- fetchmail README
-
-fetchmail is a free, full-featured, robust, well-documented remote
-mail retrieval and forwarding utility intended to be used over
-on-demand TCP/IP links (such as SLIP or PPP connections). It
-retrieves mail from remote mail servers and forwards it to your local
-(client) machine's delivery system, so it can then be be read by
-normal mail user agents such as elm(1) or Mail(1).
-
-fetchmail supports standard all mail-retrieval protocols in use on the
-Internet: POP2, POP3 (including POP3 with RFC1938 one-time passwords),
-RPOP, APOP, KPOP, Compuserve's POP3 with RPA, Microsoft's NTLM, Demon
-Internet's SDPS, all flavors of IMAP (including IMAP4rev1 with RFC1731
-Kerberos v4 or GSSAPI authentication or CRAM-MD5 authentication), and
-ESMTP ETRN. Fetchmail also supports end-to-end encryption with OpenSSL.
-
-The fetchmail code was developed under Linux, but has also been
-extensively tested under the BSD variants, AIX, HP-UX versions 9 and
-10, SunOS, Solaris, NEXTSTEP, OSF 3.2, IRIX, and Rhapsody.
-
-It should be readily portable to other Unix variants (it uses GNU
-autoconf). It has been ported to LynxOS and BeOS and will build there
-without special action. It has also been ported to QNX; to build
-under QNX, see the header comments in the Makefile. It is reported to
+fetchmail README
+================
+
+Introduction
+------------
+
+Fetchmail is a free, full-featured, robust, well-documented remote mail
+retrieval and forwarding utility intended to be used over on-demand TCP/IP
+links (such as SLIP or PPP connections). It retrieves mail from remote mail
+servers and forwards it to your local (client) machine's delivery system, so it
+can then be be read by normal mail user agents such as mutt(1), elm(1) or
+Mail(1).
+
+Fetchmail supports all standard mail-retrieval protocols in use on the
+Internet: POP3 (including some variants such as RPOP, APOP, KPOP), IMAP4rev1
+(also IMAP4, IMAP2bis), POP2, IMAP4, ETRN, and ODMR. On the output side,
+fetchmail supports ESMTP/SMTP, LMTP, and invocation of a local delivery agent.
+
+Fetchmail also fully supports authentication via GSSAPI, Kerberos 4 and 5,
+RFC1938 one-time passwords, Compuserve's POP3 with RPA, Microsoft's NTLM, Demon
+Internet's SDPS, or CRAM-MD5 authentication a la RFC2195.
+
+Fetchmail supports end-to-end encryption with OpenSSL, do read README.SSL for
+details on fetchmail's configuration and README.SSL-SERVER for server-side
+requirements. NOTE! To be compatible with earlier releases, fetchmail 6.3's
+default behaviour is more relaxed than dictated by the standard - add options
+such as --sslcertck to tighten certificate checking.
+
+Portability
+-----------
+
+The fetchmail code was developed under Linux, but has also been extensively
+tested under the BSD variants, AIX, HP-UX versions 9 and 10, SunOS, Solaris,
+NEXTSTEP, OSF 3.2, IRIX, and Rhapsody.
+
+It should be readily portable to other Unix variants and Unix-like operating
+systems (it uses GNU autoconf). It has been ported to Cygwin, LynxOS and BeOS
+and will build there without special action. It has also been ported to QNX;
+to build under QNX, see the header comments in the Makefile. It is reported to
build and run under AmigaOS.
-See the distribution files FEATURES for a full list of features, NEWS
-for detailed information on recent changes, NOTES for design notes, and
-TODO for a list of things that still need doing.
+Further reading
+---------------
+
+The INSTALL file describes how to configure and install fetchmail.
+
+See the distribution files FEATURES for a full list of features, NEWS for
+detailed information on recent changes, NOTES for design notes, and TODO for
+a list of things that still need doing. If you want to hack on this code,
+a list of known bugs and to-do items can be found in the file todo.html.
-The fetchmail code appears to be stable and free of bugs affecting
-normal operation (that is, retrieving from POP3 or IMAP in single-drop
-mode and forwarding via SMTP to sendmail). It will probably undergo
-substantial change only if and when support for a new retrieval
-protocol or authentication mode is added.
+Status, source code
+-------------------
-You can easily fetch the latest version of fetchmail via FTP from the
-following FTP directory:
+The fetchmail code appears to be stable and free of bugs affecting normal
+operation (that is, retrieving from POP3 or IMAP in single-drop mode and
+forwarding via SMTP to sendmail).
- ftp://ftp.ccil.org/pub/esr/fetchmail
+You can get the code from the fetchmail home page:
-Or you can get it from the fetchmail home page:
+ http://www.fetchmail.info/
- http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail
+ http://fetchmail.berlios.de/
Enjoy!
- -- esr
+ -- esr, ma
projects / ~andy / fetchmail / blobdiff