" for the domain my-company.co.uk (in which case your
+MTA must also be configured to accept mail sent to user@my-company.co.uk)
+
+<pre>
+ poll pop3.demon.co.uk proto pop3 aka mailstore no dns:
+ localdomains xyz.demon.co.uk my-company.co.uk
+ user xyz is * fetchall
+</pre>
+
+The `fetchall' command ensures that all mail is downloaded. If you
+want to leave mail on the server use `uidl' and `keep'; Demon does not
+implement the obsolete `top' command, because SDPS combines messages
+residing on two separate punt clusters into a single POP3 maildrop.
+If you do use UIDL, be aware that the "user@host" form for fetching
+mail from a particular Demon host will confuse fetchmail's UIDL code;
+use user+host.<P>
+
+Note that Demon may delete mail on the server which is more than 30
+days old; see their <a
+href="http://www.demon.net/services/mail/pop3.html">POP3 page</a> for
+details.<P>
+
+<h3>The SDPS extension</h3>
+
+There's a different way to do multidrop. It's not necessary on Demon
+Internet, since fetchmail can parse Received addresses, but the person
+who implemented this didn't know that. It may be useful if Demon
+Internet ever changes mail transports.<P>
-No special configuration is required, but OpenMail has an annoying bug
-similar to the big one in <a href="#T6">Microsoft Exchange</a>.
-The message sizes it gives in the LIST are rounded to the nearest 1024
-bytes. It also has a nasty habit of discarding headers it doesn't
-recognize, such as X- and Resent- headers.<P>
+SDPS includes a non-standard extension for retrieving the envelope of a
+message (*ENV), which fetchmail optionally supports if compiled with the
+--enable-SDPS option. If you have it, the first line of the fetchmail -V
+response will include the string "+SDPS".<P>
+
+Once you have SDPS compiled in, fetchmail in POP3 mode will
+automatically detect when it's talking to a Demon Internet host in
+multidrop mode, and use the *ENV extension to get an envelope To address.<P>
+
+The autodetection works by looking at the hostname in the POP3
+greeting line; if you're accessing Demon Internet through a proxy it
+may fail. To force SDPS mode, pick "sdps" as your protocol.<P>
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="S5">S5. How can I use fetchmail with usa.net's servers?</a></h2>
+
+Enable `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>'. A user reports that the 2.2 version
+of USA.NET's POP server reports that you must use the
+`<CODE>fetchall</CODE>' option to make sure that all of the mail is
+retrieved, otherwise some may be left on the server. This is almost
+certainly a server bug.<P>
+
+The usa.net servers (at least in their 2.2 version, June 1998) don't
+handle the TOP command properly, either. Regardless of the argument
+you give it, they retrieve only about 10 lines of the message.
+Fetchmail normally uses TOP for message retrieval in order to avoid
+marking messages seen, but `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>' forces it to use
+RETR instead.<P>
+
+(Note: Other failure modes have been reported on usa.net's servers.
+They seem to be chronically flaky. We recommend finding another
+provider.)<P>
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="S6">S6. How can I use fetchmail with HP OpenMail?</a></h2>
+
+No special configuration is required, but OpenMail versions prior to
+6.0 have an annoying bug similar to the big one in <a
+href="#S2">Microsoft Exchange</a>. The message sizes it gives in the
+LIST are rounded to the nearest 1024 bytes. It also has a nasty habit
+of discarding headers it doesn't recognize, such as X- and Resent-
+headers.<P>
As with M$ Exchange, the only real fix for these problems is to get a
-POP (or preferably IMAP) server that isn't brain-dead.<P>
+POP (or preferably IMAP) server that isn't brain-dead. OpenMail's
+project manager claims these bugs have been fixed in 6.0<P>
<hr>
-<h2><a name="#T10">T10. How can I use fetchmail with SOCKS?</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="S8">S8. How can I use fetchmail with Hotmail?</a></h2>
+
+You can't, yet. But Hugo Rabson has written a script called `hotmole'
+that can retrieve Hotmail mail via the web using Lynx. The script
+is available on <a
+href="http://www.jin-sei-kai.demon.co.uk/hugo/linux.html">
+Hugo Rabson's Linux page</a>.<P>
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="S9">S9. How can I use fetchmail with MSN?</a></h2>
+
+You can't. MSN uses something that looks like POP3, except the
+authentication part is nonstandard. And of course they don't
+document it, so nobody but their Windows clients can speak it.<p>
+
+This is a customer lock-in tactic; we recommend boycotting MSN as the
+only appropriate response.<p>
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="S10">S10. How can I use fetchmail with SpryNet?</a></h2>
+
+The SpryNet POP3 servers mark a message queried with TOP as seen.
+This means that if your connection drops in mid-message, it may end
+up invisibly stuck on your mail spool. Use the <code>fetchall</code>
+flag to ensure that it's recovered on the next cycle.<p>
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="K1">K1. How can I use fetchmail with SOCKS?</a></h2>
Daniel Sobral <<a href="mailto:dcs@gns.com.br">dcs@gns.com.br</a>
gave us the following recipe:<P>
want the "runsocks" program.
<LI> Set the environment variable SOCKS_SERVER to the server you'll be
using. Alternatively, you may set SOCKS4_SERVER and/or
- SOCKS5_SERVER. Eg:
+ SOCKS5_SERVER. E.g.:
<pre>
export SOCKS5_SERVER=socks.my.domain.com
</pre>
It wasn't that hard, was it? :-)<P>
+Giuseppe Guerini added a --with-socks option that supports linking
+with socks library. If you specify the value of this option as
+``yes'', the configure script will try to find the Rconnect library
+and set the makefile up to link it. You can also specify a directory
+containing the Rconnect library.<p>
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="S7">S7. How can I use fetchmail with geocities POP3 servers?</a></h2>
+
+Nathan Cutler reports that the the mail.geocities.com POP3 servers
+fail to include the first Received line of the message in the send to
+fetchmail. This can solve problems if your MUA interprets Received
+continuations as body lines and doesn't parse any of the following
+headers.<P>
+
+Workaround is to use "mda" keyword or "-mda" switch:
+<pre>
+mda "sed -e '1s/^\t/Received: /' | formail | /usr/bin/procmail -d <user>"
+</pre>
+Replace \t with exactly one tabulation character.
+
+You should also consider using "fetchall" option because Geocities' servers
+sometimes think that the first 45 messages have already been read.<P>
+
+Fix: Get an email provider that doesn't suck. Geocities' pop-up adds
+are lame, you should boycott them anyway.<P>
+
<hr>
-<h2><a name="T11">T11. How can I use fetchmail with IPv6 and IPsec?</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="K2">K2. How can I use fetchmail with IPv6 and IPsec?</a></h2>
To use fetchmail with IPv6, you need a system that supports IPv6, the "Basic
Socket Interface Extensions for IPv6" (RFC 2133), and the inet6-apps kit.
experimental kernel and net-tools. It should not be hard to build fetchmail on
other IPv6 implementations if you can port the inet6-apps kit.<P>
-To use fetchmail with network security (read: IPsec), you need a system that
+To use fetchmail with networking security (read: IPsec), you need a system that
supports IPsec, the API described in the "Network Security API for Sockets"
(draft-metz-net-security-api-01.txt), and the inet6-apps kit. This currently
means that you need to have a BSD/OS or NetBSD system with the NRL IPv6+IPsec
</UL>
<hr>
-<h2><a name="R1">R1. Fetchmail's initial gethostbyname call fails on my host.</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="K3">K3. How can I get fetchmail to work with ssh?</a></h2>
+
+We have three recipes for this. The first is easy to set up,
+but only supports one user at a time.<P>
+
+First, a lightly edited version of a recipe from Masafumi NAKANE:<p>
+
+1. You must have ssh (the ssh client) on the local host and sshd (ssh
+server) on the remote mail server. And you have to configure ssh so
+you can login to the sshd server host without a password. (Refer to ssh
+man page for several authentication methods.)<p>
+
+2. Add something like following to your .fetchmailrc file: <p>
+
+<pre>
+poll mailhost port 1234 via localhost with proto pop3:
+ preconnect "ssh -f -L 1234:mailhost:110 mailhost sleep 20 </dev/null >/dev/null";
+</pre>
+
+(Note that 1234 can be an arbitrary port number. Privileged ports can
+be specified only by root.) The effect of this ssh command is to
+forward connections made to localhost port 1234 (in above example) to
+mailhost's 110.<p>
+
+This configuration will enable secure mail transfer. All the
+conversation between fetchmail and remote pop server will be
+encrypted.<p>
+
+If sshd is not running on the remote mail server, you can specify
+intermediate host running it. If you do this, however, communication
+between the machine running sshd and the POP server will not be encrypted.
+And the preconnect line would be like this:<p>
+
+<pre>
+preconnect "ssh -f -L 1234:mailhost:110 sshdhost sleep 20 </dev/null >/dev/null"
+</pre>
+
+You can work this trick with IMAP too, but the port number 110 in the
+above would need to become 143.<p>
+
+Second, a recipe from Charlie Brady <cbrady@ind.tansu.com.au>:<p>
+
+Charlie says: "The [previous] recipe certainly works, but
+the solution I post here is better in a few respects":
+
+<UL>
+<LI>this method will not fail if two or more users attempt to use fetchmail
+ simultaneously.
+<LI>you are able to use the full facilities of tcpd to control access
+<LI>this method does not depend on the preconnect feature of fetchmail, so
+ can be used for tunneling of other services as well.
+</UL>
+
+Here are the steps:
+
+<OL>
+<LI>
+Make sure that the "socket" program is installed on the server
+machine. Presently it lives at <a
+href="ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/linux/system/network/misc/socket-1.1.tar.gz">
+ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/linux/system/network/misc/socket-1.1.tar.gz</a>,
+but watch out for a change in version number.<P>
+<LI>
+Set up an unprivileged account on your system with a .ssh directory
+containing an SSH identity file "identity" with no pass phrase,
+"identity.pub" and "known_hosts" containing the host key of your
+mailhost. Let's call this account "noddy".
+<LI>
+On mailhost, set up no-password access for noddy@yourhost. Add to your
+SSH authorized_keys file:
+
+<PRE>
+command="socket localhost 110",no-port-forwarding 1024 ......
+</PRE>
+
+where "<code>1024</code> ......" is the content of noddy's identity.pub file.
+<LI>
+Create a script /usr/local/bin/ssh.fm and make it executable:
+
+<PRE>
+#! /bin/sh
+exec ssh -q -C -l your.login.id -e none mailhost socket localhost 110
+</PRE>
+<LI>
+Add an entry in inetd.conf for whatever port you choose to use - say:
+
+<PRE>
+1234 stream tcp nowait noddy /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/local/bin/ssh.fm
+</PRE>
+<LI>
+Send a HUP signal to your inetd.
+</OL>
+
+Now just use localhost:1234 to access your POP server.<P>
+
+For yet a third recipe, see <a href="http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/mini/Secure-POP+SSH.html">Secure POP via SSH mini-HOWTO</a>.<P>
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="K4">K4. What do I have to do to use the IMAP-GSS protocol?</a></h2>
+
+Fetchmail can use RFC1731 GSSAPI authorization to safely identify you
+to your IMAP server, as long as you can share Kerberos V credentials
+with your mail host and you have a GSSAPI-capable IMAP server.
+UW-IMAP (available via FTP at <a
+href="ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/mail/">ftp.cac.washington.edu</a>)
+is the only one I'm aware of and the one I recommend anyway for other
+reasons. You'll need version 4.1-FINAL or greater though, and it has
+to have GSS support compiled in.<p>
+
+Neither UW-IMAP nor fetchmail compile in support for GSS by default, since
+it requires libraries from the Kerberos V distribution (available via FTP at
+<a href="ftp://athena-dist.mit.edu/pub/ATHENA/kerberos">athena-dist.mit.edu</a>
+but mind the export restrictions). If you have these, compiling in GSS support
+is simple: add a <pre>--with-gssapi=[/path/to/krb5/root]</pre> option to
+configure. For instance, I have all of my Kerberos V libraries installed under
+/usr/krb5 so I run <pre>configure --with-gssapi=/usr/krb5</pre><p>
+
+Setting up Kerberos V authentication is beyond the scope of this FAQ
+(you may find Jim Rome's paper <a
+href="http://www.ornl.gov/~jar/HowToKerb.html"> How to Kerberize your
+site</a> helpful), but you'll at least need to add a credential for
+imap/[mailhost] to the keytab of the mail server (IMAP doesn't just
+use the host key). Then you'll need to have your credentials ready on
+your machine (cf. kinit).<p>
+
+After that things are very simple. Set your protocol to imap-gss in your
+.fetchmailrc, and omit the password, since imap-gss doesn't need one. You
+can specify a username if you want, but this is only useful if your mailbox
+belongs to a username different from your Kerberos principal. <p>
+
+Now you don't have to worry about your password appearing in cleartext in
+your .fetchmailrc, or across the network.<p>
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="K5">K5. How can I use fetchmail with SSL?</a></h2>
+
+The U.S. government's never-to-be-sufficiently-damned EAR regulations
+prevent me from including SSL library hooks in the distribution.
+However, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution hasn't been
+eviscerated (not yet, anyway -- our would-be totalitarians are
+working on trashing the Second Amendment first).<P>
+
+<h3>Option 1:</h3>
-This is probably due to a DNS or NIS misconfiguration. The first
-thing to do is check your /etc/hosts file for duplicate or missing
-entries related to your host.<P>
+I can therefore safely <em>tell</em> you, in documentation, that there
+appears to be a way to set up an SSL command chain using the `plugin'
+option (originally designed for handling proxy connections across
+firewalls).<P>
+
+Get your hands on the <a
+href="http://www.psy.uq.edu.au:8080/~ftp/Crypto/">SSLeay</a> code.
+Now make yourself a script called `ssl_connect' that calls the SSLeay
+utility `s_client' as follows:<P>
+
+<pre>
+/usr/local/ssl/bin/s_client -quiet -ssl2 -connect $1:$2
+</pre>
+
+Now add `plugin ssl_connect' to the server options for your connection.<P>
+
+<h3>Option 2:</h3>
+
+For those in the U.S., there is a set of SSL patches for fetchmail
+available from the <a href="http://www.cryptography.org">North
+American Cryptographic Archives</a>, in the SSL directory. You have
+to answer three questions about your qualification to access the
+archive, before you are allowed in. You can enter through the main
+page for the server and browse the archive, or you can go <a
+href="http://www.cryptography.org/cgi-bin/crypto.cgi/SSL">straight to
+the SSL directory</a>. There you will find patch files against the
+fetchmail release sources as well as patched source tarballs.<P>
+
+While we cannot make the SSL sources available to anyone outside of the
+U.S. at this time, if the patches do leak out of the U.S. through no
+fault of our own, and someone informs us of their location, we can
+provide the URL pointing to archive sites outside of the U.S.<P>
+
+Newer versions of the SSL patches make appear in the `new' directory
+and stay there a while until they can be processed and moved to the SSL
+directory. Check for patches in `new' if you do not find patches
+for the latest fetchmail release.<P>
<hr>
-<h2><a name="R2">R2. Fetchmail isn't working, and -v shows `SMTP connect failed' messages.</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="R1">R1. Fetchmail isn't working, and -v shows `SMTP connect failed' messages.</a></h2>
Fetchmail itself is probably working, but your SMTP port 25 listener
is down or inaccessible.<p>
</pre>
so your <code>/etc/hosts</code> file is checked first. If you're
-running GNU libc6, check your <code>/etc/nsswitch</code> file. Make
+running GNU libc6, check your <code>/etc/nsswitch.conf</code> file. Make
sure it says something like
<pre>
- order hosts,bind
+ hosts: files dns
</pre>
again, in order to make sure <code>/etc/hosts</code> is seen first.<P>
+If you have a hostname set for your machine, and this hostname does
+not appear in /etc/hosts, you will be able to telnet to port 25 and
+even send a mail with rcpt to: user@host-not-in-/etc/hosts, but
+fetchmail can't seem to get in touch with sendmail, no matter what you
+set smtpaddress to.<p>
+
We had another report from a Linux user of fetchmail 2.1 who solved his SMTP
connection problem by removing the reference to -lresolv from his link
line and relinking. Apparently in some older Linux distributions the
this particular cause should go away.<p>
<hr>
-<h2><a name="R3">R3. When I try to configure an MDA, fetchmail doesn't work.</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="R2">R2. When I try to configure an MDA, fetchmail doesn't work.</a></h2>
(I hear this one from people who have run into the blank-line problem in <a href="#X1">X1</a>.)<p>
broken.<p>
<hr>
-<h2><a name="#R4">R4. Fetchmail dumps core when given an invalid rc file.</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="R3">R3. Fetchmail dumps core when given an invalid rc file.</a></h2>
This is usually reported from AIX or Ultrix, but has even been known
to happen on Linuxes without a recent version of <code>flex</code>
will help you get it faster.<P>
<hr>
-<h2><a name="R5">R5. Fetchmail dumps core in -V mode, but operates normally otherwise.</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="R4">R4. Fetchmail dumps core in -V mode, but operates normally otherwise.</a></h2>
We've had this reported to us under Linux using libc-5.4.17 and gcc-2.7.2.
It does not occur with libc-5.3.12 or earlier versions.<p>
Unfortunately it appears from doing gdb traces that whatever free()
calls producing the problem are being made by the C library itself, not the
fetchmail code (they're all from within fclose, and not an fclose called
-by fetchmail, either).<p>
+
directly by fetchmail, either).<p>
<hr>
-<h2><a name="R6">R6. Fetchmail dumps core when I use a .netrc file but works otherwise.</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="R5">R5. Running fetchmail in daemon mode doesn't work.</a><br></h2>
-We have a report that under Solaris 2.5 using gcc-2.7.2, if fetchmail
-is compiled with -O or -O2, it segfaults on startup when reading a
-.netrc.<p>
-
-You can work around this by disabling optimization.<p>
-
-There may be an actual bug here that the optimizer exposes; the stack
-trace says the segfault is in free() and has all the earmarks of a heap-
-corruption screw. But the symptom doesn't reproduce under Linux with the
-same .fetchmailrc and .netrc.<p>
-
-<hr>
-<h2><a name="R7">R7. Running fetchmail in daemon mode doesn't work.</a><br></h2>
-
-We have one report from a Solaris 4.1.4 user that trying to run
+We have one report from a SunOS 4.1.4 user that trying to run
fetchmail in detached daemon mode doesn't work, but that using the
same options with -N (nodetach) is OK.<P>
This should not happen under Linux or any truly POSIX-conformant Unix.<P>
<hr>
-<h2><a name="R8">R8. Fetchmail hangs when used with pppd.</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="R6">R6. Fetchmail hangs when used with pppd.</a></h2>
Your problem may be with pppd's `demand' option. We have a report that
fetchmail doesn't play well with it, but works with pppd if `demand'
is turned off. We have no idea why this is.<p>
<hr>
-<h2><a name="#R9">R9. Fetchmail randomly dies with socket errors.</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="R7">R7. Fetchmail randomly dies with socket errors.</a></h2>
Check the MTU value in your PPP interface reported by
<code>/sbin/ifconfig</code>. If it's over 600, change it in your PPP
mru 552
</pre>
+<hr>
+<a name="R8">R8. Fetchmail running as root stopped working after an OS upgrade</a></h2>
+
+In RH 6.0, the HOME value in the boot-time root environment changed
+from /root to / as the result of a change in init. Move your
+.fetchmailrc or use a -f option to explicitly point at the file.
+(Oddly, a similar problem has been reported from Debian systems.)<P>
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="#R9">R9. Fetchmail is timing out after fetching certain
+messages but before deleting them</a></h2>
+
+There's a TCP/IP stalling problem under Redhat 6.0 (and possibly other
+recent Linuxes) that can cause this symptom. Brian Boutel writes:<p>
+
+<blockquote>
+TCP timestamps are turned on on my Linux boxes (I assume it's now the
+default). This uses 12 extra bytes per segment.
+When the tcp connection starts, the other end agrees a MSS of 1460,
+and then fragments 1460 byte chunks into 1448 and 12, because
+is is not allowing for the timestamp.<p>
+
+Then, for reasons I can't explain, it waits a long time (typically 2
+minutes) after the ack is sent before sending the next (fragmented)
+packet. Turning off tcp timestamps avoids the fragmentation and
+restores normal behaviour. To do this, [execute]<p>
+
+echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_timestamps<p>
+
+I'm still unclear about the details of why this is happening. At least
+[now] I am now getting good performance and no queue blocking.
+</blockquote>
+
<hr>
<h2><a name="D1">D1. I think I've set up fetchmail correctly, but I'm not getting any mail.</a></h2>
and see <a href="#R1">R1</a>.<p>
<hr>
-<h2><a name="D2">D2. All my mail seems to disappear after an interrupt.</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="D2">D2. All my mail seems to disappear after a dropped connection.</a></h2>
One POP3 daemon used in the Berkeley Unix world that reports itself as
POP3 version 1.004 actually throws the queue away. 1.005 fixed that.
-If you're running this one, upgrade immediately.<P>
+If you're running this one, upgrade immediately. (It also truncates
+long lines at column 1024)<P>
Many POP servers, if an interruption occurs, will restore the whole
mail queue after about 10 minutes. Others will restore it right
the entire queue, including messages you have deleted. If you have
one of these and it flakes out on you a lot, try setting a small
<code>--fetchlimit</code> value. This will result in more IP connects
-to the server but will mean it actually executes changes to the queue
+to the server, but will mean it actually executes changes to the queue
more often.<P>
Qualcomm's qpopper, used at many BSD Unix sites, is better behaved.
-If its connection is dropped, it will first execute all DELE commands (as
-though you had issued a QUIT -- this is a technical violation of
+If its connection is dropped, it will first execute all DELE commands as
+though you had issued a QUIT (this is a technical violation of
the POP3 RFCs, but a good idea in a world of flaky phone lines). Then it
will re-queue any message that was being downloaded at hangup time.
Still, qpopper may require a noticeable amount of time to do deletions
<h2><a name="D3">D3. Mail that was being fetched when I interrupted my fetchmail seems to have been vanished.</a></h2>
Fetchmail only sends a delete mail request to the server when either
-(a) it gets a positive delivery acknowledgement from the SMTP
+(a) it gets a positive delivery acknowledgment from the SMTP
listener, or (b) it gets an error 571 (the spam-filter error) from the
listener. No interrupt can cause it to lose mail.<p>
-However, POP3 has a design problem in that its servers mark a message
-`seen' as soon as the fetch command to get it is sent down. If for
-some reason the message isn't actually delivered (you take a line hit
-during the download, or your port 25 listener can't find enough free
-disk space, or you interrupt the delivery in mid-message) that `seen'
-message can lurk invisibly in your server mailbox forever.<p>
+However, IMAP2bis has a design problem in that its normal fetch
+command marks a message `seen' as soon as the fetch command to get it
+is sent down. If for some reason the message isn't actually delivered
+(you take a line hit during the download, or your port 25 listener
+can't find enough free disk space, or you interrupt the delivery in
+mid-message) that `seen' message can lurk invisibly in your server
+mailbox forever.<p>
-Workaround: add the `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>' keyword to your
POP3 fetch options.<p>
+Workaround: add the `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>' keyword to your fetch options.<p>
-Solution: switch to an <a href="http://www.imap.org">IMAP</a> server.<p>
+Solution: switch to an <a href="http://www.imap.org">IMAP
4</a> server.<p>
<hr>
<h2><a name="M1">M1. I've declared local names, but all my multidrop
mail is going to root anyway.</a></h2>
-Somehow your fetchmail is never matching the hostname part of
-recipient names to the name of the mailserver machine. This probably
-means it is unable to recognize hostname parts as being DNS names of
-the mailserver, and indicates some kind of DNS configuration
-problem either on the server or your client machine. <p>
+Somehow your fetchmail is never recognizing the hostname part of
+recipient names it parses out of To/Cc/envelope-header lines as
+matching the name of the mailserver machine. To check this, run
+fetchmail in foreground with -v -v on. You will probably see a lot of
+messages with the format ``line rejected, %s is not an alias of the
+mailserver'' or ``no address matches; forwarding to %s.'' <p>
+
+These errors usually indicate some kind of DNS configuration problem
+either on the server or your client machine. <p>
The easiest workaround is to add a `<CODE>via</CODE>' option (if
necessary) and add enough aka declarations to cover all of your
you in lots of ways, for example by making your machines
intermittently or permanently unreachable to the rest of the net.<P>
+Occasionally these errors indicate the sort of header-parsing problem
+described in <a href="#M7">M7</a>.<P>
+
<hr>
<h2><a name="M2">M2. I can't seem to get fetchmail to route to a local domain properly.</a></h2>
In general, this is not really a good idea. It would be smarter to
just let the mail sit in the mailserver's queue and use fetchmail's
ETRN mode to trigger SMTP sends periodically (of course, this means
-you have to poll more frequently than the mailserver's expiry period).
+you have to poll more frequently than the mailserver's expiration period).
If you can't arrange this, try setting up a UUCP feed.<P>
If neither of these alternatives is available, multidrop mode may do
Normally, multidrop mode tries to deduce an envelope address from a message
before parsing the To/Cc/Bcc lines (this enables it to avoid losing to mailing
-list software that doesn't put a recipient addess in the To lines).<p>
+list software that doesn't put a recipient add
ress in the To lines).<p>
Some ways of accumulating a whole domain's messages in a single server
mailbox mean it all ends up with a single envelope address that is
We have one report from a Linux user (not the same one as in <a
href="#R1">R1</a>!) who solved this problem by removing the reference
to -lresolv from his link line and relinking. Apparently in some
-recent Linux distributions the libc bind library version works
+older Linux distributions the libc5 bind library version works
better.<p>
As of 2.2, the configure script has been hacked so the bind library is linked
mailserver's DNS names as you can. When an address's host part
matches an aka name, no DNS lookup needs to be done to check it.<p>
-If you're sure you've pre-declared all of your mailserver's DNS dames,
+If you're sure you've pre-declared all of your mailserver's DNS names,
you can use the `<CODE>no dns</CODE>' option to prevent other hostname
parts from being looked up at all.<p>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
I use this scheme with 2 virtual domains and the default ISP
user+domain and service about 30 mail accounts + majordomo on my
-inside pop3 server with fetchmail and sendmail 8.83<P>
+inside pop3 server with fetchmail and sendmail 8.83
</BLOCKQUOTE>
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="M7">M7. Multidrop mode isn't parsing envelope addresses from
+my Received headers as it should.</a></h2>
+
+It may happen that you're getting what appear to be well-formed
+sendmail Received headers, but fetchmail can't seem to extract an
+envelope address from them. There can be a couple of reasons for
+this.<P>
+
+<h3>Spurious Received lines need to be skipped:</h3>
+
+First, fetchmail might be looking at the wrong Received header.
+Normally it looks only on the first one it sees, on the theory that
+that one was last added and is going to be the one containing your
+mailserver's theory of who the message was addressed to.<P>
+
+Some (unusual) mailserver configurations will generate extra Received
+lines which you need to skip. To arrange this, use the optional
+skip prefix argument of the `envelope' option; you may need to say
+something like `<code>envelope 1 Received</code>' or `<code>envelope 2
+Received</code>'.
+
+<h3>The `by' clause doesn't contain a mailserver alias:</h3>
+
+When fetchmail parses a Received line that looks like
+
+<pre>
+Received: from send103.yahoomail.com (send103.yahoomail.com [205.180.60.92])
+ by iserv.ttns.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id RAA10088
+ for <ksturgeon@fbceg.org>; Wed, 9 Sep 1998 17:01:59 -0700
+</pre>
+
+it checks to see if `iserv.ttns.net' is a DNS alias of your mailserver
+before accepting `ksturgeon@fbceg.org' as an envelope address. This
+check might fail if your DNS were misconfigured, or if you were using `no dns'
+and had failed to declare iserv.ttns.net as an alias of your server.<P>
+
<hr>
<h2><a name="X1">X1. Spurious blank lines are appearing in the headers of fetched mail.</a></h2>
describing your local delivery agent. Try inserting the `E' option in the
flags part (the F= string). This will make sendmail turn each dangerous
-start-of-line From into a >From, preventing programs further downstream
+start-of-line From into a >From, preventing programs further downstream
from acting up.<p>
<hr>
the equivalent command-line options):<P>
<pre>
- mda "cat >MBOX" keep fetchall
+ mda "cat >MBOX" keep fetchall
</pre>
-This will capture exactly what fetchmail gets from the server, except
-for (a) the extra Received header line fetchmail prepends, (b) header address
-changes due to <code>rewrite</code>, and (c) any changes due to the
-<code>forcecr</code> and <code>stripcr</code> options. MBOX will in fact
-contain what programs downstream of fetchmail see.<P>
+This will capture what fetchmail gets from the server, except for (a)
+the extra Received header line fetchmail prepends, (b) header address
+changes due to <code>rewrite</code>, and (c) any end-of-line changes
+due to the <code>forcecr</code> and <code>stripcr</code> options.
+MBOX will in fact contain what programs downstream of fetchmail
+see.<P>
The most common causes of mangling are bugs and misconfigurations in
those downstream programs. If MBOX looks unmangled, you will know
operating system.<P>
If your manual fetchmail simulation shows an unmangled message,
-congratulations. You've found an actual fetchmail bug. Complain
-to us and we'll fix it. Please include the session transcript of
-your manual fetchmail simulation along with the other things described
-in the FAQ entry on <a href="#G3">reporting bugs</a>.
+congratulations. You've found an actual fetchmail bug, which is a
+pretty rare thing these days. Complain to us and we'll fix it.
+Please include the session transcript of your manual fetchmail
+simulation along with the other things described in the FAQ entry on
+<a href="#G3">reporting bugs</a>.
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="X5">X5. Using POP3, retrievals seems to be fetching too much!</a></h2>
+
+This may happen in versions of fetchmail after 4.4.1 and before 4.4.8.
+Versions after 4.4.1 use POP3's TOP command rather than RETR, in order
+to avoid marking the message seen (leaving it unseen is helpful for
+later recovery if you lose your connection in the middle of a
+retrieval).<P>
+
+Versions of fetchmail from 4.4.2 through 4.4.7 had a bad interaction
+with Eudora qpopper versions 2.3 and later. The TOP bounds check was
+fooled by an overflow condition in the TOP argument. Decrementing the
+TOP argument in 4.4.7 fixed this.<P>
+
+Fix: Upgrade to a later version of fetchmail.<P>
+
+Workaround: set the <code>fetchall</code> option. Under POP3 in these
+fetchmail version only, this had the side effect of forcing RETR
+use.<P>
<hr>
<h2><a name="O1">O1. The --logfile option doesn't work if the logfile doesn't exist.</a></h2>
it, just touch(1) the logfile before you run fetchmail (this will have
no effect on the contents of the logfile if it already exists).<P>
-<hr>
-<h2><a name="X5">X5. Using POP3, retrievals seems to be fetching too much!</a></h2>
-
-This may happen in versions of fetchmail after 4.4.1, which use POP3's
-TOP command rather than RETR in order to avoid marking the message
-seen (leaving it unseen is helpful for later recovery if you lose your
-connection in the middle of a retrieval).<P>
-
-If your POP3 server fails to sanity-check TOP requests and clip them at
-the next end-of-message, it will fetch the entire tail of the mailbox
-starting with the current message. The qpopper 2.41 beta 1 server is
-known to have this bug (though the qpopper 2.2 found on many Unixes
-does not). It's been reported to me that the logic changed in 2.3.<P>
-
-To work around it, set the <code>fetchall</code> option. Under POP3
-only, this now has the side effect of forcing RETR use.<P>
-
-(It is possible this tip is no longer necessary. At least one tester
-has claimed that the bounds check works but was fooled by an overflow
-condition in the TOP argument. Decrementing the argument may have
-fixed this.)<P>
-
<hr>
<h2><a name="O2">O2. Every time I get a POP or IMAP message the header
is dumped to all my terminal sessions.</a></h2>
According to the POP3 RFCs, deletes aren't actually performed until
you issue the end-of-session QUIT command. Fetchmail cannot fix this,
-it takes cooperation from the. server. There are two possible
-remedies:<P>
+because doing it right takes cooperation from the server. There are
+
two possible remedies:<P>
One is to switch to qpopper (the free POP3 server from Qualcomm,
the Eudora people). The qpopper software violates the POP3 RFCs by
will look right.<p>
<hr>
-<h2><a name="O6">O6. I'm seeing long sendmail delays at start of each poll cycle.</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="O6">O6. I'm seeing long sendmail delays or hangs near the start of each poll cycle.</a></h2>
Sendmail does a hostname lookup when it first starts up, and also each
time it gets a HELO in listener mode.<p>
Your resolver configuration may be causing one of these lookups to
fail and time out. Check <code>/etc/resolv.conf</code> and
-<code>/etc/hosts</code> file. Make sure your hostname and FQDN are
-both in <code>/etc/hosts</code>, and that hosts is looked at before
-DNS is queried. You probably also want your remote mail server(s) to
-be in the hosts file.<p>
+<code>/etc/hosts</code> file. Make sure your hostname and
+fully-qualified domain name are both in <code>/etc/hosts</code>, and
+that hosts is looked at before DNS is queried. You probably also want
+
your remote mail server(s) to be in the hosts file.<p>
You can suppress the startup-time lookup if need to by reconfiguring
with <code>FEATURE(nodns)</code>.<p>
Re-ordering messages is a user-agent function, anyway.<P>
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="O8">O8. I'm using pppd. Why isn't my monitor option working?</a></h2>
+
+There is a combination of circumstances that can confuse fetchmail.
+If you have set up demand dialing with pppd, and pppd has an idle
+timeout, and you have lcp-echo-interval set, then the
+lcp-echo-interval time must be longer than the pppd idle timeout.
+Otherwise it is going keep increasing the packet counters that fetchmail
+relies upon, triggering fetchmail into polling after its own delay
+interval and thus preventing the pppd link from ever reaching its
+inactivity timeout.<p>
+
<HR>
<table width="100%" cellpadding=0><tr>
<td width="30%">Back to <a href="index.html">Fetchmail Home Page</a>
<td width="30%" align=center>To <a href="/~esr/sitemap.html">Site Map</a>
-<td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 1998/05/16 19:17:42 $
+<td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 1999/08/21 06:04:18 $
</table>
<P><ADDRESS>Eric S. Raymond <A HREF="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com"><esr@snark.thyrsus.com></A></ADDRESS>
projects / ~andy / fetchmail / blobdiff