3 fetchmail is a full-featured, robust, well-documented POP2, POP3,
4 APOP, and IMAP batch mail retrieval/forwarding utility intended to be
5 used over on-demand TCP/IP links (such as SLIP or PPP connections).
6 It retrieves mail from remote mail servers and forwards it to your
7 local (client) machine's delivery system, so it can then be be read by
8 normal mail user agents such as elm(1) or Mail(1).
10 The fetchmail code was developed under Linux, but has also been
11 extensively tested under 4.4BSD, Solaris and NEXTSTEP. It should be
12 readily portable to other Unix variants (it uses GNU autoconf). It
13 has also been ported to QNX; to build under QNX, see the header
14 comments in the Makefile.
16 Here are fetchmail's main features. Those unique to fetchmail
17 (relative to fetchpop1.9, PopTart-0.9.3, get-mail, gwpop, pimp-1.0,
18 pop-perl5-1.2, popc, popmail-1.6 and upop) are marked with **.
22 ** Support for ESMTP 8BITMIME and SIZE options.
26 ** Support for secure use with ssh.
28 ** Mailserver passwords can be parsed out of your .netrc file.
30 ** When forwarding mail via SMTP, fetchmail respects the 571
31 "spam filter" response and discards any mail that triggers it.
33 ** Transaction and error logging may optionally be done via syslog.
35 ** (Linux only) Security option to permit fetchmail to poll a host
36 only when a point-to-point link to a particular IP address is up.
38 ** RPOP support (restored; had been removed in 1.8).
40 2.0 and earlier versions:
42 * **POP2, POP3, **APOP, **RPOP, **IMAP2bis, **IMAP4 support.
44 ** Support for Kerberos user authentication (either MIT or Cygnus).
46 ** Host is auto-probed for a working server if no protocol is
47 specified for the connection. Thus you don't need to know
48 what servers are running on your mail host in advance; the
49 verbose option will tell you which one succeeds.
51 ** Delivery via via SMTP to the client machine's port 25. This
52 means the retrieved mail automatically goes to the system
53 default MDA as if it were normal sender-initiated SMTP mail.
55 ** Configurable timeout to detect if server connection is dropped.
57 ** Support for retrieving and forwarding from multi-drop mailboxes
58 that is guaranteed not to cause mail loops.
60 * Easy control via command line or free-format run control file.
62 * Daemon mode -- fetchmail can be run in background to poll
63 one or more hosts at a specified interval.
65 * From:, To:, Cc:, and Reply-To: headers are rewritten so that
66 usernames relative to the fetchmail host become fully-qualified
67 Internet addresses. This enables replies to work correctly.
68 (Would be unique to fetchmail if I hadn't added it to fetchpop.)
70 * Strict conformance to relevant RFCs and good debugging options.
71 You could use fetchmail to test and debug server implementatations.
73 * Message and header processing are 8-bit clean.
75 * Carefully written, comprehensive and up-to-date man page describing
76 not only modes of operation but also (**) how to diagnose the most
77 common kinds of problems and what to do about deficient servers
79 * Rugged, simple, and well-tested code -- the author relies on it
80 every day and it has never lost mail, not even in experimental
83 * Large user community -- fetchmail has a large user base (the
84 author's beta list includes about two hundred people). This
85 means feedback is rapid, bugs get found and fixed rapidly.
87 The fetchmail code appears to be stable and free of bugs affecting
88 normal operation (that is, retrieving from POP3 or IMAP in single-drop
89 mode and forwarding via SMTP to sendmail). It will probably undergo
90 substantial change only if and when support for a new retrieval
91 protocol or authentication mode is added. See the distribution files
92 NEWS for detailed information on recent changes and NOTES for design
95 You can easily fetch the latest version of fetchmail via FTP from the
96 following FTP directory:
98 ftp://ftp.ccil.org/pub/esr/fetchmail
100 Or you can get it from Eric's home page:
102 http://www.ccil.org/~esr
104 Just chase the link to Eric's Freeware Collection. Besides fetchmail, it
105 includes a tasty selection of Web authoring tools, programmer's aids,
106 graphics libraries, compilers for bizarre languages, games, and
107 miscellaneous interesting hacks. Enjoy!