3 fetchmail is a full-featured, robust, well-documented POP2, POP3, RPOP,
4 APOP, KPOP, 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.
24 ** Support for ESMTP ETRN command.
26 ** The stripcr option to explicitly control carriage-return
27 stripping before mail forwarding.
31 ** Support for secure use with ssh.
33 ** Mailserver passwords can be parsed out of your .netrc file.
35 ** When forwarding mail via SMTP, fetchmail respects the 571
36 "spam filter" response and discards any mail that triggers it.
38 ** Transaction and error logging may optionally be done via syslog.
40 ** (Linux only) Security option to permit fetchmail to poll a host
41 only when a point-to-point link to a particular IP address is up.
43 ** RPOP support (restored; had been removed in 1.8).
45 2.0 and earlier versions:
47 ** Support POP2, APOP, RPOP, IMAP2, IMAP2bis, IMAP3, IMAP4, IMAP4rev1.
49 ** Support for Kerberos user authentication (either MIT or Cygnus).
51 ** Host is auto-probed for a working server if no protocol is
52 specified for the connection. Thus you don't need to know
53 what servers are running on your mail host in advance; the
54 verbose option will tell you which one succeeds.
56 ** Delivery via via SMTP to the client machine's port 25. This
57 means the retrieved mail automatically goes to the system
58 default MDA as if it were normal sender-initiated SMTP mail.
60 ** Configurable timeout to detect if server connection is dropped.
62 ** Support for retrieving and forwarding from multi-drop mailboxes
63 that is guaranteed not to cause mail loops.
67 * Easy control via command line or free-format run control file.
69 * Daemon mode -- fetchmail can be run in background to poll
70 one or more hosts at a specified interval.
72 * From:, To:, Cc:, and Reply-To: headers are rewritten so that
73 usernames relative to the fetchmail host become fully-qualified
74 Internet addresses. This enables replies to work correctly.
75 (Would be unique to fetchmail if I hadn't added it to fetchpop.)
77 * Strict conformance to relevant RFCs and good debugging options.
78 You could use fetchmail to test and debug server implementatations.
80 * Message and header processing are 8-bit clean.
82 * Carefully written, comprehensive and up-to-date man page describing
83 not only modes of operation but also (**) how to diagnose the most
84 common kinds of problems and what to do about deficient servers
86 * Rugged, simple, and well-tested code -- the author relies on it
87 every day and it has never lost mail, not even in experimental
90 * Large user community -- fetchmail has a large user base (the
91 author's beta list includes well over two hundred people). This
92 means feedback is rapid, bugs get found and fixed rapidly.
94 The fetchmail code appears to be stable and free of bugs affecting
95 normal operation (that is, retrieving from POP3 or IMAP in single-drop
96 mode and forwarding via SMTP to sendmail). It will probably undergo
97 substantial change only if and when support for a new retrieval
98 protocol or authentication mode is added. See the distribution files
99 NEWS for detailed information on recent changes and NOTES for design
102 You can easily fetch the latest version of fetchmail via FTP from the
103 following FTP directory:
105 ftp://ftp.ccil.org/pub/esr/fetchmail
107 Or you can get it from Eric's home page:
109 http://www.ccil.org/~esr
111 Just chase the link to Eric's Freeware Collection. Besides fetchmail, it
112 includes a tasty selection of Web authoring tools, programmer's aids,
113 graphics libraries, compilers for bizarre languages, games, and
114 miscellaneous interesting hacks. Enjoy!