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-.TH fetchmail 1 "fetchmail 6.3.11" "fetchmail" "fetchmail reference manual"
+.TH fetchmail 1 "fetchmail 6.3.14" "fetchmail" "fetchmail reference manual"
.SH NAME
fetchmail \- fetch mail from a POP, IMAP, ETRN, or ODMR-capable server
TCP/IP links (such as SLIP or PPP connections), it may also be useful as
a message transfer agent for sites which refuse for security reasons to
permit (sender-initiated) SMTP transactions with sendmail.
+
+.SS SUPPORT, TROUBLESHOOTING
+.PP
+For troubleshooting, tracing and debugging, you need to increase
+fetchmail's verbosity to actually see what happens. To do that, please
+run \fBboth of the two following commands,
+adding all of the options you'd normally use.\fP
+
+.IP
+.nf
+env LC_ALL=C fetchmail -V -v --nodetach --nosyslog
+.fi
+.IP
+(This command line prints in English how fetchmail understands your
+configuration.)
+
+.IP
+.nf
+env LC_ALL=C fetchmail -vvv --nodetach --nosyslog
+.fi
+.IP
+(This command line actually runs fetchmail with verbose English output.)
.PP
+Also see
+.URL "http://fetchmail.berlios.de/fetchmail-FAQ.html#G3" "item #G3 in fetchmail's FAQ"
+.PP
+You can omit the LC_ALL=C part above if you want output in the local
+language (if supported). However if you are posting to mailing lists,
+please leave it in. The maintainers do not necessarily understand your
+language, please use English.
+
+
+
+.SS CONCEPTS
If \fBfetchmail\fP is used with a POP or an IMAP server (but not with
ETRN or ODMR), it has two fundamental modes of operation for each user
account from which it retrieves mail: \fIsingledrop\fP- and
.B \-m <command> | \-\-mda <command>
(Keyword: mda)
.br
-You can force mail to be passed to an MDA directly
-(rather than forwarded to port 25) with the \-\-mda or \-m option.
-
-To
-avoid losing mail, use this option only with MDAs like maildrop or
-MTAs like sendmail that return a nonzero status on disk-full and other
-resource-exhaustion errors; the nonzero status tells fetchmail that
-delivery failed and prevents the message from being deleted off the
-server.
-
-If \fBfetchmail\fP is running as root, it sets its user id to
-that of the target user while delivering mail through an MDA. Some
-possible MDAs are "/usr/sbin/sendmail \-i \-f %F \-\- %T" (\fBNote:\fP
+This option lets \fBfetchmail\fP use a Message or Local Delivery Agent
+(MDA or LDA) directly, rather than forward via SMTP or LMTP.
+
+To avoid losing mail, use this option only with MDAs like maildrop or
+MTAs like sendmail that exit with a nonzero status on disk-full and other
+delivery errors; the nonzero status tells fetchmail that delivery failed
+and prevents the message from being deleted on the server.
+
+If \fBfetchmail\fP is running as root, it sets its user id while
+delivering mail through an MDA as follows: First, the FETCHMAILUSER,
+LOGNAME, and USER environment variables are checked in this order. The
+value of the first variable from his list that is defined (even if it is
+empty!) is looked up in the system user database. If none of the
+variables is defined, fetchmail will use the real user id it was started
+with. If one of the variables was defined, but the user stated there
+isn't found, fetchmail continues running as root, without checking
+remaining variables on the list. Practically, this means that if you
+run fetchmail as root (not recommended), it is most useful to define the
+FETCHMAILUSER environment variable to set the user that the MDA should
+run as. Some MDAs (such as maildrop) are designed to be setuid root and
+setuid to the recipient's user id, so you don't lose functionality this
+way even when running fetchmail as unprivileged user. Check the MDA's
+manual for details.
+
+Some possible MDAs are "/usr/sbin/sendmail \-i \-f %F \-\- %T"
+(\fBNote:\fP
some several older or vendor sendmail versions mistake \-\- for an
address, rather than an indicator to mark the end of the option arguments),
"/usr/bin/deliver" and "/usr/bin/maildrop \-d %T". Local delivery
projects / ~andy / fetchmail / blobdiff