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-<td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 2001/09/26 14:28:57 $
+<td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 2002/04/08 23:46:55 $
</table>
<HR>
<H1>Frequently Asked Questions About Fetchmail</H1>
<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 Courier IMAP?</a><br>
<h1>How to make fetchmail work with various servers:</h1>
<a href="#S12">S12. How can I use fetchmail with MailMax?</a><br>
<a href="#S13">S13. How can I use fetchmail with Novell GroupWise?</a><br>
<a href="#S14">S14. How can I use fetchmail with InterChange?</a><br>
+<a href="#S15">S15. How can I use fetchmail with GMX?</a><br>
<h1>How to set up well-known security and authentication methods:</h1>
<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
+<a href="#R6">R6. Fetchmail randomly dies with socket errors.</a><br>
+<a href="#R7">R7. Fetchmail running as root stopped working after an OS upgrade</a><br>
+<a href="#R8">R8. Fetchmail is timing out after fetching certain
messages but before deleting them</a><br>
-<a href="#R10">R10. Fetchmail is timing out during message fetches</a><br>
-<a href="#R11">R11. Fetchmail is dying with SIGPIPE.</a><br>
+<a href="#R9">R9. Fetchmail is timing out during message fetches</a><br>
+<a href="#R10">R10. Fetchmail is dying with SIGPIPE.</a><br>
-<h1>Disappearing mail</h1>
+<h1>Hangs and lockups:</h1>
+
+<a href="#H1">H1. Fetchmail hangs when used with pppd.</a><br>
+<a href="#H2">H2. Fetchmail hangs during the MAIL FROM exchange.</a><br>
+<a href="#H3">H3. Fetchmail hangs while fetching mail.</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 a dropped connection.</a><br>
<ol>
<li>Your operating system.
<li>Your compiler version, if you built from source; otherwise, the
- name and origin ogf the RPM or other binary package you installed.
+ name and origin of the RPM or other binary package you installed.
<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.
<p>If your bug is something that used to work but stopped working when
you upgraded, then you can help pin the bug down by trying <a
-href="ftp://ftp.ccil.org/pub/esr/fetchmail">intermediate versions of
+href="ftp://ftp.ccil.org/pub/esr/fetchmail/">intermediate versions of
fetchmail</a> until you identify the revision that broke your
feature. The smart way to do this is by binary search on the version
sequence. First, try the version halfway between your last good one
<hr>
<h2><a name="G5">G5. Is there a mailing list for exchanging tips?</a></h2>
-<p>There is a fetchmail-friends list for people who want to discuss fixes
+<p>There is a fetchmail-friends list
+(fetchmail-friends@lists.ccil.org) for people who want to discuss fixes
and improvements in fetchmail and help co-develop it. It's a MailMan
-list, which you can sign up for at <a
-<a href="http://lists.ccil.org/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-friends">fetchmail-friends@lists.ccil.org</a>.
-There is also an announcements-only list, <a href="http://lists.ccil.org/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-announce">fetchmail-announce@lists.ccil.org</em>.
+list, which you can sign up for at
+<a href="http://lists.ccil.org/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-friends">http://lists.ccil.org/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-friends</a>.
+There is also an announcements-only list,
+fetchmail-announce@lists.ccil.org, which you can sign up for at <a href="http://lists.ccil.org/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-announce">http://lists.ccil.org/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-announce</a>.
<hr>
<h2><a name="G6">G6. So, what's this I hear about a fetchmail paper?</a></h2>
<hr>
<h2><a name="G14">G14. Is there a way in fetchmail to support disconnected IMAP mode?</a></H2>
-No. Fetchmail is a mail transport agent, best understood as a protocol
+<p>No. Fetchmail is a mail transport agent, best understood as a protocol
gateway between POP3/IMAP servers and SMTP. Disconnected operation
requires an elaborate interactive client. It's a very different problem.
<hr>
<h2><a name="G15">G15. How will fetchmail perform under heavy loads?</a></h2>
-Fetchmail streams message bodies line-by-line; the most core it
+<p>Fetchmail streams message bodies line-by-line; the most core it
ever requires per message is enough memory to hold the RFC822 header, and
that storage is freed when body processing begins. It is, accordingly,
quite economical in its use of memory.
<hr>
<h2><a name="B1">B1. Make coughs and dies when building on FreeBSD.</a></h2>
-The vendor-supplied make on FreeBSD systems can only be used within
+<p>The vendor-supplied make on FreeBSD systems can only be used within
FreeBSD's "scope", e.g. the ports collection. Type "gmake" to run GNU
make and better things will happen.
<hr>
<h2><a name="B2">B2. Lex bombs out while building the fetchmail lexer.</a></h2>
-In the immortal words of Alan Cox the last time this came up: ``Take
+<p>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://ftp.gnu.org/pub/non-gnu/flex/">flex</a> and use that. All
mismatch, so smail's new behavior (introduced sometime between
3.2.0.90 and 3.2.0.95) is a bug.
+<p>You may also need to say
+<code>-smtp_hello_broken_allow=127.0.0.1</code>
+in order for smail to accept the "localhost" that fetchmail normally
+appends to recipient addresses.
+
<hr>
<h2><a name="T5">T5. How can I use fetchmail with SCO's MMDF?</a></h2>
to \r\n, but its rules are not the intuitive and correct-for-RFC822
ones. Use `forcecr'.
+<a name="T7">T7. How can I use fetchmail with Courier IMAP?</a></h2>
+
+<p>The courier mta doesn't like RCPT addresses that look like
+<code>someone@localhost</code>. Work around this with an
+<code>smtphost</code> or <code>smtpaddress</code>.
+
<hr>
<h2><a name="S1">S1. How can I use fetchmail with qpopper?</a></h2>
marking messages seen, but `<CODE>fetchall</CODE>' forces it to use
RETR instead.
+<p>Also, we're told USA.NET adds a ton of hops to your messages. You may
+need to raise the MaxHopCount parameter in your sendmail.cf to avoid having
+fetched mail rejected.
+
<p>(Note: Other failure modes have been reported on usa.net's servers.
They seem to be chronically flaky. We recommend finding another
provider.)
POP (or preferably IMAP) server that isn't brain-dead. OpenMail's
project manager claims these bugs have been fixed in 6.0.
+<p>We've had a more recent report (December 2001) that the TOP command
+fails, returning only one line regrardless of its argument, on something
+identifying itself as "OpenMail POP3 interface".
+
<hr>
<h2><a name="S7">S7. How can I use fetchmail with geocities POP3 servers?</a></h2>
their new 3.61.08 release of InterChange fixes this problem. I don't
have any reports one way or the other yet.
+<a name="S15">S15. How can I use fetchmail with GMX?</a></h2>
+
+<p>Use IMAP. The GMX StreamProxy server behaves badly on
+authentication failures, sending back a non-conformant error message
+(missing an <code>-ERR</code> tag) that confuses fetchmail.
+
<hr>
<h2><a name="K1">K1. How can I use fetchmail with SOCKS?</a></h2>
location, you'll need to specify it as an argument to --with-ssl after
an equal sign.
+<p>Note that there is a known bug in the implementation of SSL_peek
+under OpenSSL versions 0.9.5 and older that fetchmail occasionally
+tripped over, causing hangs. It is recommended that you install 0.9.6
+or later.
+
<p>Fetchmail binaries built this way support <code>ssl</code>,
<code>sslkey</code>, and <code>sslcert</code> options that control
SSL encryption. You will need to have an SSL-enabled mailserver
An interactive program could seed the random number generator from
keystroke timings or some other form of user input. Because fetchmail
-is primarily designed to run forever as a background daemon, that option
+is primarily designed to run forever as a background daemon, that
option is not available in this case.
<hr>
that!
<hr>
-<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.
-
-<hr>
-<h2><a name="R7">R7. Fetchmail randomly dies with socket errors.</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="R6">R6. 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
address.
<hr>
-<h2><a name="R8">R8. Fetchmail running as root stopped working after an OS upgrade</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="R7">R7. 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
(Oddly, a similar problem has been reported from Debian systems.)
<hr>
-<h2><a name="R9">R9. Fetchmail is timing out after fetching certain
+<h2><a name="R8">R8. 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
</blockquote>
<hr>
-<h2><a name="R10">R10. Fetchmail is timing out during message fetches</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="R9">R9. Fetchmail is timing out during message fetches</a></h2>
This is probably a general networking issue. Sending a "RETR" command will
cause the server to start sending large amounts of data, which means
large packets. If your networking layer has a packet-fragmentation
problem, that's where you'll see it.
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="R10">R10. Fetchmail is dying with SIGPIPE.</a></h2>
+
+This probably means you have an <code>mda</code> option. Your MDA is
+croaking while being passed a message. Best fix is to remove the
+<code>mda</code> option and pass mail to your port 25 SMTP listener.
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="H1">H1. 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.
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="H2">H2. Fetchmail hangs during the MAIL FROM exchange.</a></h2>
+
+<p>The symptom: 'fetchmail -v' retrieves mail fine, but appears to hang after
+sending the MAIL FROM command
+
+<pre>
+SMTP> MAIL FROM: <someone@somewhere>
+</pre>
+
+<p>The hang is actually occuring when sendmail looks up a sender's
+address in DNS. The problem isn't in fetchmail but in the
+configuration of sendmail. You must enable the 'nodns' and
+'nocanonify' features of sendmail.
+
+<p>Here was my fix for RedHat 7.2:
+
+<ol>
+<li># cd /etc/mail
+<li># cp sendmail.mc sendmail-mine.mc
+<li>Edit sendmail-mine.mc and add lines:
+<pre>
+ FEATURE(nodns)
+ FEATURE(nocanonify)
+</pre>
+<li>Build a new sendmail.cf
+<pre>
+ # m4 sendmail-mine.cf > /etc/sendmail.cf
+</pre>
+<li>Restart sendmail.
+</ol>
+
+<p>For more details consult the file /usr/share/sendmail-cf/README.
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="H3">H3. Fetchmail hangs while fetching mail.</a></h2>
+
+<p>The symption: 'fetchmail -v' retrieves the first few messages, but
+hangs returning:
+
+<pre>
+ fetchmail: SMTP< 550 5.0.0 Access denied
+ fetchmail: SMTP> RSET
+ fetchmail: SMTP< 250 2.0.0 Reset state
+ .......fetchmail: flushed
+ fetchmail: POP3> DELE 1
+ fetchmail: POP3< +OK marked deleted
+</pre>
+
+<p>Check and see if you're allowing sendmail connections through TCP
+wrappers.
+
+<p>Adding 'sendmail : ALL' to /etc/hosts.allow could solve this problem.
+
<hr>
<h2><a name="D1">D1. I think I've set up fetchmail correctly, but I'm not getting any mail.</a></h2>
<p>Or you may not be connecting to the SMTP listener. Run fetchmail -v
and see <a href="#R1">R1</a>.
-<hr>
-<h2><a name="R11">R11. Fetchmail is dying with SIGPIPE.</a></h2>
+<p>Or you may have your local user set incorrectly. In the following
+line
+
+<pre>
+ user 'remoteuser' there with password '*' is 'localuser' here
+</pre>
+
+make sure that 'localuser' does exist and can receive mail.
-This probably means you have an <code>mda</code> option. Your MDA is
-croaking while being passed a message. Best fix is to remove the
-<code>mda</code> option and pass mail to your port 25 SMTP listener.
<hr>
<h2><a name="D2">D2. All my mail seems to disappear after a dropped connection.</a></h2>
Fetchmail only sends a delete mail request to the server when either
(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, or (b) it gets one of the spam-filter errors (see the
+description of the <code>antispam></code> option) from the
listener. No interrupt can cause it to lose mail.
<p>However, IMAP2bis has a design problem in that its normal fetch
<p>I could eliminate this problem by keeping a list of all message-IDs
received during a poll so far and dropping any message that matches a
-seen mail ID. The touble is that this is an O(N**2) operation that
-might significantly slow down the retriweval of large mail batches.
+seen mail ID. The trouble is that this is an O(N**2) operation that
+might significantly slow down the retrieval of large mail batches.
<hr>
<h2><a name="X1">X1. Spurious blank lines are appearing in the headers of fetched mail.</a></h2>
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<td width="30%">Back to <a href="index.html">Fetchmail Home Page</a>
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-<td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 2001/09/26 14:28:57 $
+<td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 2002/04/08 23:46:55 $
</table>
<ADDRESS>Eric S. Raymond <A HREF="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com"><esr@thyrsus.com></A></ADDRESS>
projects / ~andy / fetchmail / blobdiff