2 .\" ** The above line should force tbl to be used as a preprocessor **
4 .\" Manual page in man(7) format with tbl(1) macros for fetchmail
6 .\" For license terms, see the file COPYING in this directory.
8 .TH fetchmail 1 "fetchmail 6.3.5" "fetchmail" "fetchmail reference manual"
10 fetchmail \- fetch mail from a POP, IMAP, ETRN, or ODMR-capable server
13 \fBfetchmail\fR [\fIoption...\fR] [\fImailserver...\fR]
19 is a mail-retrieval and forwarding utility; it fetches mail from
20 remote mailservers and forwards it to your local (client) machine's
21 delivery system. You can then handle the retrieved mail using normal
22 mail user agents such as \fImutt\fR(1), \fIelm\fR(1) or \fIMail\fR(1).
23 The \fIfetchmail\fR utility can be run in a daemon mode to repeatedly
24 poll one or more systems at a specified interval.
28 program can gather mail from servers supporting any of the common
29 mail-retrieval protocols: POP2 (legacy, to be removed from future
30 release), POP3, IMAP2bis, IMAP4, and IMAP4rev1.
31 It can also use the ESMTP ETRN extension and ODMR. (The RFCs describing all
32 these protocols are listed at the end of this manual page.)
36 is primarily intended to be used over on-demand TCP/IP links (such as
37 SLIP or PPP connections), it may also be useful as a message transfer
38 agent for sites which refuse for security reasons to permit
39 (sender-initiated) SMTP transactions with sendmail.
43 is used with a POP or an IMAP server, it has two fundamental modes of
44 operation for each user account from which it retrieves mail:
45 \fIsingledrop\fR- and \fImultidrop\fR-mode. In singledrop-mode,
47 assumes that all messages in the user's account are intended for a single
48 recipient. An individual mail message will not be inspected for recipient
49 information, rather, the identity of the recipient will either default to
50 the local user currently executing \fIfetchmail\fR,
51 or else will need to be explicitly specified in the configuration file.
52 Singledrop-mode is used when the fetchmailrc configuration contains at
53 most a single local user specification for a given server account.
57 is not able to assume that there is only a single recipient, but rather
58 that the mail server account actually contains mail intended for any
59 number of different recipients. Therefore,
61 must attempt to deduce the proper "envelope recipient" from the mail
62 headers of each message. In this mode of operation,
64 almost resembles an MTA, however it is important to note that neither
65 the POP nor IMAP protocols were intended for use in this fashion, and
66 hence envelope information is often not directly available. Instead,
68 must resort to a process of informed guess-work in an attempt to
69 discover the true envelope recipient of a message, unless the ISP stores
70 the envelope information in some header (not all do). Even if this
71 information is present in the headers, the process can
72 be error-prone and is dependent upon the specific mail server used
73 for mail retrieval. Multidrop-mode is used when more than one local
74 user is specified for a particular server account in the configuration
75 file. Note that the forgoing discussion of singledrop- and
76 multidrop-modes does not apply to the ESMTP ETRN or ODMR retrieval
77 methods, since they are based upon the SMTP protocol which
78 specifically provides the envelope recipient to \fIfetchmail\fR.
80 As each message is retrieved, \fIfetchmail\fR normally delivers it via SMTP to
81 port 25 on the machine it is running on (localhost), just as though it
82 were being passed in over a normal TCP/IP link. \fIfetchmail\fR provides
83 the SMTP server with an envelope recipient derived in the manner described
84 previously. The mail will then be
85 delivered locally via your system's MDA (Mail Delivery Agent, usually
86 \fIsendmail\fR(8) but your system may use a different one such
87 as \fIsmail\fR, \fImmdf\fR, \fIexim\fR, \fIpostfix\fR, or \fIqmail\fR). All the
88 delivery-control mechanisms (such as \fI.forward\fR files) normally
89 available through your system MDA and local delivery agents will
90 therefore work automatically.
92 If no port 25 listener is available, but your fetchmail configuration
93 was told about a reliable local MDA, it will use that MDA for local
98 is available, it will assist you in setting up and editing a
99 fetchmailrc configuration. It runs under the X window system and
100 requires that the language Python and the Tk toolkit be present on your
101 system. If you are first setting up fetchmail for single-user mode, it
102 is recommended that you use Novice mode. Expert mode provides complete
103 control of fetchmail configuration, including the multidrop features.
104 In either case, the 'Autoprobe' button will tell you the most capable
105 protocol a given mailserver supports, and warn you of potential problems
108 .SH GENERAL OPERATION
111 is controlled by command-line options and a run control file,
112 .IR ~/.fetchmailrc\fR ,
113 the syntax of which we describe in a later section (this file is what
114 the \fIfetchmailconf\fR program edits). Command-line options override
118 Each server name that you specify following the options on the
119 command line will be queried. If you don't specify any servers
120 on the command line, each 'poll' entry in your
122 file will be queried.
124 To facilitate the use of
126 in scripts and pipelines, it returns an appropriate exit code upon
127 termination -- see EXIT CODES below.
129 The following options modify the behavior of \fIfetchmail\fR. It is
130 seldom necessary to specify any of these once you have a
131 working \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file set up.
133 Almost all options have a corresponding keyword which can be used to
138 Some special options are not covered here, but are documented instead
139 in sections on AUTHENTICATION and DAEMON MODE which follow.
143 Displays the version information for your copy of
145 No mail fetch is performed.
146 Instead, for each server specified, all the option information
147 that would be computed if
149 were connecting to that server is displayed. Any non-printables in
150 passwords or other string names are shown as backslashed C-like
151 escape sequences. This option is useful for verifying that your
152 options are set the way you want them.
155 Return a status code to indicate whether there is mail waiting,
156 without actually fetching or deleting mail (see EXIT CODES below).
157 This option turns off daemon mode (in which it would be useless). It
158 doesn't play well with queries to multiple sites, and doesn't work
159 with ETRN or ODMR. It will return a false positive if you leave read but
160 undeleted mail in your server mailbox and your fetch protocol can't
161 tell kept messages from new ones. This means it will work with IMAP,
162 not work with POP2, and may occasionally flake out under POP3.
165 Silent mode. Suppresses all progress/status messages that are
166 normally echoed to standard output during a fetch (but does not
167 suppress actual error messages). The \-\-verbose option overrides this.
170 Verbose mode. All control messages passed between
172 and the mailserver are echoed to stdout. Overrides \-\-silent.
173 Doubling this option (\-v \-v) causes extra diagnostic information
177 .B \-a | \-\-all | (since v6.3.3) \-\-fetchall
178 (Keyword: fetchall, since v3.0)
179 Retrieve both old (seen) and new messages from the mailserver. The
180 default is to fetch only messages the server has not marked seen.
181 Under POP3, this option also forces the use of RETR rather than TOP.
182 Note that POP2 retrieval behaves as though \-\-all is always on (see
183 RETRIEVAL FAILURE MODES below) and this option does not work with ETRN
184 or ODMR. While the \-a and \-\-all command-line and fetchall rcfile
185 options have been supported for a long time, the \-\-fetchall
186 command-line option was added in v6.3.3.
190 Keep retrieved messages on the remote mailserver. Normally, messages
191 are deleted from the folder on the mailserver after they have been retrieved.
192 Specifying the \fBkeep\fR option causes retrieved messages to remain in
193 your folder on the mailserver. This option does not work with ETRN or
194 ODMR. If used with POP3, it is recommended to also specify the \-\-uidl
195 option or uidl keyword.
199 Delete retrieved messages from the remote mailserver. This
200 option forces retrieved mail to be deleted. It may be useful if
201 you have specified a default of \fBkeep\fR in your
202 \&\fI.fetchmailrc\fR. This option is forced on with ETRN and ODMR.
205 POP3/IMAP only. This is a dangerous option and can cause mail loss when
206 used improperly. It deletes old (seen) messages from the mailserver
207 before retrieving new messages. \fBWarning:\fR This can cause mail loss if
208 you check your mail with other clients than fetchmail, and cause
209 fetchmail to delete a message it had never fetched before. It can also
210 cause mail loss if the mail server marks the message seen after
211 retrieval (IMAP2 servers). You should probably not use this option in your
212 configuration file. If you use it with POP3, you must use the 'uidl'
213 option. What you probably want is the default setting: if you don't
214 specify '\-k', then fetchmail will automatically delete messages after
218 POP3/IMAP only, since version 6.3.0. Delete oversized messages from the
219 mailserver before retrieving new messages. The size limit should be
220 separately specified with the \-\-limit option. This option does not
221 work with ETRN or ODMR.
222 .SS Protocol and Query Options
224 .B \-p <proto> | \-\-proto <proto> | \-\-protocol <proto>
225 (Keyword: proto[col])
226 Specify the protocol to use when communicating with the remote
227 mailserver. If no protocol is specified, the default is AUTO.
229 may be one of the following:
232 Tries IMAP, POP3, and POP2 (skipping any of these for which support
233 has not been compiled in).
235 Post Office Protocol 2 (legacy, to be removed from future release)
237 Post Office Protocol 3
239 Use POP3 with old-fashioned MD5-challenge authentication.
241 Use POP3 with RPOP authentication.
243 Use POP3 with Kerberos V4 authentication on port 1109.
245 Use POP3 with Demon Internet's SDPS extensions.
247 IMAP2bis, IMAP4, or IMAP4rev1 (\fIfetchmail\fR automatically detects their capabilities).
249 Use the ESMTP ETRN option.
251 Use the the On-Demand Mail Relay ESMTP profile.
254 All these alternatives work in basically the same way (communicating
255 with standard server daemons to fetch mail already delivered to a
256 mailbox on the server) except ETRN and ODMR. The ETRN mode
257 allows you to ask a compliant ESMTP server (such as BSD sendmail at
258 release 8.8.0 or higher) to immediately open a sender-SMTP connection
259 to your client machine and begin forwarding any items addressed to
260 your client machine in the server's queue of undelivered mail. The
261 ODMR mode requires an ODMR-capable server and works similarly to
262 ETRN, except that it does not require the client machine to have
267 Force UIDL use (effective only with POP3). Force client-side tracking
268 of 'newness' of messages (UIDL stands for "unique ID listing" and is
269 described in RFC1939). Use with 'keep' to use a mailbox as a baby
270 news drop for a group of users. The fact that seen messages are skipped
271 is logged, unless error logging is done through syslog while running in
272 daemon mode. Note that fetchmail may automatically enable this option
273 depending on upstream server capabilities. Note also that this option
274 may be removed and forced enabled in a future fetchmail version. See
277 .B \-\-idle (since 6.3.3)
278 (Keyword: idle, since before 6.0.0)
279 Enable IDLE use (effective only with IMAP). Note that this works with
280 only one folder at a given time. While the idle rcfile keyword had been
281 supported for a long time, the \-\-idle command-line option was added in
282 version 6.3.3. IDLE use means that fetchmail tells the IMAP server to
283 send notice of new messages, so they can be retrieved sooner than would
284 be possible with regular polls.
286 .B \-P <portnumber> | \-\-service <servicename>
287 (Keyword: service) Since version 6.3.0.
288 The service option permits you to specify a service name to connect to.
289 You can specify a decimal port number here, if your services database
290 lacks the required service-port assignments. See the FAQ item R12 and
291 the \-\-ssl documentation for details. This replaces the older \-\-port
294 .B \-\-port <portnumber>
296 Obsolete version of \-\-service that does not take service names.
298 this option may be removed from a future version.
300 .B \-\-principal <principal>
302 The principal option permits you to specify a service principal for
303 mutual authentication. This is applicable to POP3 or IMAP with Kerberos
306 .B \-t <seconds> | \-\-timeout <seconds>
308 The timeout option allows you to set a server-nonresponse
309 timeout in seconds. If a mailserver does not send a greeting message
310 or respond to commands for the given number of seconds,
311 \fIfetchmail\fR will hang up on it. Without such a timeout
312 \fIfetchmail\fR might hang up indefinitely trying to fetch mail from a
313 down host. This would be particularly annoying for a \fIfetchmail\fR
314 running in background. There is a default timeout which fetchmail\~\-V
315 will report. If a given connection receives too many timeouts in
316 succession, fetchmail will consider it wedged and stop retrying,
317 the calling user will be notified by email if this happens.
319 .B \-\-plugin <command>
320 (Keyword: plugin) The plugin option allows you to use an external
321 program to establish the TCP connection. This is useful if you want
322 to use socks, SSL, ssh, or need some special firewalling setup. The
323 program will be looked up in $PATH and can optionally be passed the
324 hostname and port as arguments using "%h" and "%p" respectively (note
325 that the interpolation logic is rather primitive, and these token must
326 be bounded by whitespace or beginning of string or end of string).
327 Fetchmail will write to the plugin's stdin and read from the plugin's
330 .B \-\-plugout <command>
332 Identical to the plugin option above, but this one is used for the SMTP
333 connections (which will probably not need it, so it has been separated
336 .B \-r <name> | \-\-folder <name>
338 Causes a specified non-default mail folder on the mailserver (or
339 comma-separated list of folders) to be retrieved. The syntax of the
340 folder name is server-dependent. This option is not available under
344 (Keyword: tracepolls)
345 Tell fetchmail to poll trace information in the form 'polling %s
346 account %s' and 'folder %s' to the Received line it generates,
347 where the %s parts are replaced by the user's remote name, the poll
348 label, and the folder (mailbox) where available (the Received header
349 also normally includes the server's true name). This can be used to
350 facilitate mail filtering based on the account it is being received
351 from. The folder information is written only since version 6.3.4.
355 Causes the connection to the mail server to be encrypted via SSL. Connect
356 to the server using the specified base protocol over a connection secured
357 by SSL. SSL support must be present at the server.
359 Note that fetchmail may still try to negotiate TLS even if this option
360 is not given. You can use the \-\-sslproto option to defeat this
361 behavior or tell fetchmail to negotiate a particular SSL protocol.
363 If no port is specified, the connection is attempted to the well known
364 port of the SSL version of the base protocol. This is generally a
365 different port than the port used by the base protocol. For IMAP, this
366 is port 143 for the clear protocol and port 993 for the SSL secured
367 protocol, for POP3, it is port 110 for the clear text and port 995 for
368 the encrypted variant.
370 If your system lacks the corresponding entries from /etc/services, see
371 the \-\-service option and specify the numeric port number as given in
372 the previous paragraph (unless your ISP had directed you to different
373 ports, which is uncommon however).
375 .B \-\-sslcert <name>
377 Specifies the file name of the client side public SSL certificate. Some
378 SSL encrypted servers may require client side keys and certificates for
379 authentication. In most cases, this is optional. This specifies
380 the location of the public key certificate to be presented to the server
381 at the time the SSL session is established. It is not required (but may
382 be provided) if the server does not require it. Some servers may
383 require it, some servers may request it but not require it, and some
384 servers may not request it at all. It may be the same file
385 as the private key (combined key and certificate file) but this is not
390 Specifies the file name of the client side private SSL key. Some SSL
391 encrypted servers may require client side keys and certificates for
392 authentication. In most cases, this is optional. This specifies
393 the location of the private key used to sign transactions with the server
394 at the time the SSL session is established. It is not required (but may
395 be provided) if the server does not require it. Some servers may
396 require it, some servers may request it but not require it, and some
397 servers may not request it at all. It may be the same file
398 as the public key (combined key and certificate file) but this is not
399 recommended. If a password is required to unlock the key, it will be
400 prompted for at the time just prior to establishing the session to the
401 server. This can cause some complications in daemon mode.
403 .B \-\-sslproto <name>
405 Forces an SSL or TLS protocol. Possible values are '\fBssl2\fR',
406 \&'\fBssl3\fR', '\fBssl23\fR', and '\fBtls1\fR'. Try this if the default
407 handshake does not work for your server. To defeat automatic TLSv1
408 negotiation when the server advertises STARTTLS or STLS, use \fB''\fR or
409 \&'\fBssl23\fR'. This option, even if the argument is the empty string,
410 will also suppress the diagnostic 'SERVER: opportunistic upgrade to
411 TLS.' message in verbose mode. The default is to try appropriate
412 protocols depending on context.
416 Causes fetchmail to strictly check the server certificate against a set of
417 local trusted certificates (see the \fBsslcertpath\fR option). If the server
418 certificate is not signed by one of the trusted ones (directly or indirectly),
419 the SSL connection will fail, regardless of the \fBsslfingerprint\fR
420 option. This checking should prevent man-in-the-middle attacks against
421 the SSL connection. Note that CRLs are seemingly not currently supported
422 by OpenSSL in certificate verification! Your system clock should be
423 reasonably accurate when using this option.
425 Note that this optional behavior may become default behavior in future
428 .B \-\-sslcertpath <directory>
429 (Keyword: sslcertpath)
430 Sets the directory fetchmail uses to look up local certificates. The default
431 is your OpenSSL default one. The directory must be hashed as OpenSSL expects
432 it - every time you add or modify a certificate in the directory, you need
433 to use the \fBc_rehash\fR tool (which comes with OpenSSL in the tools/
436 .B \-\-sslfingerprint <fingerprint>
437 (Keyword: sslfingerprint)
438 Specify the fingerprint of the server key (an MD5 hash of the key) in
439 hexadecimal notation with colons separating groups of two digits. The letter
440 hex digits must be in upper case. This is the default format OpenSSL uses,
441 and the one fetchmail uses to report the fingerprint when an SSL connection
442 is established. When this is specified, fetchmail will compare the server key
443 fingerprint with the given one, and the connection will fail if they do not
444 match regardless of the \fBsslcertck\fR setting.
445 This can be used to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, but the finger
446 print from the server needs to be obtained or verified over a secure
447 channel, and certainly not over the same Internet connection that
450 Using this option will prevent printing certificate verification errors
451 as long as \-\-sslcertck is unset.
453 To obtain the fingerprint of a certificate stored in the file cert.pem,
457 openssl x509 \-in cert.pem \-noout \-md5 \-fingerprint
462 .SS Delivery Control Options
464 .B \-S <hosts> | \-\-smtphost <hosts>
465 (Keyword: smtp[host])
466 Specify a hunt list of hosts to forward mail to (one or more
467 hostnames, comma-separated). Hosts are tried in list order; the first
468 one that is up becomes the forwarding target for the current run. If
469 this option is not specified, 'localhost' is used as the default.
470 Each hostname may have a port number following the host name. The
471 port number is separated from the host name by a slash; the default
472 port is "smtp". If you specify an absolute path name (beginning with
473 a /), it will be interpreted as the name of a UNIX socket accepting
474 LMTP connections (such as is supported by the Cyrus IMAP daemon)
478 \-\-smtphost server1,server2/2525,server3,/var/imap/socket/lmtp
481 This option can be used with ODMR, and will make fetchmail a relay
482 between the ODMR server and SMTP or LMTP receiver.
484 .B \-\-fetchdomains <hosts>
485 (Keyword: fetchdomains)
486 In ETRN or ODMR mode, this option specifies the list of domains the
487 server should ship mail for once the connection is turned around. The
488 default is the FQDN of the machine running
491 .B \-D <domain> | \-\-smtpaddress <domain>
492 (Keyword: smtpaddress) Specify the domain to be appended to addresses
493 in RCPT TO lines shipped to SMTP. When this is not specified, the name
494 of the SMTP server (as specified by \-\-smtphost) is used for SMTP/LMTP
495 and 'localhost' is used for UNIX socket/BSMTP.
497 .B \-\-smtpname <user@domain>
499 Specify the domain and user to be put in RCPT TO lines shipped to SMTP.
500 The default user is the current local user.
502 .B \-Z <nnn> | \-\-antispam <nnn[, nnn]...>
504 Specifies the list of numeric SMTP errors that are to be interpreted
505 as a spam-block response from the listener. A value of \-1 disables
506 this option. For the command-line option, the list values should
509 .B \-m <command> | \-\-mda <command>
510 (Keyword: mda) You can force mail to be passed to an MDA directly
511 (rather than forwarded to port 25) with the \-\-mda or \-m option. To
512 avoid losing mail, use this option only with MDAs like maildrop or
513 MTAs like sendmail that return a nonzero status on disk-full and other
514 resource-exhaustion errors; the nonzero status tells fetchmail that
515 delivery failed and prevents the message from being deleted off the
516 server. If \fIfetchmail\fR is running as root, it sets its user id to
517 that of the target user while delivering mail through an MDA. Some
518 possible MDAs are "/usr/sbin/sendmail \-i \-f %F \-\- %T" (\fBNote:\fR
519 some several older or vendor sendmail versions mistake \-\- for an
520 address, rather than an indicator to mark the end of the option arguments),
521 "/usr/bin/deliver" and "/usr/bin/maildrop \-d %T". Local delivery
522 addresses will be inserted into the MDA command wherever you place a
523 %T; the mail message's From address will be inserted where you place
524 an %F. \fBDO NOT ENCLOSE THE %F OR %T STRING IN SINGLE QUOTES!\fR For
525 both %T and %F, fetchmail encloses the addresses in single quotes ('),
526 after removing any single quotes they may contain, before the MDA
527 command is passed to the shell. Do \fINOT\fR use an MDA invocation
528 like "sendmail \-i \-t" that dispatches on the contents of To/Cc/Bcc, it
529 will create mail loops and bring the just wrath of many postmasters
530 down upon your head. Also, do \fInot\fR try to combine multidrop
531 mode with an MDA such as maildrop that can only accept one
532 address; you will lose mail.
534 A word of warning: the well-known
536 package is very hard to configure properly, it has a very nasty "fall
537 through to the next rule" behavior on delivery errors (even temporary
538 ones, such as out of disk space if another user's mail daemon copies the
539 mailbox around to purge old messages), so your mail will end up in the
540 wrong mailbox sooner or later. The proper procmail configuration is
541 outside the scope of this document though. Using
543 is usually much easier, and many users find the filter syntax used by
544 maildrop easier to understand.
549 Cause delivery via LMTP (Local Mail Transfer Protocol). A service
550 host and port \fBmust\fR be explicitly specified on each host in the
551 smtphost hunt list (see above) if this option is selected; the default
552 port 25 will (in accordance with RFC 2033) not be accepted.
554 .B \-\-bsmtp <filename>
556 Append fetched mail to a BSMTP file. This simply contains the SMTP
557 commands that would normally be generated by fetchmail when passing
558 mail to an SMTP listener daemon. An argument of '\-' causes the mail
559 to be written to standard output. Note that fetchmail's
560 reconstruction of MAIL FROM and RCPT TO lines is not guaranteed
561 correct; the caveats discussed under THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP
562 MAILBOXES below apply.
563 .SS Resource Limit Control Options
565 .B \-l <maxbytes> | \-\-limit <maxbytes>
566 (Keyword: limit) Takes a maximum octet size argument. Messages larger
567 than this size will not be fetched and will be left on the server (in
568 foreground sessions, the progress messages will note that they are
569 "oversized"). If the fetch protocol permits (in particular, under
570 IMAP or POP3 without the fetchall option) the message will not be
573 An explicit \-\-limit of 0 overrides any limits set in your
574 run control file. This option is intended for those needing to
575 strictly control fetch time due to expensive and variable phone rates.
577 Combined with \-\-limitflush, it can be used to delete oversized
578 messages waiting on a server. In daemon mode, oversize notifications
579 are mailed to the calling user (see the \-\-warnings option). This
580 option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
582 .B \-w <interval> | \-\-warnings <interval>
584 Takes an interval in seconds. When you call
586 with a 'limit' option in daemon mode, this controls the interval at
587 which warnings about oversized messages are mailed to the calling user
588 (or the user specified by the 'postmaster' option). One such
589 notification is always mailed at the end of the the first poll that
590 the oversized message is detected. Thereafter, re-notification is
591 suppressed until after the warning interval elapses (it will take
592 place at the end of the first following poll).
594 .B \-b <count> | \-\-batchlimit <count>
595 (Keyword: batchlimit)
596 Specify the maximum number of messages that will be shipped to an SMTP
597 listener before the connection is deliberately torn down and rebuilt
598 (defaults to 0, meaning no limit). An explicit \-\-batchlimit of 0
599 overrides any limits set in your run control file. While
600 \fBsendmail\fR(8) normally initiates delivery of a message immediately
601 after receiving the message terminator, some SMTP listeners are not so
602 prompt. MTAs like \fIsmail\fR(8) may wait till the
603 delivery socket is shut down to deliver. This may produce annoying
604 delays when \fIfetchmail\fR is processing very large batches. Setting
605 the batch limit to some nonzero size will prevent these delays. This
606 option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
608 .B \-B <number> | \-\-fetchlimit <number>
609 (Keyword: fetchlimit)
610 Limit the number of messages accepted from a given server in a single
611 poll. By default there is no limit. An explicit \-\-fetchlimit of 0
612 overrides any limits set in your run control file.
613 This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
615 .B \-\-fetchsizelimit <number>
616 (Keyword: fetchsizelimit)
617 Limit the number of sizes of messages accepted from a given server in
618 a single transaction. This option is useful in reducing the delay in
619 downloading the first mail when there are too many mails in the
620 mailbox. By default, the limit is 100. If set to 0, sizes of all
621 messages are downloaded at the start.
622 This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR. For POP3, the only valid
625 .B \-\-fastuidl <number>
627 Do a binary instead of linear search for the first unseen UID. Binary
628 search avoids downloading the UIDs of all mails. This saves time
629 (especially in daemon mode) where downloading the same set of UIDs in
630 each poll is a waste of bandwidth. The number 'n' indicates how rarely
631 a linear search should be done. In daemon mode, linear search is used
632 once followed by binary searches in 'n-1' polls if 'n' is greater than
633 1; binary search is always used if 'n' is 1; linear search is always
634 used if 'n' is 0. In non-daemon mode, binary search is used if 'n' is
635 1; otherwise linear search is used. The default value of 'n' is 4.
636 This option works with POP3 only.
638 .B \-e <count> | \-\-expunge <count>
640 Arrange for deletions to be made final after a given number of
641 messages. Under POP2 or POP3, fetchmail cannot make deletions final
642 without sending QUIT and ending the session -- with this option on,
643 fetchmail will break a long mail retrieval session into multiple
644 sub-sessions, sending QUIT after each sub-session. This is a good
645 defense against line drops on POP3 servers that do not do the
646 equivalent of a QUIT on hangup. Under IMAP,
648 normally issues an EXPUNGE command after each deletion in order to
649 force the deletion to be done immediately. This is safest when your
650 connection to the server is flaky and expensive, as it avoids
651 resending duplicate mail after a line hit. However, on large
652 mailboxes the overhead of re-indexing after every message can slam the
653 server pretty hard, so if your connection is reliable it is good to do
654 expunges less frequently. Also note that some servers enforce a delay
655 of a few seconds after each quit, so fetchmail may not be able to get
656 back in immediately after an expunge -- you may see "lock busy" errors
657 if this happens. If you specify this option to an integer N,
660 to only issue expunges on every Nth delete. An argument of zero
661 suppresses expunges entirely (so no expunges at all will be done until
662 the end of run). This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
663 .SS Authentication Options
665 .B \-u <name> | \-\-user <name> | \-\-username <name>
666 (Keyword: user[name])
667 Specifies the user identification to be used when logging in to the mailserver.
668 The appropriate user identification is both server and user-dependent.
669 The default is your login name on the client machine that is running
671 See USER AUTHENTICATION below for a complete description.
673 .B \-I <specification> | \-\-interface <specification>
675 Require that a specific interface device be up and have a specific local
676 or remote IPv4 (IPv6 is not supported by this option yet) address (or
677 range) before polling. Frequently \fIfetchmail\fP
678 is used over a transient point-to-point TCP/IP link established directly
679 to a mailserver via SLIP or PPP. That is a relatively secure channel.
680 But when other TCP/IP routes to the mailserver exist (e.g. when the link
681 is connected to an alternate ISP), your username and password may be
682 vulnerable to snooping (especially when daemon mode automatically polls
683 for mail, shipping a clear password over the net at predictable
684 intervals). The \-\-interface option may be used to prevent this. When
685 the specified link is not up or is not connected to a matching IP
686 address, polling will be skipped. The format is:
689 interface/iii.iii.iii.iii[/mmm.mmm.mmm.mmm]
692 The field before the first slash is the interface name (i.e. sl0, ppp0
693 etc.). The field before the second slash is the acceptable IP address.
694 The field after the second slash is a mask which specifies a range of
695 IP addresses to accept. If no mask is present 255.255.255.255 is
696 assumed (i.e. an exact match). This option is currently only supported
697 under Linux and FreeBSD. Please see the
699 section for below for FreeBSD specific information.
701 Note that this option may be removed from a future fetchmail version.
703 .B \-M <interface> | \-\-monitor <interface>
705 Daemon mode can cause transient links which are automatically taken down
706 after a period of inactivity (e.g. PPP links) to remain up
707 indefinitely. This option identifies a system TCP/IP interface to be
708 monitored for activity. After each poll interval, if the link is up but
709 no other activity has occurred on the link, then the poll will be
710 skipped. However, when fetchmail is woken up by a signal, the
711 monitor check is skipped and the poll goes through unconditionally.
712 This option is currently only supported under Linux and FreeBSD.
717 options to work for non root users under FreeBSD, the fetchmail binary
718 must be installed SGID kmem. This would be a security hole, but
719 fetchmail runs with the effective GID set to that of the kmem group
721 when interface data is being collected.
723 Note that this option may be removed from a future fetchmail version.
726 (Keyword: auth[enticate])
727 This option permits you to specify an authentication type (see USER
728 AUTHENTICATION below for details). The possible values are \fBany\fR,
729 \&\fBpassword\fR, \fBkerberos_v5\fR, \fBkerberos\fR (or, for
730 excruciating exactness, \fBkerberos_v4\fR), \fBgssapi\fR,
731 \fBcram\-md5\fR, \fBotp\fR, \fBntlm\fR, \fBmsn\fR (only for POP3) and
732 \fBssh\fR. When \fBany\fR (the default) is specified, fetchmail tries
733 first methods that don't require a password (GSSAPI, KERBEROS\ IV,
734 KERBEROS\ 5); then it looks for methods that mask your password
735 (CRAM-MD5, X\-OTP - note that NTLM and MSN are not autoprobed for POP3
736 and MSN is only supported for POP3); and only if the server doesn't
737 support any of those will it ship your password en clair. Other values
738 may be used to force various authentication methods
739 (\fBssh\fR suppresses authentication and is thus good for IMAP PREAUTH).
740 Any value other than \fBpassword\fR, \fBcram\-md5\fR, \fBntlm\fR,
741 \&\fBmsn\fR or \fBotp\fR suppresses fetchmail's normal inquiry for a
742 password. Specify \fBssh\fR when you are using an end-to-end secure
743 connection such as an ssh tunnel; specify \fBgssapi\fR or
744 \&\fBkerberos_v4\fR if you are using a protocol variant that employs
745 GSSAPI or K4. Choosing KPOP protocol automatically selects Kerberos
746 authentication. This option does not work with ETRN.
747 .SS Miscellaneous Options
749 .B \-f <pathname> | \-\-fetchmailrc <pathname>
750 Specify a non-default name for the
752 run control file. The pathname argument must be either "-" (a single
753 dash, meaning to read the configuration from standard input) or a
754 filename. Unless the \-\-version option is also on, a named file
755 argument must have permissions no more open than 0600 (u=rw,g=,o=) or
758 .B \-i <pathname> | \-\-idfile <pathname>
760 Specify an alternate name for the .fetchids file used to save POP3
761 UIDs. NOTE: since fetchmail 6.3.0, write access to the directory
762 containing the idfile is required, as fetchmail writes a temporary file
763 and renames it into the place of the real idfile only if the temporary
764 file has been written successfully. This avoids the truncation of
765 idfiles when running out of disk space.
767 .B \--pidfile <pathname>
768 (Keyword: pidfile; since fetchmail v6.3.4)
769 Override the default location of the PID file. Default: see
772 .B \-n | \-\-norewrite
773 (Keyword: no rewrite)
776 edits RFC-822 address headers (To, From, Cc, Bcc, and Reply\-To) in
777 fetched mail so that any mail IDs local to the server are expanded to
778 full addresses (@ and the mailserver hostname are appended). This enables
779 replies on the client to get addressed correctly (otherwise your
780 mailer might think they should be addressed to local users on the
781 client machine!). This option disables the rewrite. (This option is
782 provided to pacify people who are paranoid about having an MTA edit
783 mail headers and want to know they can prevent it, but it is generally
784 not a good idea to actually turn off rewrite.)
785 When using ETRN or ODMR, the rewrite option is ineffective.
787 .B \-E <line> | \-\-envelope <line>
788 (Keyword: envelope; Multidrop only)
790 In the configuration file, an enhanced syntax is used:
792 .B envelope [<count>] <line>
794 This option changes the header
796 assumes will carry a copy of the mail's envelope address. Normally
797 this is 'X\-Envelope\-To', but as this header is not standard, practice
798 varies. See the discussion of multidrop address handling below. As a
799 special case, 'envelope "Received"' enables parsing of sendmail-style
800 Received lines. This is the default, and it should not be necessary
801 unless you have globally disabled Received parsing with 'no envelope'
802 in the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file.
804 The optional count argument (only available in the configuration file)
805 determines how many header lines of this kind are skipped. A count of 1
806 means: skip the first, take the second. A count of 2 means: skip the
807 first and second, take the third, and so on.
809 .B \-Q <prefix> | \-\-qvirtual <prefix>
810 (Keyword: qvirtual; Multidrop only)
811 The string prefix assigned to this option will be removed from the user
812 name found in the header specified with the \fIenvelope\fR option
813 (\fIbefore\fR doing multidrop name mapping or localdomain checking,
814 if either is applicable). This option is useful if you are using
816 to collect the mail for an entire domain and your ISP (or your mail
817 redirection provider) is using qmail.
818 One of the basic features of qmail is the
822 message header. Whenever qmail delivers a message to a local mailbox
823 it puts the username and hostname of the envelope recipient on this
824 line. The major reason for this is to prevent mail loops. To set up
825 qmail to batch mail for a disconnected site the ISP-mailhost will have
826 normally put that site in its 'Virtualhosts' control file so it will
827 add a prefix to all mail addresses for this site. This results in mail
828 .\" The \&@\& tries to stop HTML converters from making a mailto URL here.
829 sent to 'username\&@\&userhost.userdom.dom.com' having a
830 \&'Delivered\-To:' line of the form:
832 Delivered\-To: mbox\-userstr\-username\&@\&userhost.example.com
834 The ISP can make the 'mbox\-userstr\-' prefix anything they choose
835 but a string matching the user host name is likely.
836 By using the option 'envelope Delivered\-To:' you can make fetchmail reliably
837 identify the original envelope recipient, but you have to strip the
838 \&'mbox\-userstr\-' prefix to deliver to the correct user.
839 This is what this option is for.
844 file, interpret any command-line options specified, and dump a
845 configuration report to standard output. The configuration report is
846 a data structure assignment in the language Python. This option
847 is meant to be used with an interactive
855 Removed before version 6.3.0, the required underlying inet6_apps library
856 had been discontinued and is no longer available.
858 .SH USER AUTHENTICATION AND ENCRYPTION
859 All modes except ETRN require authentication of the client to the server.
860 Normal user authentication in
862 is very much like the authentication mechanism of
864 The correct user-id and password depend upon the underlying security
865 system at the mailserver.
867 If the mailserver is a Unix machine on which you have an ordinary user
868 account, your regular login name and password are used with
870 If you use the same login name on both the server and the client machines,
871 you needn't worry about specifying a user-id with the
873 option -- the default behavior is to use your login name on the
874 client machine as the user-id on the server machine. If you use a
875 different login name on the server machine, specify that login name
878 option. e.g. if your login name is 'jsmith' on a machine named 'mailgrunt',
883 fetchmail \-u jsmith mailgrunt
885 The default behavior of
887 is to prompt you for your mailserver password before the connection is
888 established. This is the safest way to use
890 and ensures that your password will not be compromised. You may also specify
891 your password in your
893 file. This is convenient when using
895 in daemon mode or with scripts.
896 .SS Using netrc files
898 If you do not specify a password, and
900 cannot extract one from your
902 file, it will look for a
904 file in your home directory before requesting one interactively; if an
905 entry matching the mailserver is found in that file, the password will
906 be used. Fetchmail first looks for a match on poll name; if it finds none,
907 it checks for a match on via name. See the
909 man page for details of the syntax of the
911 file. To show a practical example, a .netrc might look like
915 machine hermes.example.org
920 You can repeat this block with different user information if you need to
921 provide more than one password.
923 This feature may allow you to avoid duplicating password
924 information in more than one file.
926 On mailservers that do not provide ordinary user accounts, your user-id and
927 password are usually assigned by the server administrator when you apply for
928 a mailbox on the server. Contact your server administrator if you don't know
929 the correct user-id and password for your mailbox account.
932 Early versions of POP3 (RFC1081, RFC1225) supported a crude form of
933 independent authentication using the
935 file on the mailserver side. Under this RPOP variant, a fixed
936 per-user ID equivalent to a password was sent in clear over a link to
937 a reserved port, with the command RPOP rather than PASS to alert the
938 server that it should do special checking. RPOP is supported
941 (you can specify 'protocol RPOP' to have the program send 'RPOP'
942 rather than 'PASS') but its use is strongly discouraged, and support
943 will be removed from a future fetchmail version. This
944 facility was vulnerable to spoofing and was withdrawn in RFC1460.
946 RFC1460 introduced APOP authentication. In this variant of POP3,
947 you register an APOP password on your server host (the program
948 to do this with on the server is probably called \fIpopauth\fR(8)). You
949 put the same password in your
953 logs in, it sends a cryptographically secure hash of your password and
954 the server greeting time to the server, which can verify it by
955 checking its authorization database.
958 makes some efforts to make the server believe messages had not been
959 retrieved, by using the TOP command with a large number of lines when
960 possible. TOP is a command that retrieves the full header and
961 a \fIfetchmail\fP-specified amount of body lines. It is optional and
962 therefore not implemented by all servers, and some are known to
963 implement it improperly. On many servers however, the RETR command which
964 retrieves the full message with header and body, sets the "seen" flag
965 (for instance, in a web interface), whereas the TOP command does not do
969 will always use the RETR command if "fetchall" is set.
971 will also use the RETR command if "keep" is set and "uidl" is unset.
974 will use the RETR command on Maillennium POP3/PROXY
975 servers (used by Comcast) to avoid a deliberate TOP misinterpretation in
976 this server that causes message corruption.
980 will use the TOP command. This implies that in "keep" setups, "uidl"
981 must be set if "TOP" is desired.
984 that this description is true for the current version of fetchmail, but
985 the behavior may change in future versions. In particular, fetchmail may
986 prefer the RETR command because the TOP command causes much grief on
987 some servers and is only optional.
988 .SH ALTERNATE AUTHENTICATION FORMS
990 If your \fIfetchmail\fR was built with Kerberos support and you specify
991 Kerberos authentication (either with \-\-auth or the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
992 option \fBauthenticate kerberos_v4\fR) it will try to get a Kerberos
993 ticket from the mailserver at the start of each query. Note: if
994 either the pollname or via name is 'hesiod', fetchmail will try to use
995 Hesiod to look up the mailserver.
997 If you use POP3 or IMAP with GSSAPI authentication, \fIfetchmail\fR will
998 expect the server to have RFC1731- or RFC1734-conforming GSSAPI
999 capability, and will use it. Currently this has only been tested over
1000 Kerberos V, so you're expected to already have a ticket-granting
1001 ticket. You may pass a username different from your principal name
1002 using the standard \fB\-\-user\fR command or by the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
1005 If your IMAP daemon returns the PREAUTH response in its greeting line,
1006 fetchmail will notice this and skip the normal authentication step.
1007 This can be useful, e.g. if you start imapd explicitly using ssh.
1008 In this case you can declare the authentication value 'ssh' on that
1009 site entry to stop \fI.fetchmail\fR from asking you for a password
1012 If you are using POP3, and the server issues a one-time-password
1013 challenge conforming to RFC1938, \fIfetchmail\fR will use your
1014 password as a pass phrase to generate the required response. This
1015 avoids sending secrets over the net unencrypted.
1017 Compuserve's RPA authentication (similar to APOP) is supported. If you
1018 compile in the support, \fIfetchmail\fR will try to perform an RPA pass-phrase
1019 authentication instead of sending over the password en clair if it
1020 detects "@compuserve.com" in the hostname.
1022 If you are using IMAP, Microsoft's NTLM authentication (used by Microsoft
1023 Exchange) is supported. If you compile in the support, \fIfetchmail\fR
1024 will try to perform an NTLM authentication (instead of sending over the
1025 password en clair) whenever the server returns AUTH=NTLM in its
1026 capability response. Specify a user option value that looks like
1027 \&'user@domain': the part to the left of the @ will be passed as the
1028 username and the part to the right as the NTLM domain.
1029 .SS Secure Socket Layers (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS)
1031 You can access SSL encrypted services by specifying the \-\-ssl option.
1032 You can also do this using the "ssl" user option in the .fetchmailrc
1033 file. With SSL encryption enabled, queries are initiated over a connection
1034 after negotiating an SSL session. Some services, such as POP3 and IMAP,
1035 have different well known ports defined for the SSL encrypted services.
1036 The encrypted ports will be selected automatically when SSL is enabled and
1037 no explicit port is specified.
1039 When connecting to an SSL encrypted server, the server presents a certificate
1040 to the client for validation. The certificate is checked to verify that
1041 the common name in the certificate matches the name of the server being
1042 contacted and that the effective and expiration dates in the certificate
1043 indicate that it is currently valid. If any of these checks fail, a warning
1044 message is printed, but the connection continues. The server certificate
1045 does not need to be signed by any specific Certifying Authority and may
1046 be a "self-signed" certificate.
1048 Some SSL encrypted servers may request a client side certificate. A client
1049 side public SSL certificate and private SSL key may be specified. If
1050 requested by the server, the client certificate is sent to the server for
1051 validation. Some servers may require a valid client certificate and may
1052 refuse connections if a certificate is not provided or if the certificate
1053 is not valid. Some servers may require client side certificates be signed
1054 by a recognized Certifying Authority. The format for the key files and
1055 the certificate files is that required by the underlying SSL libraries
1056 (OpenSSL in the general case).
1058 A word of care about the use of SSL: While above mentioned
1059 setup with self-signed server certificates retrieved over the wires
1060 can protect you from a passive eavesdropper it doesn't help against an
1061 active attacker. It's clearly an improvement over sending the
1062 passwords in clear but you should be aware that a man-in-the-middle
1063 attack is trivially possible (in particular with tools such as dsniff,
1064 http://monkey.org/~dugsong/dsniff/). Use of an ssh tunnel (see
1065 below for some examples) is preferable if you care seriously about the
1066 security of your mailbox.
1070 also supports authentication to the ESMTP server on the client side
1071 according to RFC 2554. You can specify a name/password pair to be
1072 used with the keywords 'esmtpname' and 'esmtppassword'; the former
1073 defaults to the username of the calling user.
1076 .SS Introducing the daemon mode
1079 puts itself into the background and runs forever, querying each
1080 specified host and then sleeping for a given polling interval.
1081 .SS Starting the daemon mode
1082 There are several ways to make fetchmail work in daemon mode. On the
1083 command line, \fB\-\-daemon\ <interval>\fR or \fB\-d\ <interval>\fR
1084 option runs \fIfetchmail\fR in daemon mode. You must specify a numeric
1085 argument which is a polling interval in seconds.
1087 Example: simply invoking
1091 will, therefore, poll all the hosts described in your
1093 file (except those explicitly excluded with the 'skip' verb) once
1096 It is also possible to set a polling interval
1097 in your \fI~/.fetchmailrc\fR file by saying 'set\ daemon\ <interval>',
1098 where <interval> is an integer number of seconds. If you do this,
1099 fetchmail will always start in daemon mode unless you override it with
1100 the command-line option \-\-daemon 0 or \-d0.
1102 Only one daemon process is permitted per user; in daemon mode,
1103 \fIfetchmail\fR sets up a per-user lockfile to guarantee this.
1104 (You can however cheat and set the FETCHMAILHOME environment variable to
1105 overcome this setting, but in that case, it is your responsibility to
1106 make sure you aren't polling the same server with two processes at the
1108 .SS Awakening the background daemon
1110 Normally, calling fetchmail with a daemon in the background sends a
1111 wake-up signal to the daemon and quits without output. The background
1112 daemon then starts its next poll cycle immediately. The wake-up signal,
1113 SIGUSR1, can also be sent manually. The wake-up action also clears any
1114 'wedged' flags indicating that connections have wedged due to failed
1115 authentication or multiple timeouts.
1116 .SS Terminating the background daemon
1120 will kill a running daemon process instead of waking it up (if there
1121 is no such process, \fIfetchmail\fP will notify you.
1122 If the \-\-quit option appears last on the command line, \fIfetchmail\fP
1123 will kill the running daemon process and then quit. Otherwise,
1124 \fIfetchmail\fP will first kill a running daemon process and then
1125 continue running with the other options.
1126 .SS Useful options for daemon mode
1131 .B \-\-logfile <filename>
1132 option (keyword: set logfile) is only effective when fetchmail is
1133 detached. This option allows you to redirect status messages
1134 into a specified logfile (follow the option with the logfile name). The
1135 logfile is opened for append, so previous messages aren't deleted. This
1136 is primarily useful for debugging configurations.
1140 option (keyword: set syslog) allows you to redirect status and error
1141 messages emitted to the
1143 system daemon if available.
1144 Messages are logged with an id of \fBfetchmail\fR, the facility \fBLOG_MAIL\fR,
1145 and priorities \fBLOG_ERR\fR, \fBLOG_ALERT\fR or \fBLOG_INFO\fR.
1146 This option is intended for logging status and error messages which
1147 indicate the status of the daemon and the results while fetching mail
1149 Error messages for command line options and parsing the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR
1150 file are still written to stderr, or to the specified log file.
1153 option turns off use of
1155 assuming it's turned on in the
1160 .B \-\-logfile <file>
1167 option suppresses backgrounding and detachment of the
1168 daemon process from its control terminal. This is useful
1169 for debugging or when fetchmail runs as the child of a supervisor
1174 Note that this also causes the logfile option to be
1175 ignored (though perhaps it shouldn't).
1177 Note that while running in daemon mode polling a POP2 or IMAP2bis server,
1178 transient errors (such as DNS failures or sendmail delivery refusals)
1179 may force the fetchall option on for the duration of the next polling
1180 cycle. This is a robustness feature. It means that if a message is
1181 fetched (and thus marked seen by the mailserver) but not delivered
1182 locally due to some transient error, it will be re-fetched during the
1183 next poll cycle. (The IMAP logic doesn't delete messages until
1184 they're delivered, so this problem does not arise.)
1186 If you touch or change the
1188 file while fetchmail is running in daemon mode, this will be detected
1189 at the beginning of the next poll cycle. When a changed
1191 is detected, fetchmail rereads it and restarts from scratch (using
1192 exec(2); no state information is retained in the new instance).
1193 Note also that if you break the
1195 file's syntax, the new instance will softly and silently vanish away
1198 .SH ADMINISTRATIVE OPTIONS
1201 .B \-\-postmaster <name>
1202 option (keyword: set postmaster) specifies the last-resort username to
1203 which multidrop mail is to be forwarded if no matching local recipient
1204 can be found. It is also used as destination of undeliverable mail if
1205 the 'bouncemail' global option is off and additionally for spam-blocked
1206 mail if the 'bouncemail' global option is off and the 'spambounce'
1207 global option is on. This option defaults to the user who invoked
1209 If the invoking user is root, then the default of this option is
1210 the user 'postmaster'. Setting postmaster to the empty string causes
1211 such mail as described above to be discarded - this however is usually a
1213 See also the description of the 'FETCHMAILUSER' environment variable in
1214 the ENVIRONMENT section below.
1218 behaves like the "set no bouncemail" global option, which see.
1222 option (keyword: set invisible) tries to make fetchmail invisible.
1223 Normally, fetchmail behaves like any other MTA would -- it generates a
1224 Received header into each message describing its place in the chain of
1225 transmission, and tells the MTA it forwards to that the mail came from
1226 the machine fetchmail itself is running on. If the invisible option
1227 is on, the Received header is suppressed and fetchmail tries to spoof
1228 the MTA it forwards to into thinking it came directly from the
1233 option (keyword: set showdots) forces fetchmail to show progress dots
1234 even if the current tty is not stdout (for example logfiles).
1235 Fetchmail shows the dots by default when run in nodetach mode or when
1236 daemon mode is not enabled.
1240 option, you can ask fetchmail to add information to the Received
1241 header on the form "polling {label} account {user}", where {label} is
1242 the account label (from the specified rcfile, normally ~/.fetchmailrc)
1243 and {user} is the username which is used to log on to the mail
1244 server. This header can be used to make filtering email where no
1245 useful header information is available and you want mail from
1246 different accounts sorted into different mailboxes (this could, for
1247 example, occur if you have an account on the same server running a
1248 mailing list, and are subscribed to the list using that account). The
1249 default is not adding any such header. In
1251 this is called 'tracepolls'.
1253 .SH RETRIEVAL FAILURE MODES
1254 The protocols \fIfetchmail\fR uses to talk to mailservers are next to
1255 bulletproof. In normal operation forwarding to port 25, no message is
1256 ever deleted (or even marked for deletion) on the host until the SMTP
1257 listener on the client side has acknowledged to \fIfetchmail\fR that
1258 the message has been either accepted for delivery or rejected due to a
1261 When forwarding to an MDA, however, there is more possibility
1262 of error. Some MDAs are 'safe' and reliably return a nonzero status
1263 on any delivery error, even one due to temporary resource limits.
1266 program is like this; so are most programs designed as mail transport
1269 including the sendmail wrapper of Postfix and
1271 These programs give back a reliable positive acknowledgement and
1272 can be used with the mda option with no risk of mail loss. Unsafe
1273 MDAs, though, may return 0 even on delivery failure. If this
1274 happens, you will lose mail.
1276 The normal mode of \fIfetchmail\fR is to try to download only 'new'
1277 messages, leaving untouched (and undeleted) messages you have already
1278 read directly on the server (or fetched with a previous \fIfetchmail
1279 \-\-keep\fR). But you may find that messages you've already read on the
1280 server are being fetched (and deleted) even when you don't specify
1281 \-\-all. There are several reasons this can happen.
1283 One could be that you're using POP2. The POP2 protocol includes no
1284 representation of 'new' or 'old' state in messages, so \fIfetchmail\fR
1285 must treat all messages as new all the time. But POP2 is obsolete, so
1288 A potential POP3 problem might be servers that insert messages
1289 in the middle of mailboxes (some VMS implementations of mail are
1290 rumored to do this). The \fIfetchmail\fR code assumes that new
1291 messages are appended to the end of the mailbox; when this is not true
1292 it may treat some old messages as new and vice versa. Using UIDL whilst
1293 setting fastuidl 0 might fix this, otherwise, consider switching to IMAP.
1295 Yet another POP3 problem is that if they can't make tempfiles in the
1296 user's home directory, some POP3 servers will hand back an
1297 undocumented response that causes fetchmail to spuriously report "No
1300 The IMAP code uses the presence or absence of the server flag \eSeen
1301 to decide whether or not a message is new. This isn't the right thing
1302 to do, fetchmail should check the UIDVALIDITY and use UID, but it
1303 doesn't do that yet. Under Unix, it counts on your IMAP server to notice
1304 the BSD-style Status flags set by mail user agents and set the \eSeen
1305 flag from them when appropriate. All Unix IMAP servers we know of do
1306 this, though it's not specified by the IMAP RFCs. If you ever trip over
1307 a server that doesn't, the symptom will be that messages you have
1308 already read on your host will look new to the server. In this
1309 (unlikely) case, only messages you fetched with \fIfetchmail \-\-keep\fR
1310 will be both undeleted and marked old.
1312 In ETRN and ODMR modes, \fIfetchmail\fR does not actually retrieve messages;
1313 instead, it asks the server's SMTP listener to start a queue flush
1314 to the client via SMTP. Therefore it sends only undelivered messages.
1317 Many SMTP listeners allow administrators to set up 'spam filters' that
1318 block unsolicited email from specified domains. A MAIL FROM or DATA line that
1319 triggers this feature will elicit an SMTP response which
1320 (unfortunately) varies according to the listener.
1324 return an error code of 571.
1326 According to RFC2821, the correct thing to return in this situation is
1327 550 "Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable" (the draft adds
1328 "[E.g., mailbox not found, no access, or command rejected for policy
1331 Older versions of the
1333 MTA return 501 "Syntax error in parameters or arguments".
1337 MTA runs 554 as an antispam response.
1340 may reject code with a 500 response (followed by an enhanced status
1341 code that contains more information).
1345 treats as antispam responses and discards
1346 the message can be set with the 'antispam' option. This is one of the
1348 three circumstance under which fetchmail ever discards mail (the others
1349 are the 552 and 553 errors described below, and the suppression of
1350 multidropped messages with a message-ID already seen).
1354 is fetching from an IMAP server, the antispam response will be detected and
1355 the message rejected immediately after the headers have been fetched,
1356 without reading the message body. Thus, you won't pay for downloading
1357 spam message bodies.
1359 By default, the list of antispam responses is empty.
1361 If the \fIspambounce\fR global option is on, mail that is spam-blocked
1362 triggers an RFC1892/RFC1894 bounce message informing the originator that
1363 we do not accept mail from it. See also BUGS.
1365 .SH SMTP/ESMTP ERROR HANDLING
1366 Besides the spam-blocking described above, fetchmail takes special
1367 actions on the following SMTP/ESMTP error responses
1369 452 (insufficient system storage)
1370 Leave the message in the server mailbox for later retrieval.
1372 552 (message exceeds fixed maximum message size)
1373 Delete the message from the server. Send bounce-mail to the
1376 553 (invalid sending domain)
1377 Delete the message from the server. Don't even try to send
1378 bounce-mail to the originator.
1380 Other errors trigger bounce mail back to the originator. See also BUGS.
1382 .SH THE RUN CONTROL FILE
1383 The preferred way to set up fetchmail is to write a
1384 \&\fI.fetchmailrc\fR file in your home directory (you may do this
1385 directly, with a text editor, or indirectly via \fIfetchmailconf\fR).
1386 When there is a conflict between the command-line arguments and the
1387 arguments in this file, the command-line arguments take precedence.
1389 To protect the security of your passwords,
1390 your \fI~/.fetchmailrc\fR may not normally have more than 0600 (u=rw,g=,o=) permissions;
1392 will complain and exit otherwise (this check is suppressed when
1395 You may read the \fI.fetchmailrc\fR file as a list of commands to
1398 is called with no arguments.
1399 .SS Run Control Syntax
1401 Comments begin with a '#' and extend through the end of the line.
1402 Otherwise the file consists of a series of server entries or global
1403 option statements in a free-format, token-oriented syntax.
1405 There are four kinds of tokens: grammar keywords, numbers
1406 (i.e. decimal digit sequences), unquoted strings, and quoted strings.
1407 A quoted string is bounded by double quotes and may contain
1408 whitespace (and quoted digits are treated as a string). Note that
1409 quoted strings will also contain line feed characters if they run across
1410 two or more lines, unless you use a backslash to join lines (see below).
1411 An unquoted string is any whitespace-delimited token that is neither
1412 numeric, string quoted nor contains the special characters ',', ';',
1415 Any amount of whitespace separates tokens in server entries, but is
1416 otherwise ignored. You may use backslash escape sequences (\en for LF,
1417 \&\et for HT, \eb for BS, \er for CR, \e\fInnn\fP for decimal (where
1418 nnn cannot start with a 0), \e0\fIooo\fP for octal, and \ex\fIhh\fP for
1419 hex) to embed non-printable characters or string delimiters in strings.
1420 In quoted strings, a backslash at the very end of a line will cause the
1421 backslash itself and the line feed (LF or NL, new line) character to be
1422 ignored, so that you can wrap long strings. Without the backslash at the
1423 line end, the line feed character would become part of the string.
1426 while these resemble C-style escape sequences, they are not the same.
1427 fetchmail only supports these eight styles. C supports more escape
1428 sequences that consist of backslash (\e) and a single character, but
1429 does not support decimal codes and does not require the leading 0 in
1430 octal notation. Example: fetchmail interprets \e233 the same as \exE9
1431 (Latin small letter e with acute), where C would interpret \e233 as
1432 octal 0233 = \ex9B (CSI, control sequence introducer).
1434 Each server entry consists of one of the keywords 'poll' or 'skip',
1435 followed by a server name, followed by server options, followed by any
1436 number of user descriptions. Note: the most common cause of syntax
1437 errors is mixing up user and server options.
1439 For backward compatibility, the word 'server' is a synonym for 'poll'.
1441 You can use the noise keywords 'and', 'with',
1442 \&'has', 'wants', and 'options' anywhere in an entry to make
1443 it resemble English. They're ignored, but but can make entries much
1444 easier to read at a glance. The punctuation characters ':', ';' and
1445 \&',' are also ignored.
1448 The 'poll' verb tells fetchmail to query this host when it is run with
1449 no arguments. The 'skip' verb tells
1451 not to poll this host unless it is explicitly named on the command
1452 line. (The 'skip' verb allows you to experiment with test entries
1453 safely, or easily disable entries for hosts that are temporarily down.)
1455 .SS Keyword/Option Summary
1456 Here are the legal options. Keyword suffixes enclosed in
1457 square brackets are optional. Those corresponding to short command-line
1458 options are followed by '\-' and the appropriate option letter. If
1459 option is only relevant to a single mode of operation, it is noted as
1460 \&'s' or 'm' for singledrop- or multidrop-mode, respectively.
1462 Here are the legal global options:
1466 Keyword Opt Mode Function
1468 set daemon \-d \& T{
1469 Set a background poll interval in seconds.
1471 set postmaster \& \& T{
1472 Give the name of the last-resort mail recipient (default: user running
1473 fetchmail, "postmaster" if run by the root user)
1475 set bouncemail \& \& T{
1476 Direct error mail to the sender (default)
1478 set no bouncemail \& \& T{
1479 Direct error mail to the local postmaster (as per the 'postmaster'
1480 global option above).
1482 set no spambounce \& \& T{
1483 Do not bounce spam-blocked mail (default).
1485 set spambounce \& \& T{
1486 Bounce blocked spam-blocked mail (as per the 'antispam' user option)
1487 back to the destination as indicated by the 'bouncemail' global option.
1488 Warning: Do not use this to bounce spam back to the sender - most spam
1489 is sent with false sender address and thus this option hurts innocent
1492 set logfile \-L \& T{
1493 Name of a file to append error and status messages to.
1495 set idfile \-i \& T{
1496 Name of the file to store UID lists in.
1499 Do error logging through syslog(3).
1501 set no syslog \& \& T{
1502 Turn off error logging through syslog(3). (default)
1504 set properties \& \& T{
1505 String value that is ignored by fetchmail (may be used by extension
1510 Here are the legal server options:
1514 Keyword Opt Mode Function
1517 Specify DNS name of mailserver, overriding poll name
1519 proto[col] \-p \& T{
1520 Specify protocol (case insensitive):
1521 POP2, POP3, IMAP, APOP, KPOP
1523 local[domains] \& m T{
1524 Specify domain(s) to be regarded as local
1527 Specify TCP/IP service port (obsolete, use 'service' instead).
1530 Specify service name (a numeric value is also allowed and
1531 considered a TCP/IP port number).
1533 auth[enticate] \& \& T{
1534 Set authentication type (default 'any')
1537 Server inactivity timeout in seconds (default 300)
1540 Specify envelope-address header name
1543 Disable looking for envelope address
1546 Qmail virtual domain prefix to remove from user name
1549 Specify alternate DNS names of mailserver
1552 specify IP interface(s) that must be up for server poll to take place
1555 Specify IP address to monitor for activity
1558 Specify command through which to make server connections.
1561 Specify command through which to make listener connections.
1564 Enable DNS lookup for multidrop (default)
1567 Disable DNS lookup for multidrop
1570 Do comparison by IP address for multidrop
1572 no checkalias \& m T{
1573 Do comparison by name for multidrop (default)
1576 Force POP3 to use client-side UIDLs (recommended)
1579 Turn off POP3 use of client-side UIDLs (default)
1582 Only check this site every N poll cycles; N is a numeric argument.
1585 Add poll tracing information to the Received header
1588 Set Kerberos principal (only useful with imap and kerberos)
1591 Set name for RFC2554 authentication to the ESMTP server.
1593 esmtppassword \& \& T{
1594 Set password for RFC2554 authentication to the ESMTP server.
1598 Here are the legal user options:
1602 Keyword Opt Mode Function
1604 user[name] \-u \& T{
1605 Set remote user name
1606 (local user name if name followed by 'here')
1609 Connect local and remote user names
1612 Connect local and remote user names
1615 Specify remote account password
1618 Connect to server over the specified base protocol using SSL encryption
1621 Specify file for client side public SSL certificate
1624 Specify file for client side private SSL key
1627 Force ssl protocol for connection
1630 Specify remote folder to query
1633 Specify smtp host(s) to forward to
1635 fetchdomains \& m T{
1636 Specify domains for which mail should be fetched
1638 smtpaddress \-D \& T{
1639 Specify the domain to be put in RCPT TO lines
1642 Specify the user and domain to be put in RCPT TO lines
1645 Specify what SMTP returns are interpreted as spam-policy blocks
1648 Specify MDA for local delivery
1651 Specify BSMTP batch file to append to
1654 Command to be executed before each connection
1656 postconnect \& \& T{
1657 Command to be executed after each connection
1660 Don't delete seen messages from server (for POP3, uidl is recommended)
1663 Flush all seen messages before querying (DANGEROUS)
1666 Flush all oversized messages before querying
1669 Fetch all messages whether seen or not
1672 Rewrite destination addresses for reply (default)
1675 Strip carriage returns from ends of lines
1678 Force carriage returns at ends of lines
1681 Force BODY=8BITMIME to ESMTP listener
1684 Strip Status and X-Mozilla-Status lines out of incoming mail
1686 dropdelivered \& \& T{
1687 Strip Delivered-To lines out of incoming mail
1690 Convert quoted-printable to 8-bit in MIME messages
1693 Idle waiting for new messages after each poll (IMAP only)
1696 Delete seen messages from server (default)
1699 Don't flush all seen messages before querying (default)
1701 no fetchall \& \& T{
1702 Retrieve only new messages (default)
1705 Don't rewrite headers
1708 Don't strip carriage returns (default)
1711 Don't force carriage returns at EOL (default)
1713 no pass8bits \& \& T{
1714 Don't force BODY=8BITMIME to ESMTP listener (default)
1716 no dropstatus \& \& T{
1717 Don't drop Status headers (default)
1719 no dropdelivered \& \& T{
1720 Don't drop Delivered\-To headers (default)
1722 no mimedecode \& \& T{
1723 Don't convert quoted-printable to 8-bit in MIME messages (default)
1726 Don't idle waiting for new messages after each poll (IMAP only)
1729 Set message size limit
1732 Set message size warning interval
1734 batchlimit \-b \& T{
1735 Max # messages to forward in single connect
1737 fetchlimit \-B \& T{
1738 Max # messages to fetch in single connect
1740 fetchsizelimit \& \& T{
1741 Max # message sizes to fetch in single transaction
1744 Use binary search for first unseen message (POP3 only)
1747 Perform an expunge on every #th message (IMAP and POP3 only)
1750 String value is ignored by fetchmail (may be used by extension scripts)
1754 Remember that all user options must \fIfollow\fR all server options.
1756 In the .fetchmailrc file, the 'envelope' string argument may be
1757 preceded by a whitespace-separated number. This number, if specified,
1758 is the number of such headers to skip over (that is, an argument of 1
1759 selects the second header of the given type). This is sometime useful
1760 for ignoring bogus envelope headers created by an ISP's local delivery
1761 agent or internal forwards (through mail inspection systems, for
1763 .SS Keywords Not Corresponding To Option Switches
1765 The 'folder' and 'smtphost' options (unlike their command-line
1766 equivalents) can take a space- or comma-separated list of names
1769 All options correspond to the obvious command-line arguments, except
1770 the following: 'via', 'interval', 'aka', 'is', 'to', 'dns'/'no dns',
1771 \&'checkalias'/'no checkalias', 'password', 'preconnect', 'postconnect',
1772 \&'localdomains', 'stripcr'/'no stripcr', 'forcecr'/'no forcecr',
1773 \&'pass8bits'/'no pass8bits' 'dropstatus/no dropstatus',
1774 \&'dropdelivered/no dropdelivered', 'mimedecode/no mimedecode', 'no idle',
1777 The 'via' option is for if you want to have more
1778 than one configuration pointing at the same site. If it is present,
1779 the string argument will be taken as the actual DNS name of the
1780 mailserver host to query.
1781 This will override the argument of poll, which can then simply be a
1782 distinct label for the configuration (e.g. what you would give on the
1783 command line to explicitly query this host).
1785 The 'interval' option (which takes a numeric argument) allows you to poll a
1786 server less frequently than the basic poll interval. If you say
1787 \&'interval N' the server this option is attached to will only be
1788 queried every N poll intervals.
1789 .SS Singledrop vs. Multidrop options
1791 The 'is' or 'to' keywords associate the following local (client)
1792 name(s) (or server-name to client-name mappings separated by =) with
1793 the mailserver user name in the entry. If an is/to list has '*' as
1794 its last name, unrecognized names are simply passed through. Note that
1795 until \fIfetchmail\fR version 6.3.4 inclusively, these lists could only
1796 contain local parts of user names (fetchmail would only look at the part
1797 before the @ sign). \fIfetchmail\fR versions 6.3.5 and
1798 newer support full addresses on the left hand side of these mappings,
1799 and they take precedence over any 'localdomains', 'aka', 'via' or
1802 A single local name can be used to support redirecting your mail when
1803 your username on the client machine is different from your name on the
1804 mailserver. When there is only a single local name, mail is forwarded
1805 to that local username regardless of the message's Received, To, Cc,
1806 and Bcc headers. In this case,
1808 never does DNS lookups.
1810 When there is more than one local name (or name mapping),
1811 \fIfetchmail\fR looks at the envelope header, if configured, and
1812 otherwise at the Received, To, Cc, and Bcc headers of retrieved mail
1813 (this is 'multidrop mode'). It looks for addresses with hostname parts
1814 that match your poll name or your 'via', 'aka' or 'localdomains'
1815 options, and usually also for hostname parts which DNS tells it are
1816 aliases of the mailserver. See the discussion of 'dns', 'checkalias',
1817 \&'localdomains', and 'aka' for details on how matching addresses are
1820 If \fIfetchmail\fR cannot match any mailserver usernames or
1821 localdomain addresses, the mail will be bounced.
1822 Normally it will be bounced to the sender, but if the 'bouncemail'
1823 global option is off, the mail will go to the local postmaster instead.
1824 (see the 'postmaster' global option). See also BUGS.
1826 The 'dns' option (normally on) controls the way addresses from
1827 multidrop mailboxes are checked. On, it enables logic to check each
1828 host address that does not match an 'aka' or 'localdomains' declaration
1829 by looking it up with DNS. When a mailserver username is recognized
1830 attached to a matching hostname part, its local mapping is added to
1831 the list of local recipients.
1833 The 'checkalias' option (normally off) extends the lookups performed
1834 by the 'dns' keyword in multidrop mode, providing a way to cope with
1835 remote MTAs that identify themselves using their canonical name, while
1836 they're polled using an alias.
1837 When such a server is polled, checks to extract the envelope address
1840 reverts to delivery using the To/Cc/Bcc headers (See below
1841 \&'Header vs. Envelope addresses').
1842 Specifying this option instructs
1844 to retrieve all the IP addresses associated with both the poll name
1845 and the name used by the remote MTA and to do a comparison of the IP
1846 addresses. This comes in handy in situations where the remote server
1847 undergoes frequent canonical name changes, that would otherwise
1848 require modifications to the rcfile. 'checkalias' has no effect if
1849 \&'no dns' is specified in the rcfile.
1851 The 'aka' option is for use with multidrop mailboxes. It allows you
1852 to pre-declare a list of DNS aliases for a server. This is an
1853 optimization hack that allows you to trade space for speed. When
1855 while processing a multidrop mailbox, grovels through message headers
1856 looking for names of the mailserver, pre-declaring common ones can
1857 save it from having to do DNS lookups. Note: the names you give
1858 as arguments to 'aka' are matched as suffixes -- if you specify
1859 (say) 'aka netaxs.com', this will match not just a hostname
1860 netaxs.com, but any hostname that ends with '.netaxs.com'; such as
1861 (say) pop3.netaxs.com and mail.netaxs.com.
1863 The 'localdomains' option allows you to declare a list of domains
1864 which fetchmail should consider local. When fetchmail is parsing
1865 address lines in multidrop modes, and a trailing segment of a host
1866 name matches a declared local domain, that address is passed through
1867 to the listener or MDA unaltered (local-name mappings are \fInot\fR
1870 If you are using 'localdomains', you may also need to specify 'no
1871 envelope', which disables \fIfetchmail\fR's normal attempt to deduce
1872 an envelope address from the Received line or X-Envelope-To header or
1873 whatever header has been previously set by 'envelope'. If you set 'no
1874 envelope' in the defaults entry it is possible to undo that in
1875 individual entries by using 'envelope <string>'. As a special case,
1876 \&'envelope "Received"' restores the default parsing of
1879 The \fBpassword\fR option requires a string argument, which is the password
1880 to be used with the entry's server.
1882 The 'preconnect' keyword allows you to specify a shell command to be
1883 executed just before each time
1885 establishes a mailserver connection. This may be useful if you are
1886 attempting to set up secure POP connections with the aid of
1888 If the command returns a nonzero status, the poll of that mailserver
1891 Similarly, the 'postconnect' keyword similarly allows you to specify a
1892 shell command to be executed just after each time a mailserver
1893 connection is taken down.
1895 The 'forcecr' option controls whether lines terminated by LF only are
1896 given CRLF termination before forwarding. Strictly speaking RFC821
1897 requires this, but few MTAs enforce the requirement it so this option
1898 is normally off (only one such MTA, qmail, is in significant use at
1901 The 'stripcr' option controls whether carriage returns are stripped
1902 out of retrieved mail before it is forwarded. It is normally not
1903 necessary to set this, because it defaults to 'on' (CR stripping
1904 enabled) when there is an MDA declared but 'off' (CR stripping
1905 disabled) when forwarding is via SMTP. If 'stripcr' and 'forcecr' are
1906 both on, 'stripcr' will override.
1908 The 'pass8bits' option exists to cope with Microsoft mail programs that
1909 stupidly slap a "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit" on everything. With
1910 this option off (the default) and such a header present,
1912 declares BODY=7BIT to an ESMTP-capable listener; this causes problems for
1913 messages actually using 8-bit ISO or KOI-8 character sets, which will
1914 be garbled by having the high bits of all characters stripped. If
1915 \&'pass8bits' is on,
1917 is forced to declare BODY=8BITMIME to any ESMTP-capable listener. If
1918 the listener is 8-bit-clean (as all the major ones now are) the right
1919 thing will probably result.
1921 The 'dropstatus' option controls whether nonempty Status and
1922 X-Mozilla-Status lines are retained in fetched mail (the default) or
1923 discarded. Retaining them allows your MUA to see what messages (if
1924 any) were marked seen on the server. On the other hand, it can
1925 confuse some new-mail notifiers, which assume that anything with a
1926 Status line in it has been seen. (Note: the empty Status lines
1927 inserted by some buggy POP servers are unconditionally discarded.)
1929 The 'dropdelivered' option controls whether Delivered\-To headers will
1930 be kept in fetched mail (the default) or discarded. These headers are
1931 added by Qmail and Postfix mailservers in order to avoid mail loops but
1932 may get in your way if you try to "mirror" a mailserver within the same
1933 domain. Use with caution.
1935 The 'mimedecode' option controls whether MIME messages using the
1936 quoted-printable encoding are automatically converted into pure 8-bit
1937 data. If you are delivering mail to an ESMTP-capable, 8-bit-clean
1938 listener (that includes all of the major MTAs like sendmail), then
1939 this will automatically convert quoted-printable message headers and
1940 data into 8-bit data, making it easier to understand when reading
1941 mail. If your e-mail programs know how to deal with MIME messages,
1942 then this option is not needed. The mimedecode option is off by
1943 default, because doing RFC2047 conversion on headers throws away
1944 character-set information and can lead to bad results if the encoding
1945 of the headers differs from the body encoding.
1947 The 'idle' option is intended to be used with IMAP servers supporting
1948 the RFC2177 IDLE command extension, but does not strictly require it.
1949 If it is enabled, and fetchmail detects that IDLE is supported, an
1950 IDLE will be issued at the end of each poll. This will tell the IMAP
1951 server to hold the connection open and notify the client when new mail
1952 is available. If IDLE is not supported, fetchmail will simulate it by
1953 periodically issuing NOOP. If you need to poll a link frequently, IDLE
1954 can save bandwidth by eliminating TCP/IP connects and LOGIN/LOGOUT
1955 sequences. On the other hand, an IDLE connection will eat almost all
1956 of your fetchmail's time, because it will never drop the connection
1957 and allow other polls to occur unless the server times out the IDLE.
1958 It also doesn't work with multiple folders; only the first folder will
1962 The 'properties' option is an extension mechanism. It takes a string
1963 argument, which is ignored by fetchmail itself. The string argument may be
1964 used to store configuration information for scripts which require it.
1965 In particular, the output of '\-\-configdump' option will make properties
1966 associated with a user entry readily available to a Python script.
1968 .SS Miscellaneous Run Control Options
1969 The words 'here' and 'there' have useful English-like
1970 significance. Normally 'user eric is esr' would mean that
1971 mail for the remote user 'eric' is to be delivered to 'esr',
1972 but you can make this clearer by saying 'user eric there is esr here',
1973 or reverse it by saying 'user esr here is eric there'
1975 Legal protocol identifiers for use with the 'protocol' keyword are:
1978 auto (or AUTO) (legacy, to be removed from future release)
1979 pop2 (or POP2) (legacy, to be removed from future release)
1988 Legal authentication types are 'any', 'password', 'kerberos',
1989 \&'kerberos_v4', 'kerberos_v5' and 'gssapi', 'cram\-md5', 'otp', 'msn'
1990 (only for POP3), 'ntlm', 'ssh'. The 'password' type specifies
1991 authentication by normal transmission of a password (the password may be
1992 plain text or subject to protocol-specific encryption as in APOP);
1993 \&'kerberos' tells \fIfetchmail\fR to try to get a Kerberos ticket at the
1994 start of each query instead, and send an arbitrary string as the
1995 password; and 'gssapi' tells fetchmail to use GSSAPI authentication.
1996 See the description of the 'auth' keyword for more.
1998 Specifying 'kpop' sets POP3 protocol over port 1109 with Kerberos V4
1999 authentication. These defaults may be overridden by later options.
2001 There are some global option statements: 'set logfile'
2002 followed by a string sets the same global specified by \-\-logfile. A
2003 command-line \-\-logfile option will override this. Note that \-\-logfile is
2004 only effective if fetchmail detaches itself from the terminal. Also,
2005 \&'set daemon' sets the poll interval as \-\-daemon does. This can be
2006 overridden by a command-line \-\-daemon option; in particular \-\-daemon\~0
2007 can be used to force foreground operation. The 'set postmaster'
2008 statement sets the address to which multidrop mail defaults if there are
2009 no local matches. Finally, 'set syslog' sends log messages to
2012 .SH DEBUGGING FETCHMAIL
2013 .SS Fetchmail crashing
2014 There are various ways in that fetchmail may "crash", i. e. stop
2015 operation suddenly and unexpectedly. A "crash" usually refers to an
2016 error condition that the software did not handle by itself. A well-known
2017 failure mode is the "segmentation fault" or "signal 11" or "SIGSEGV" or
2018 just "segfault" for short. These can be caused by hardware or by software
2019 problems. Software-induced segfaults can usually be reproduced easily
2020 and in the same place, whereas hardware-induced segfaults can go away if
2021 the computer is rebooted, or powered off for a few hours, and can happen
2022 in random locations even if you use the software the same way.
2024 For solving hardware-induced segfaults, find the faulty component and repair or
2025 replace it. <http://www.bitwizard.nl/sig11/> may help you with details.
2027 For solving software-induced segfaults, the developers may need a "stack
2030 .SS Enabling fetchmail core dumps
2031 By default, fetchmail suppresses core dumps as these might contain
2032 passwords and other sensitive information. For debugging fetchmail
2033 crashes, obtaining a "stack backtrace" from a core dump is often the
2034 quickest way to solve the problem, and when posting your problem on a
2035 mailing list, the developers may ask you for a "backtrace".
2037 1. To get useful backtraces, fetchmail needs to be installed without
2038 getting stripped of its compilation symbols. Unfortunately, most
2039 binary packages that are installed are stripped, and core files from
2040 symbol-stripped programs are worthless. So you may need to recompile
2041 fetchmail. On many systems, you can type
2044 file `which fetchmail`
2047 to find out if fetchmail was symbol-stripped or not. If yours was
2048 unstripped, fine, proceed, if it was stripped, you need to recompile the
2049 source code first. You do not usually need to install fetchmail in order
2052 2. The shell environment that starts fetchmail needs to enable core
2053 dumps. The key is the "maximum core (file) size" that can usually be
2054 configured with a tool named "limit" or "ulimit". See the documentation
2055 for your shell for details. In the popular bash shell, "ulimit \-Sc
2056 unlimited" will allow the core dump.
2058 3. You need to tell fetchmail, too, to allow core dumps. To do
2059 this, run fetchmail with the \fB\-d0 \-v\fP options. It is often easier
2060 to also add \fB\-\-nosyslog \-N\fR as well.
2062 Finally, you need to reproduce the crash. You can just start fetchmail
2063 from the directory where you compiled it by typing \fB./fetchmail\fR,
2064 so the complete command line will start with \fB./fetchmail \-Nvd0
2065 \&\-\-nosyslog\fR and perhaps list your other options.
2067 After the crash, run your debugger to obtain the core dump. The
2068 debugger will often be GNU GDB, you can then type (adjust paths as
2069 necessary) \fBgdb ./fetchmail fetchmail.core\fR and then, after GDB
2070 has started up and read all its files, type \fBbacktrace full\fR, save
2071 the output (copy & paste will do, the backtrace will be read by a human)
2072 and then type \fBquit\fR to leave gdb.
2074 on some systems, the core
2075 files have different names, they might contain a number instead of the
2076 program name, or number and name, but it will usually have "core" as
2079 .SH INTERACTION WITH RFC 822
2080 When trying to determine the originating address of a message,
2081 fetchmail looks through headers in the following order:
2085 Resent-Sender: (ignored if it doesn't contain an @ or !)
2086 Sender: (ignored if it doesn't contain an @ or !)
2093 The originating address is used for logging, and to set the MAIL FROM
2094 address when forwarding to SMTP. This order is intended to cope
2095 gracefully with receiving mailing list messages in multidrop mode. The
2096 intent is that if a local address doesn't exist, the bounce message
2097 won't be returned blindly to the author or to the list itself, but
2098 rather to the list manager (which is less annoying).
2100 In multidrop mode, destination headers are processed as follows:
2101 First, fetchmail looks for the Received: header (or whichever one is
2102 specified by the 'envelope' option) to determine the local
2103 recipient address. If the mail is addressed to more than one recipient,
2104 the Received line won't contain any information regarding recipient addresses.
2106 Then fetchmail looks for the Resent-To:, Resent-Cc:, and Resent-Bcc:
2107 lines. If they exist, they should contain the final recipients and
2108 have precedence over their To:/Cc:/Bcc: counterparts. If the Resent\-*
2109 lines don't exist, the To:, Cc:, Bcc: and Apparently-To: lines are
2110 looked for. (The presence of a Resent\-To: is taken to imply that the
2111 person referred by the To: address has already received the original
2114 .SH CONFIGURATION EXAMPLES
2115 Note that although there are password declarations in a good many
2116 of the examples below, this is mainly for illustrative purposes.
2117 We recommend stashing account/password pairs in your $HOME/.netrc
2118 file, where they can be used not just by fetchmail but by ftp(1) and
2124 poll SERVERNAME protocol PROTOCOL username NAME password PASSWORD
2130 poll pop.provider.net protocol pop3 username "jsmith" password "secret1"
2133 Or, using some abbreviations:
2136 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" password "secret1"
2139 Multiple servers may be listed:
2142 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" pass "secret1"
2143 poll other.provider.net proto pop2 user "John.Smith" pass "My^Hat"
2146 Here's a version of those two with more whitespace and some noise words:
2149 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3
2150 user "jsmith", with password secret1, is "jsmith" here;
2151 poll other.provider.net proto pop2:
2152 user "John.Smith", with password "My^Hat", is "John.Smith" here;
2155 This version is much easier to read and doesn't cost significantly
2156 more (parsing is done only once, at startup time).
2159 If you need to include whitespace in a parameter string, enclose the
2160 string in double quotes. Thus:
2163 poll mail.provider.net with proto pop3:
2164 user "jsmith" there has password "u can't krak this"
2165 is jws here and wants mda "/bin/mail"
2168 You may have an initial server description headed by the keyword
2169 \&'defaults' instead of 'poll' followed by a name. Such a record
2170 is interpreted as defaults for all queries to use. It may be overwritten
2171 by individual server descriptions. So, you could write:
2176 poll pop.provider.net
2178 poll mail.provider.net
2179 user "jjsmith" there has password "secret2"
2182 It's possible to specify more than one user per server (this is only
2183 likely to be useful when running fetchmail in daemon mode as root).
2184 The 'user' keyword leads off a user description, and every user specification
2185 in a multi-user entry must include it. Here's an example:
2188 poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 port 3111
2189 user "jsmith" with pass "secret1" is "smith" here
2190 user jones with pass "secret2" is "jjones" here keep
2193 This associates the local username 'smith' with the pop.provider.net
2194 username 'jsmith' and the local username 'jjones' with the
2195 pop.provider.net username 'jones'. Mail for 'jones' is kept on the
2196 server after download.
2198 Here's what a simple retrieval configuration for a multidrop mailbox
2202 poll pop.provider.net:
2203 user maildrop with pass secret1 to golux 'hurkle'='happy' snark here
2206 This says that the mailbox of account 'maildrop' on the server is a
2207 multidrop box, and that messages in it should be parsed for the
2208 server user names 'golux', 'hurkle', and 'snark'. It further
2209 specifies that 'golux' and 'snark' have the same name on the
2210 client as on the server, but mail for server user 'hurkle' should be
2211 delivered to client user 'happy'.
2216 until version 6.3.4, did NOT allow full user@domain specifications here,
2217 these would never match. \fIFetchmail\fP 6.3.5 and newer support
2218 user@domain specifications on the left-hand side of a user mapping.
2220 Here's an example of another kind of multidrop connection:
2223 poll pop.provider.net localdomains loonytoons.org toons.org:
2224 user maildrop with pass secret1 to * here
2227 This also says that the mailbox of account 'maildrop' on the server is
2228 a multidrop box. It tells fetchmail that any address in the
2229 loonytoons.org or toons.org domains (including sub-domain addresses like
2230 \&'joe@daffy.loonytoons.org') should be passed through to the local SMTP
2231 listener without modification. Be careful of mail loops if you do this!
2233 Here's an example configuration using ssh and the plugin option. The
2234 queries are made directly on the stdin and stdout of imapd via ssh.
2235 Note that in this setup, IMAP authentication can be skipped.
2238 poll mailhost.net with proto imap:
2239 plugin "ssh %h /usr/sbin/imapd" auth ssh;
2240 user esr is esr here
2243 .SH THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP MAILBOXES
2244 Use the multiple-local-recipients feature with caution -- it can bite.
2245 All multidrop features are ineffective in ETRN and ODMR modes.
2247 Also, note that in multidrop mode duplicate mails are suppressed. A
2248 piece of mail is considered duplicate if it has the same message-ID as
2249 the message immediately preceding and more than one addressee. Such
2250 runs of messages may be generated when copies of a message addressed
2251 to multiple users are delivered to a multidrop box.
2253 .SS Header vs. Envelope addresses
2254 The fundamental problem is that by having your mailserver toss several
2255 peoples' mail in a single maildrop box, you may have thrown away
2256 potentially vital information about who each piece of mail was
2257 actually addressed to (the 'envelope address', as opposed to the
2258 header addresses in the RFC822 To/Cc headers - the Bcc is not available
2259 at the receiving end). This 'envelope address' is the address you need
2260 in order to reroute mail properly.
2264 can deduce the envelope address. If the mailserver MTA is
2266 and the item of mail had just one recipient, the MTA will have written
2267 a 'by/for' clause that gives the envelope addressee into its Received
2268 header. But this doesn't work reliably for other MTAs, nor if there is
2269 more than one recipient. By default, \fIfetchmail\fR looks for
2270 envelope addresses in these lines; you can restore this default with
2271 \&\-E "Received" or 'envelope Received'.
2273 .B As a better alternative,
2274 some SMTP listeners and/or mail servers insert a header
2275 in each message containing a copy of the envelope addresses. This
2276 header (when it exists) is often 'X\-Original\-To', 'Delivered\-To' or
2277 \&'X\-Envelope\-To'. Fetchmail's assumption about this can be changed with
2278 the \-E or 'envelope' option. Note that writing an envelope header of
2279 this kind exposes the names of recipients (including blind-copy
2280 recipients) to all receivers of the messages, so the upstream must store
2281 one copy of the message per recipient to avoid becoming a privacy problem.
2283 Postfix, since version 2.0, writes an X\-Original\-To: header which
2284 contains a copy of the envelope as it was received.
2286 Qmail and Postfix generally write a 'Delivered\-To' header upon
2287 delivering the message to the mail spool and use it to avoid mail loops.
2288 Qmail virtual domains however will prefix the user name with a string
2289 that normally matches the user's domain. To remove this prefix you can
2290 use the \-Q or 'qvirtual' option.
2292 Sometimes, unfortunately, neither of these methods works. That is the
2293 point when you should contact your ISP and ask them to provide such an
2294 envelope header, and you should not use multidrop in this situation.
2295 When they all fail, fetchmail must fall back on the contents of To/Cc
2296 headers (Bcc headers are not available - see below) to try to determine
2297 recipient addressees -- and these are unreliable.
2298 In particular, mailing-list software often ships mail with only
2299 the list broadcast address in the To header.
2301 .B Note that a future version of \fIfetchmail\fP may remove To/Cc parsing!
2305 cannot deduce a recipient address that is local, and the intended
2306 recipient address was anyone other than fetchmail's invoking user,
2307 .B mail will get lost.
2308 This is what makes the multidrop feature risky without proper envelope
2311 A related problem is that when you blind-copy a mail message, the Bcc
2312 information is carried \fIonly\fR as envelope address (it's removed from
2313 the headers by the sending mail server, so fetchmail can see it only if
2314 there is an X-\Envelope\-To header). Thus, blind-copying to someone who
2315 gets mail over a fetchmail multidrop link will fail unless the the
2316 mailserver host routinely writes X\-Envelope\-To or an equivalent header
2317 into messages in your maildrop.
2319 \fBIn conclusion, mailing lists and Bcc'd mail can only work if the
2320 server you're fetching from (1) stores one copy of the message per
2321 recipient in \fIyour\fP domain and (2) records the envelope
2322 information in a special header (X\-Original\-To, Delivered\-To,
2323 X\-Envelope\-To).\fR
2325 .SS Good Ways To Use Multidrop Mailboxes
2326 Multiple local names can be used to administer a mailing list from the
2327 client side of a \fIfetchmail\fR collection. Suppose your name is
2328 \&'esr', and you want to both pick up your own mail and maintain a mailing
2329 list called (say) "fetchmail-friends", and you want to keep the alias
2330 list on your client machine.
2332 On your server, you can alias 'fetchmail\-friends' to 'esr'; then, in
2333 your \fI.fetchmailrc\fR, declare 'to esr fetchmail\-friends here'.
2334 Then, when mail including 'fetchmail\-friends' as a local address
2335 gets fetched, the list name will be appended to the list of
2336 recipients your SMTP listener sees. Therefore it will undergo alias
2337 expansion locally. Be sure to include 'esr' in the local alias
2338 expansion of fetchmail\-friends, or you'll never see mail sent only to
2339 the list. Also be sure that your listener has the "me-too" option set
2340 (sendmail's \-oXm command-line option or OXm declaration) so your name
2341 isn't removed from alias expansions in messages you send.
2343 This trick is not without its problems, however. You'll begin to see
2344 this when a message comes in that is addressed only to a mailing list
2345 you do \fInot\fR have declared as a local name. Each such message
2346 will feature an 'X\-Fetchmail\-Warning' header which is generated
2347 because fetchmail cannot find a valid local name in the recipient
2348 addresses. Such messages default (as was described above) to being
2349 sent to the local user running
2351 but the program has no way to know that that's actually the right thing.
2353 .SS Bad Ways To Abuse Multidrop Mailboxes
2354 Multidrop mailboxes and
2356 serving multiple users in daemon mode do not mix. The problem, again, is
2357 mail from mailing lists, which typically does not have an individual
2358 recipient address on it. Unless
2360 can deduce an envelope address, such mail will only go to the account
2361 running fetchmail (probably root). Also, blind-copied users are very
2362 likely never to see their mail at all.
2364 If you're tempted to use
2366 to retrieve mail for multiple users from a single mail drop via POP or
2367 IMAP, think again (and reread the section on header and envelope
2368 addresses above). It would be smarter to just let the mail sit in the
2369 mailserver's queue and use fetchmail's ETRN or ODMR modes to trigger
2370 SMTP sends periodically (of course, this means you have to poll more
2371 frequently than the mailserver's expiry period). If you can't arrange
2372 this, try setting up a UUCP feed.
2374 If you absolutely \fImust\fR use multidrop for this purpose, make sure
2375 your mailserver writes an envelope-address header that fetchmail can
2376 see. Otherwise you \fIwill\fR lose mail and it \fIwill\fR come back
2379 .SS Speeding Up Multidrop Checking
2380 Normally, when multiple users are declared
2382 extracts recipient addresses as described above and checks each host
2383 part with DNS to see if it's an alias of the mailserver. If so, the
2384 name mappings described in the "to ... here" declaration are done and
2385 the mail locally delivered.
2387 This is a convenient but also slow method. To speed
2388 it up, pre-declare mailserver aliases with 'aka'; these are checked
2389 before DNS lookups are done. If you're certain your aka list contains
2391 DNS aliases of the mailserver (and all MX names pointing at it - note
2392 this may change in a future version)
2393 you can declare 'no dns' to suppress DNS lookups entirely and
2394 \fIonly\fR match against the aka list.
2397 To facilitate the use of
2399 in shell scripts, an exit\ status code is returned to give an indication
2400 of what occurred during a given connection.
2402 The exit codes returned by
2406 One or more messages were successfully retrieved (or, if the \-c option
2407 was selected, were found waiting but not retrieved).
2409 There was no mail awaiting retrieval. (There may have been old mail still
2410 on the server but not selected for retrieval.)
2412 An error was encountered when attempting to open a socket to retrieve
2413 mail. If you don't know what a socket is, don't worry about it --
2414 just treat this as an 'unrecoverable error'. This error can also be
2415 because a protocol fetchmail wants to use is not listed in /etc/services.
2417 The user authentication step failed. This usually means that a bad
2418 user-id, password, or APOP id was specified. Or it may mean that you
2419 tried to run fetchmail under circumstances where it did not have
2420 standard input attached to a terminal and could not prompt for a
2423 Some sort of fatal protocol error was detected.
2425 There was a syntax error in the arguments to
2428 The run control file had bad permissions.
2430 There was an error condition reported by the server. Can also
2433 timed out while waiting for the server.
2435 Client-side exclusion error. This means
2437 either found another copy of itself already running, or failed in such
2438 a way that it isn't sure whether another copy is running.
2440 The user authentication step failed because the server responded "lock
2441 busy". Try again after a brief pause! This error is not implemented
2442 for all protocols, nor for all servers. If not implemented for your
2443 server, "3" will be returned instead, see above. May be returned when
2444 talking to qpopper or other servers that can respond with "lock busy"
2445 or some similar text containing the word "lock".
2449 run failed while trying to do an SMTP port open or transaction.
2451 Fatal DNS error. Fetchmail encountered an error while performing
2452 a DNS lookup at startup and could not proceed.
2454 BSMTP batch file could not be opened.
2456 Poll terminated by a fetch limit (see the \-\-fetchlimit option).
2458 Server busy indication.
2460 Server timed out during an IMAP IDLE.
2462 Internal error. You should see a message on standard error with
2467 queries more than one host, return status is 0 if \fIany\fR query
2468 successfully retrieved mail. Otherwise the returned error status is
2469 that of the last host queried.
2474 default run control file
2477 default location of file associating hosts with last message IDs seen
2478 (used only with newer RFC1939-compliant POP3 servers supporting the
2482 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (non-root mode).
2485 your FTP run control file, which (if present) will be searched for
2486 passwords as a last resort before prompting for one interactively.
2488 /var/run/fetchmail.pid
2489 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, Linux systems).
2492 lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, systems without /var/run).
2495 If the FETCHMAILUSER variable is set, it is used as the name of the
2496 calling user (default local name) for purposes such as mailing error
2497 notifications. Otherwise, if either the LOGNAME or USER variable is
2498 correctly set (e.g. the corresponding UID matches the session user ID)
2499 then that name is used as the default local name. Otherwise
2500 \fBgetpwuid\fR(3) must be able to retrieve a password entry for the
2501 session ID (this elaborate logic is designed to handle the case of
2502 multiple names per userid gracefully).
2504 If the environment variable FETCHMAILHOME is set to a valid and
2505 existing directory name, fetchmail will read $FETCHMAILHOME/fetchmailrc
2506 (the dot is missing in this case), $FETCHMAILHOME/.fetchids and
2507 $FETCHMAILHOME/.fetchmail.pid rather than from the user's home
2508 directory. The .netrc file is always looked for in the the invoking
2509 user's home directory regardless of FETCHMAILHOME's setting.
2511 If the HOME_ETC variable is set, fetchmail will read
2512 $HOME_ETC/.fetchmailrc instead of ~/.fetchmailrc.
2514 If HOME_ETC and FETCHMAILHOME are set, HOME_ETC will be ignored.
2519 daemon is running as root, SIGUSR1 wakes it up from its sleep phase and
2520 forces a poll of all non-skipped servers. For compatibility reasons,
2521 SIGHUP can also be used in 6.3.X but may not be available in future
2526 is running in daemon mode as non-root, use SIGUSR1 to wake it (this is
2527 so SIGHUP due to logout can retain the default action of killing it).
2531 in foreground while a background fetchmail is running will do
2532 whichever of these is appropriate to wake it up.
2534 .SH BUGS AND KNOWN PROBLEMS
2536 Fetchmail cannot handle user names that contain blanks after a "@"
2537 character, for instance "demonstr@ti on". These are rather uncommon and
2538 only hurt when using UID-based \-\-keep setups, so the 6.3.X versions of
2539 fetchmail won't be fixed.
2541 Please check the \fBNEWS\fP file that shipped with fetchmail for more
2542 known bugs than those listed here.
2544 The assumptions that the DNS and in particular the checkalias options
2545 make are not often sustainable. For instance, it has become uncommon for
2546 an MX server to be a POP3 or IMAP server at the same time. Therefore the
2547 MX lookups may go away in a future release.
2549 The mda and plugin options interact badly. In order to collect error
2550 status from the MDA, fetchmail has to change its normal signal
2551 handling so that dead plugin processes don't get reaped until the end
2552 of the poll cycle. This can cause resource starvation if too many
2553 zombies accumulate. So either don't deliver to a MDA using plugins or
2554 risk being overrun by an army of undead.
2556 The \-\-interface option does not support IPv6 and it is doubtful if it
2557 ever will, since there is no portable way to query interface IPv6
2560 The RFC822 address parser used in multidrop mode chokes on some
2561 @-addresses that are technically legal but bizarre. Strange uses of
2562 quoting and embedded comments are likely to confuse it.
2564 In a message with multiple envelope headers, only the last one
2565 processed will be visible to fetchmail.
2567 Use of some of these protocols requires that the program send
2568 unencrypted passwords over the TCP/IP connection to the mailserver.
2569 This creates a risk that name/password pairs might be snaffled with a
2570 packet sniffer or more sophisticated monitoring software. Under Linux
2571 and FreeBSD, the \-\-interface option can be used to restrict polling to
2572 availability of a specific interface device with a specific local or
2573 remote IP address, but snooping is still possible if (a) either host
2574 has a network device that can be opened in promiscuous mode, or (b)
2575 the intervening network link can be tapped. We recommend the use of
2577 tunnelling to not only shroud your passwords but encrypt the entire
2580 Use of the %F or %T escapes in an mda option could open a security
2581 hole, because they pass text manipulable by an attacker to a shell
2582 command. Potential shell characters are replaced by '_' before
2583 execution. The hole is further reduced by the fact that fetchmail
2584 temporarily discards any suid privileges it may have while running the
2585 MDA. For maximum safety, however, don't use an mda command containing
2586 %F or %T when fetchmail is run from the root account itself.
2588 Fetchmail's method of sending bounces due to errors or spam-blocking and
2589 spam bounces requires that port 25 of localhost be available for sending
2594 while a background instance is running and break the syntax, the
2595 background instance will die silently. Unfortunately, it can't
2596 die noisily because we don't yet know whether syslog should be enabled.
2597 On some systems, fetchmail dies quietly even if there is no syntax
2598 error; this seems to have something to do with buggy terminal ioctl
2601 The \-f\~\- option (reading a configuration from stdin) is incompatible
2602 with the plugin option.
2604 The 'principal' option only handles Kerberos IV, not V.
2606 Interactively entered passwords are truncated after 63 characters. If
2607 you really need to use a longer password, you will have to use a
2610 A backslash as the last character of a configuration file will be
2611 flagged as a syntax error rather than ignored.
2613 Send comments, bug reports, gripes, and the like to the
2614 fetchmail\-devel list <fetchmail\-devel@lists.berlios.de>. An HTML FAQ is
2615 available at the fetchmail home page; surf to
2616 http://fetchmail.berlios.de/ or do a WWW search for pages with
2617 \&'fetchmail' in their titles.
2620 Fetchmail is currently maintained by Matthias Andree and Rob Funk with
2621 major assistance from Sunil Shetye (for code) and Rob MacGregor (for the
2624 Most of the code is from Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>. Too
2625 many other people to name here have contributed code and patches.
2627 This program is descended from and replaces
2629 by Carl Harris <ceharris@mal.com>; the internals have become quite different,
2630 but some of its interface design is directly traceable to that
2633 This manual page has been improved by R.\ Hannes Beinert and H\['e]ctor
2637 mutt(1), elm(1), mail(1), sendmail(8), popd(8), imapd(8), netrc(5)
2639 The fetchmail home page: <http://fetchmail.berlios.de/>
2641 The maildrop home page: <http://www.courier-mta.org/maildrop/>
2642 .SH APPLICABLE STANDARDS
2644 Note that this list is just a collection of references and not a
2645 statement as to the actual protocol conformance or requirements in
2649 RFC 821, RFC 2821, RFC 1869, RFC 1652, RFC 1870, RFC 1983, RFC 1985,
2653 RFC 822, RFC 2822, RFC 1123, RFC 1892, RFC 1894.
2659 RFC 1081, RFC 1225, RFC 1460, RFC 1725, RFC 1734, RFC 1939, RFC 1957,
2663 RFC 1460, RFC 1725, RFC 1939.
2672 RFC 1730, RFC 1731, RFC 1732, RFC 2060, RFC 2061, RFC 2195, RFC 2177,
projects / ~andy / fetchmail / blob