INSTALL Instructions for fetchmail

If you have installed binaries (e.g. from an RPM) you can skip to step 4.

If you are a Linux system packager, be aware that the build process generates
an RPM spec file at fetchmail.spec, and you can "make rpm" to generate an
RPM and SRPM.

The Frequently Asked Questions list, included as the file FAQ in this
distributions, answers the most common questions about configuring and 
running fetchmail.

1. CONFIGURE

Installing fetchmail is easy.  From within this directory, type:

	./configure

The autoconfiguration script will spend a bit of time figuring out the
specifics of your system.  If you want to specify a particular compiler
(e.g. you have gcc but want to compile with cc), set the environment 
variable CC before you run configure.  

The configure script accepts certain standard configuration options.
These include --prefix, --exec-prefix, --bindir, --infodir, --mandir,
and --srcdir.  Do `configure --help' for more.

POP2 support is no longer compiled in by default, as POP2 is way obsolete
and there don't seem to be any live servers for it anymore.  You can
configure it back in if you want with `configure --enable-POP2', but
leaving it out cuts the executable's size slightly.

If you want to build for debugging, 

	CFLAGS=-g LDFLAGS=" " ./configure

will do that.

If you're running QNX, edit the distributed Makefile directly.  The
QNX values for various macros are there but commented out; all you
have to do is uncomment them.

2. MAKE 

You may find you need flex at version 2.5.3 or greater to build
fetchmail.  The stock lex distributed with some versions of Linux does
not work -- it yields a parser which core-dumps on syntax errors.  You
can get flex at the GNU ftp site, ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu.

Run

	make

This should compile fetchmail for your system.

3. INSTALL

Lastly, become root and run

	make install

This will install fetchmail.  By default, fetchmail will be installed
in /usr/local/bin, with the man page in /usr/local/man/man1.  You can
use the configure options --bindir and --mandir to change these.

NOTE: If you are using an MTA other than sendmail (such as qmail,
exim, or smail), see the FAQ (section T) for discussion of any special
configuration steps that may be necessary.

4. SET UP A RUN CONTROL FILE

See the man page and the file sample.rcfile for a description of how to
configure your individual preferences.

If you're upgrading from popclient, see question F4 in the FAQ file.

5. TEST

I strongly recommend that your first fetchmail run use the -v and -k
options, in case there is something not quite right with your server,
your local delivery configuration or your port 25 listener.  Also,
beware of aliases that direct your local mail back to the server host!

This software is known to work with the qpop/popper series of
freeware POP3 servers; also with the IMAP2bis and IMAP4 servers that are
distributed with Pine from the University of Washington.  This covers
all the servers normally hosted on Linux and *BSD systems.

6. REPORTING BUGS

You should read the FAQ file question G3 before reporting a bug.

7. USE IT

Once you've verified your configuration, you can start fetchmail to
run in background and forget about it.  Enjoy!