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<head>
-<meta name="generator"
-content="HTML Tidy for Linux/x86 (vers 1st February 2002), see www.w3.org"/>
<title>The Fetchmail FAQ</title>
-<link rev="made" href="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com"/>
<meta name="description"
content="Frequently asked questions about fetchmail."/>
<meta name="keywords" content="fetchmail, POP, POP2, POP3, IMAP, remote mail"/>
<tr>
<td width="30%">Back to <a href="index.html">Fetchmail Home
Page</a></td>
-<td width="30%" align="center">To <a href="/~esr/sitemap.html">Site
-Map</a></td>
-<td width="30%" align="right">$Date: 2002/09/04 13:58:24 $</td>
+<td width="30%" align="right">$Date$</td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr/>
-<h1>Frequently Asked Questions About Fetchmail</h1>
+<h1 id="FAQ">Frequently Asked Questions About Fetchmail</h1>
-<p>Before reporting any bug, please read <a href="#G3">G3</a> for
-advice on how to include diagnostic information that will get your
-bug fixed as quickly as possible.</p>
+<p><strong>Support? Bug reports?</strong> Please read <a
+href="#G3">G3</a> for what information is required to get your problem
+solved as quickly as possible.</p>
-<p>If you have a question or answer you think ought to be added to
-this FAQ list, mail it to fetchmail's maintainer, Eric S. Raymond,
-at <a href="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com">esr@thyrsus.com</a>.</p>
+<p>Note that this FAQ is occasionally updated from the Git repository
+and speaks in the past tense ("since") about a fetchmail release that is
+not yet available. Please try a release candidate for that version in
+case you need the new option.</p>
-<h1>General questions:</h1>
+<p>If you have a question or answer you think ought to be added to
+this FAQ list, file it to one of the trackers at <a
+ href="http://developer.berlios.de/projects/fetchmail/">our BerliOS
+ project site</a> or post to one of the fetchmail mailing lists (see
+below).</p>
+
+<h1 id="Contents">Contents</h1>
+
+<a href="#Contentdetail">Detailed Contents</a><br/>
+<a href="#C_G">G. General problems</a><br/>
+<a href="#C_B">B. Build-time problems</a><br/>
+<a href="#C_F">F. Fetchmail configuration file grammar questions</a><br/>
+<a href="#C_C">C. Configuration questions</a><br/>
+<a href="#C_T">T. How to make fetchmail play nice with various MTAs</a><br/>
+<a href="#C_S">S. How to make fetchmail work with various servers</a><br/>
+<a href="#C_I">I. How to fetchmail work with specific ISPs</a><br/>
+<a href="#C_K">K. How to set up well-known security and authentication</a><br/>
+<a href="#C_R">R. Runtime fatal errors</a><br/>
+<a href="#C_H">H. Hangs and lockups</a><br/>
+<a href="#C_D">D. Disappearing mail</a><br/>
+<a href="#C_M">M. Multidrop-mode problems</a><br/>
+<a href="#C_X">X. Mangled mail</a><br/>
+<a href="#C_O">O. Other problems</a><br/>
+
+<h1 id="Contentdetail">Detailed Contents</h1>
+
+<h2 id="C_G">General problems</h2>
<a href="#G1">G1. What is fetchmail and why should I bother?</a><br/>
<a href="#G2">G2. Where do I find the latest FAQ and fetchmail sources?</a><br/>
-<a href="#G3">G3. I think I've found a bug. Will you fix it?</a><br/>
+<a href="#G3">G3. Something doesn't work/I think I've found a bug. Will you fix it?</a><br/>
<a href="#G4">G4. I have this idea for a neat feature. Will you add it?</a><br/>
-<a href="#G5">G5. I want to make fetchmail behave like Outlook Express.</a><br/>
+<a href="#G5">G5. I want to make fetchmail remove kept mail after some days.</a><br/>
<a href="#G6">G6. Is there a mailing list for exchanging tips?</a><br/>
<a href="#G7">G7. So, what's this I hear about a fetchmail paper?</a><br/>
<a href="#G8">G8. What is the best server to use with fetchmail?</a><br/>
<a href="#G14">G14. Is fetchmail Y2K-compliant?</a><br/>
<a href="#G15">G15. Is there a way in fetchmail to support disconnected IMAP mode?</a><br/>
<a href="#G16">G16. How will fetchmail perform under heavy loads?</a><br/>
-
-<h1>Build-time problems:</h1>
-<a href="#B1">B1. Make coughs and dies when building on FreeBSD.</a><br/>
+<h2 id="C_B">Build-time problems</h2>
+
+<a href="#B1"><strike>B1. Make coughs and dies when building on FreeBSD.</strike></a><br/>
<a href="#B2">B2. Lex bombs out while building the fetchmail lexer.</a><br/>
<a href="#B3">B3. I get link failures when I try to build fetchmail.</a><br/>
<a href="#B4">B4. I get build failures in the intl directory.</a><br/>
-
-<h1>Fetchmail configuration file grammar questions:</h1>
+
+<h2 id="C_F">Fetchmail configuration file grammar questions</h2>
<a href="#F1">F1. Why does my old .fetchmailrc no longer work?</a><br/>
<a href="#F2">F2. The .fetchmailrc parser won't accept my all-numeric user name.</a><br/>
-<a href="#F3">F3. The .fetchmailrc parser won't accept my host or username beginning with `no'.</a><br/>
-<a href="#F4">F4. I'm getting a `parse error' message I don't understand.</a><br/>
+<a href="#F3">F3. The .fetchmailrc parser won't accept my host or username beginning with 'no'.</a><br/>
+<a href="#F4">F4. I'm getting a 'parse error' message I don't understand.</a><br/>
-<h1>Configuration questions:</h1>
+<h2 id="C_C">Configuration questions</h2>
<a href="#C1">C1. Why do I need a .fetchmailrc when running as root
on my own machine?</a><br/>
<a href="#C6">C6. Fetchmail works OK started up manually, but not
from an init script.</a><br/>
<a href="#C7">C7. How can I forward mail to another
-host?.</a><br/>
-
+host?</a><br/>
+<a href="#C8">C8. Why is "NOMAIL" an error?/I frequently get messages
+from cron!</a><br/>
-<h1>How to make fetchmail play nice with various MTAs:</h1>
+<h2 id="C_T">How to make fetchmail play nice with various MTAs</h2>
<a href="#T1">T1. How can I use fetchmail with sendmail?</a><br/>
<a href="#T2">T2. How can I use fetchmail with qmail?</a><br/>
<a href="#T7">T7. How can I use fetchmail with Courier IMAP?</a><br/>
<a href="#T8">T8. How can I use fetchmail with vbmailshield?</a><br/>
-<h1>How to make fetchmail work with various servers:</h1>
-
-<a href="#S1">S1. How can I use fetchmail with qpopper?</a><br/>
-<a href="#S2">S2. How can I use fetchmail with Microsoft
-Exchange?</a><br/>
-<a href="#S3">S3. How can I use fetchmail with Compuserve
-RPA?</a><br/>
-<a href="#S4">S4. How can I use fetchmail with Demon Internet's
-SDPS?</a><br/>
-<a href="#S5">S5. How can I use fetchmail with usa.net's
-servers?</a><br/>
-<a href="#S6">S6. How can I use fetchmail with HP
-OpenMail?</a><br/>
-<a href="#S7">S7. How can I use fetchmail with geocities POP3
-servers?</a><br/>
-<a href="#S8">S8. How can I use fetchmail with Hotmail?</a><br/>
-<a href="#S9">S9. How can I use fetchmail with MSN?</a><br/>
-<a href="#S10">S10. How can I use fetchmail with SpryNet?</a><br/>
-<a href="#S11">S11. How can I use fetchmail with FTGate?</a><br/>
-<a href="#S12">S12. How can I use fetchmail with MailMax?</a><br/>
-<a href="#S13">S13. How can I use fetchmail with Novell
-GroupWise?</a><br/>
-<a href="#S14">S14. How can I use fetchmail with
-InterChange?</a><br/>
-<a href="#S15">S15. How can I use fetchmail with GMX?</a><br/>
-
+<h2 id="C_S">How to make fetchmail work with various servers</h2>
-<h1>How to set up well-known security and authentication
-methods:</h1>
+<a href="#S1"><strike>S1. How can I use fetchmail with qpopper?</strike></a><br/>
+<a href="#S2">S2. How can I use fetchmail with Microsoft Exchange?</a><br/>
+<a href="#S3">S3. How can I use fetchmail with HP OpenMail?</a><br/>
+<a href="#S4">S4. How can I use fetchmail with Novell GroupWise?</a><br/>
+<a href="#S5">S5. How can I use fetchmail with InterChange?</a><br/>
+<a href="#S6">S6. How can I use fetchmail with MailMax?</a><br/>
+<a href="#S7">S7. How can I use fetchmail with FTGate?</a><br/>
+
+<h2 id="C_I">How to fetchmail work with specific ISPs</h2>
+
+<a href="#I1">I1. How can I use fetchmail with Compuserve RPA?</a><br/>
+<a href="#I2">I2. How can I use fetchmail with Demon Internet's SDPS?</a><br/>
+<a href="#I3">I3. How can I use fetchmail with usa.net's servers?</a><br/>
+<a href="#I4">I4. How can I use fetchmail with geocities POP3 servers?</a><br/>
+<a href="#I5">I5. How can I use fetchmail with Hotmail or Lycos Webmail?</a><br/>
+<a href="#I6">I6. How can I use fetchmail with MSN?</a><br/>
+<a href="#I7">I7. How can I use fetchmail with SpryNet?</a><br/>
+<a href="#I8">I8. How can I use fetchmail with comcast.net or other
+ Maillennium servers?</a><br/>
+<a href="#I9">I9. How can I use fetchmail with GMail/Google Mail?</a><br/>
+
+<h2 id="C_K">How to set up well-known security and authentication
+methods</h2>
<a href="#K1">K1. How can I use fetchmail with SOCKS?</a><br/>
-<a href="#K2">K2. How can I use fetchmail with IPv6 and
-IPsec?</a><br/>
-<a href="#K3">K3. How can I get fetchmail to work with
-ssh?</a><br/>
-<a href="#K4">K4. What do I have to do to use the IMAP-GSS
-protocol?</a><br/>
+<a href="#K2">K2. How can I use fetchmail with IPv6 and IPsec?</a><br/>
+<a href="#K3">K3. How can I get fetchmail to work with ssh?</a><br/>
+<a href="#K4">K4. What do I have to do to use the IMAP-GSS protocol?</a><br/>
<a href="#K5">K5. How can I use fetchmail with SSL?</a><br/>
-
+<a href="#K6">K6. How can I tell fetchmail not to try TLS if the server
+ advertises it? Why does fetchmail use SSL even though not configured?</a><br/>
-<h1>Runtime fatal errors:</h1>
+<h2 id="C_R">Runtime fatal errors</h2>
-<a href="#R1">R1. Fetchmail isn't working, and -v shows `SMTP
+<a href="#R1">R1. Fetchmail isn't working, and -v shows 'SMTP
connect failed' messages.</a><br/>
<a href="#R2">R2. When I try to configure an MDA, fetchmail doesn't
work.</a><br/>
<a href="#R3">R3. Fetchmail dumps core when given an invalid rc
file.</a><br/>
-<a href="#R4">R4. Fetchmail dumps core in -V mode, but operates
-normally otherwise.</a><br/>
+<a href="#R4"><strike>R4. Fetchmail dumps core in -V mode, but operates
+ normally otherwise.</strike></a><br/>
<a href="#R5">R5. Running fetchmail in daemon mode doesn't
work.</a><br/>
-<a href="#R6">R6. Fetchmail randomly dies with socket
-errors.</a><br/>
+<a href="#R6">R6. Fetchmail randomly dies with socket errors.</a><br/>
<a href="#R7">R7. Fetchmail running as root stopped working after
an OS upgrade</a><br/>
<a href="#R8">R8. Fetchmail is timing out after fetching certain
messages but before deleting them</a><br/>
-<a href="#R9">R9. Fetchmail is timing out during message
-fetches</a><br/>
-<a href="#R10">R10. Fetchmail is dying with SIGPIPE.</a><br/>
-<a href="#R11">R11. My server is hanging up or emitting errors on
-CAPA.</a><br/>
-
+<a href="#R9">R9. Fetchmail is timing out during message fetches</a><br/>
+<a href="#R10"><strike>R10. Fetchmail is dying with SIGPIPE.</strike></a><br/>
+<a href="#R11">R11. My server is hanging or emitting errors on CAPA.</a><br/>
+<a href="#R12">R12. Fetchmail isn't working and reports getaddrinfo
+ errors.</a><br />
+<a href="#R13">R13. What does "Interrupted system call" mean?</a><br />
+<a href="#R14">R14. Since upgrading fetchmail/OpenSSL, I can no longer connect!</a><br />
+<a href="#R15">R15. Help, I'm getting Authorization failure!</a><br />
-<h1>Hangs and lockups:</h1>
+<h2 id="C_H">Hangs and lockups</h2>
<a href="#H1">H1. Fetchmail hangs when used with pppd.</a><br/>
<a href="#H2">H2. Fetchmail hangs during the MAIL FROM
exchange.</a><br/>
<a href="#H3">H3. Fetchmail hangs while fetching mail.</a><br/>
-
-<h1>Disappearing mail:</h1>
+
+<h2 id="C_D">Disappearing mail</h2>
<a href="#D1">D1. I think I've set up fetchmail correctly, but I'm
not getting any mail.</a><br/>
connection.</a><br/>
<a href="#D3">D3. Mail that was being fetched when I interrupted my
fetchmail seems to have been vanished.</a><br/>
-
-<h1>Multidrop-mode problems:</h1>
+
+<h2 id="C_M">Multidrop-mode problems</h2>
<a href="#M1">M1. I've declared local names, but all my multidrop
mail is going to root anyway.</a><br/>
domain properly.</a><br/>
<a href="#M3">M3. I tried to run a mailing list using multidrop,
and I have a mail loop!</a><br/>
-<a href="#M4">M4. My multidrop fetchmail seems to be having DNS
-problems.</a><br/>
+<a href="#M4"><strike>M4. My multidrop fetchmail seems to be having DNS
+ problems.</strike></a><br/>
<a href="#M5">M5. I'm seeing long DNS delays before each message is
processed.</a><br/>
<a href="#M6">M6. How do I get multidrop mode to work with
from my Received headers as it should.</a><br/>
<a href="#M8">M8. Users are getting multiple copies of
messages.</a><br/>
-
-<h1>Mangled mail:</h1>
+
+<h2 id="C_X">Mangled mail</h2>
<a href="#X1">X1. Spurious blank lines are appearing in the headers
of fetched mail.</a><br/>
being split.</a><br/>
<a href="#X4">X4. My mail is being mangled in a new and different
way.</a><br/>
-<a href="#X5">X5. Using POP3, retrievals seems to be fetching too
-much!</a><br/>
+<a href="#X5"><strike>X5. Using POP3, retrievals seems to be fetching too
+much!</strike></a><br/>
<a href="#X6">X6. My mail attachments are being dropped or
mangled.</a><br/>
<a href="#X7">X7. Some mail attachments are hanging
fetchmail.</a><br/>
<a href="#X8">X8. A spurious ) is being appended to my
messages.</a><br/>
-
+<a href="#X9">X9. Missing "Content-Transfer-Encoding" header
+with Domino IMAP</a><br/>
+<a href="#X10">X10. Fetchmail delivers partial messages</a><br/>
+
-<h1>Other problems:</h1>
+<h2 id="C_O">Other problems</h2>
<a href="#O1">O1. The --logfile option doesn't work if the logfile
doesn't exist.</a><br/>
working?</a><br/>
<a href="#O9">O9. Why does fetchmail keep retrieving the same
messages over and over?</a><br/>
-<a href="#O10">O10. Why is the received date on all my messages the
-same?</a><br/>
-
-
-<h1>Answers:</h1>
-
-<hr/>
+<a href="#O10"><strike>O10. Why is the received date on all my messages the
+ same?</strike></a><br/>
+<a href="#O11">O11. I keep getting messages that say "Repoll
+immediately" in my logs.</a><br/>
+<a href="#O12">O12. Fetchmail no longer expunges mail on a 451 SMTP response.</a><br/>
+<a href="#O13">O13. I want timestamp information in my fetchmail logs.</a><br/>
+<a href="#O14">O14. Fetchmail no longer deletes oversized mails with
+ --flush.</a><br/>
+<a href="#O15">O15. Fetchmail always retains the first message in the
+ mailbox.</a><br/>
+<a href="#O16">O16. Why is the Fetchmail FAQ only available in
+ ISO-216 A4 format? How do I get the FAQ in Letter
+ format?</a><br/>
+<a href="#O17">O17. Linux logs "TCP(fetchmail:...): Application bug, race
+ in MSG_PEEK."</a><br/>
+
+<hr/>
+<h1 id="G">General problems</h1>
<h2><a id="G1" name="G1">G1. What is fetchmail and why should I
bother?</a></h2>
<p>Fetchmail is a one-stop solution to the remote mail retrieval
problem for Unix machines, quite useful to anyone with an
-intermittent PPP or SLIP connection to a remote mailserver. It can
-collect mail using any variant of POP or IMAP and forwards via port
-25 to the local SMTP listener, enabling all the normal
-forwarding/filtering/aliasing mechanisms that would apply to local
-mail or mail arriving via a full-time TCP/IP connection.</p>
+intermittent or dynamic-IP connection to a remote mailserver, SLIP or
+PPP dialup, or leased line when SMTP isn't desired. Fetchmail can
+collect mail using any variant of POP or IMAP and forwards to a the
+local SMTP (via TCP socket) or LMTP (via TCP or Unix socket) listener or
+into an MDA program, enabling all the normal
+forwarding/filtering/aliasing mechanisms that would apply to local mail
+or mail arriving via a full-time TCP/IP connection.</p>
<p>Fetchmail is not a toy or a coder's learning exercise, but an
industrial-strength tool capable of transparently handling every
Fetchmail is easy to configure, unobtrusive in operation, powerful,
feature-rich, and well documented.</p>
-<p>Fetchmail is <a href="http://www.opensource.org">open-source</a>
-software. The openness of the sources is the strongest assurance of
-quality you can have. Extensive peer review by a large,
-multi-platform user community has shown that fetchmail is as near
-bulletproof as the underlying protocols permit.</p>
+<p>Fetchmail is <a href="http://www.opensource.org/">Open Source</a>
+Software. The openness of the sources enables you to review and
+customize the code, and contribute your changes.</p>
+
+<p>A former fetchmail maintainer once claimed that Open Source software
+were the strongest quality assurance, but the current maintainers do not
+believe that open source alone is a criterion for quality – <a
+ href="fetchmail-SA-2005-01.txt">the remotely exploitable POP3
+ vulnerability (CVE-2005-2335)</a> lingered undiscovered in
+fetchmail's code for years, which is a hint that open source code does
+not audit itself.</p>
<p>Fetchmail is licensed under the <a
-href="http://gnu.org//copyleft/gpl.html">GNU General Public
-License</a>.</p>
+href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html">GNU General Public
+License v2</a>. Details, including an exception that allows linking
+against OpenSSL, are in the COPYING file in the fetchmail
+distribution.</p>
<p>If you found this FAQ in the distribution, see the README for
fetchmail's full feature list.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="G2" name="G2">G2. Where do I find the latest FAQ and
fetchmail sources?</a></h2>
<p>The latest HTML FAQ is available alongside the latest fetchmail
sources at the fetchmail home page: <a
-href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail">http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail</a>.
+href="http://www.fetchmail.info/">http://www.fetchmail.info/</a>.
You can also usually find both in the <a
-href="http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/mail/pop/!INDEX.html">
-POP mail tools directory on Sunsite</a>.</p>
+href="http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/mail/pop/!INDEX.short.html">
+POP mail tools directory on iBiblio</a>.</p>
<p>A text dump of this FAQ is included in the fetchmail
distribution. Because it freezes at distribution release time, it
may not be completely current.</p>
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="G3" name="G3">G3. I think I've found a bug. Will you fix
-it?</a></h2>
+<h2><a id="G3" name="G3">G3. Something does not work/I think I've found a bug. Will you fix it?</a></h2>
+
+<p>The first thing you should to is to upgrade to the newest version of
+fetchmail, and then see if the problem reproduces. So you'll probably
+save us both time if you upgrade and test with <a href="#G2">the latest
+ version</a> <em>before</em> sending in a bug report.</p>
-<p>Yes I will, provided you include enough diagnostic information
+<p>Bugs will be fixed, provided you include enough diagnostic information
for me to go on. Send bugs to <a
-href="mailto:fetchmail-friends@ccil.org">fetchmail-friends</a>.
-When reporting bugs, please include the following:</p>
+href="mailto:fetchmail-users@lists.berlios.de">fetchmail-users</a>.
+When sending bugs or asking for help, please <strong>do not make up
+ information except your password</strong> and please
+<strong>report</strong> the following:</p>
<ol>
<li>Your operating system.</li>
name and origin of the RPM or other binary package you
installed.</li>
-<li>A copy of your POP or IMAP server's greeting line.</li>
-
<li>The name and version of the SMTP listener or MDA you are
forwarding to.</li>
<li>Any command-line options you used.</li>
-<li>The output of fetchmail -V called with whatever other
-command-line options you used.</li>
+<li>The output of <kbd>env LC_ALL=C fetchmail -V</kbd> called with
+whatever other command-line options you used.</li>
+
+<li><strong>The output of <kbd>env LC_ALL=C fetchmail --nodetach -vvv
+--nosyslog</kbd> with whatever other command-line options you use
+routinely.</strong>
+ <p>It is very important that the transcript include your
+POP/IMAP server's greeting line, so I can identify it in case of server
+problems. This transcript will not reveal your passwords, which are
+specially masked out precisely so transcripts can be passed around.</p>
+</li>
</ol>
<p>If you have FTP access to your remote mail account, and you have
any suspicion that the bug was triggered by a particular message,
please include a copy of the message that triggered the bug.</p>
-<p>Often, the first thing I will do when you report a bug is tell
-you to upgrade to the newest version of fetchmail, and then see if
-the problem reproduces. So you'll probably save us both time if you
-upgrade and test with the latest version <em>before</em> sending in
-a bug report.</p>
-
<p>If your bug is something that used to work but stopped working
when you upgraded, then you can help pin the bug down by trying <a
-href="ftp://ftp.ccil.org/pub/esr/fetchmail/">intermediate versions
+href="http://download.berlios.de/fetchmail/">intermediate versions
of fetchmail</a> until you identify the revision that broke your
feature. The smart way to do this is by binary search on the
version sequence. First, try the version halfway between your last
failure was introduced in the lower half. Now bisect that half in
the same way. In a very few tries, you should be able to identify
the exact adjacent pair of versions between which your bug was
-introduced -- and with information like that, I can usually come up
-with a fix very quickly.</p>
-
-<p>Another useful thing you can do, if you're using POP3, is to
-test for IMAP4 support on your mailserver using the autoprobe
-function of fetchmailconf. If you have IMAP4, and fetchmailconf
-doesn't tell you it's broken, switch immediately. POP3 is a weak,
-poorly-designed protocol with chronic problems, and the later
-versions after RFC1725 actually get worse rather than better.
-Changing over to IMAP4 may well make your problem go away -- and if
-your ISP doesn't have IMAP4 support, bug them to supply it.</p>
-
-<p>It is helpful if you include your .fetchmailrc file, but not
+introduced. <strong>Please</strong> include session transcripts (as
+described in the last bullet point above) of <strong>both
+the working and failing versions.</strong> Often, the source of the problem
+can instantly identified by looking at the differences in protocol
+transactions.</p>
+
+<p>It may helpful if you include your .fetchmailrc file, but not
necessary unless your symptom seems to involve an error in
configuration parsing. If you do send in your .fetchmailrc, mask
-the passwords first!</p>
+the passwords first! Otherwise, fetchmail -V – as directed above
+– will usually suffice.</p>
<p>If fetchmail seems to run and fetch mail, but the headers look
mangled (that is, headers are missing or blank lines are inserted
mail chain to screw up that look like fetchmail's fault, but you
may be able to fix these by tweaking your configuration.</p>
-<p>A transcript of the failed session with -v -v (yes, that's
-<em>two</em> -v options, enabling debug mode) will almost always be
-useful. It is very important that the transcript include your
-POP/IMAP server's greeting line, so I can identify it in case of
-server problems. This transcript will not reveal your passwords,
-which are specially masked out precisely so transcripts can be
-passed around.</p>
-
-<p>If you upgraded your fetchmail and something broke, you should
-include session transcripts with -v -v of both the working and
-failing versions. Very often, the source of the problem can
-instantly identified by looking at the differences in protocol
-transactions.</p>
-
<p>If the bug involves a core dump or hang, a gdb stack trace is
good to have. (Bear in mind that you can attach gdb to a running
but hung process by giving the process ID as a second argument.)
</pre>
<p>Then rebuild in order to generate a version that can be
-gdb-traced.</p>
+traced with a debugger such as gdb, dbx or idb.</p>
<p>Best of all is a mail file which, when fetched, will reproduce
the bug under the latest (current) version.</p>
-<p>Any bug I can reproduce will usually get fixed very quickly,
-often within 48 hours. Bugs I can't reproduce are a crapshoot. If
-the solution isn't obvious when I first look, it may evade me for a
-long time (or to put it another way, fetchmail is well enough
-tested that the easy bugs have long since been found). So if you
-want your bug fixed rapidly, it is not just sufficient but nearly
-<em>necessary</em> that you give me a way to reproduce it.</p>
+<p>Any bug I can reproduce will usually get fixed quite quickly.
+Bugs I can't reproduce are a crapshoot. If the solution isn't obvious
+when I first look, it may evade me for a long time (or to put it another
+way, fetchmail is well enough tested that the easy bugs have long since
+been found). So if you want your bug fixed rapidly, it is not just
+sufficient but <em>necessary</em> that you give me a way to
+easily reproduce it.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="G4" name="G4">G4. I have this idea for a neat feature.
Will you add it?</a></h2>
-<p>Probably not. Most of the feature suggestions I get are for ways
-to set various kinds of administrative policy or add more spam
-filtering (the most common one, which I used to get about four
-million times a week and got <em>really</em> tired of, is for
-tin-like kill files).</p>
+<p>If it's reasonable for fetchmail and cannot be solved with reasonable
+effort outside of fetchmail, perhaps.</p>
<p>You can do spam filtering better with procmail or maildrop on
the server side and (if you're the server sysadmin) sendmail.cf
-domain exclusions. You can do other policy things better with the
+domain exclusions. If you really want fetchmail to do it from the
+client side, use a <code>preconnect</code> command to call
+<a href='http://mailfilter.sourceforge.net/'>mailfilter</a>.</p>
+
+<p>You can do other policy things better with the
<code>mda</code> option and script wrappers around fetchmail. If
it's a prime-time-vs.-non-prime-time issue, ask yourself whether a
wrapper script called from crontab would do the job.</p>
-<p>I'm not going to do these; fetchmail's job is transport, not
-policy, and I refuse to change it from doing one thing well to
-attempting many things badly. One of my objectives is to keep
-fetchmail simple so it stays reliable.</p>
+<p>fetchmail's first job is transport though, and it should do this
+well. If a feature would cause fetchmail to deteriorate in other
+respects, the feature will probably not be added.</p>
<p>For reasons fetchmail doesn't have other commonly-requested
features (such as password encryption, or multiple concurrent polls
-from the same instance of fetchmail) see the <a
-href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail/design-notes.html">design
-notes</a>.</p>
-
-<p>Fetchmail is a mature project, no longer in constant active
-development. It is no longer my top project, and I am going to be
-quite reluctant to add features that might either jeopardize its
-stability or involve me in large amounts of coding.</p>
-
-<p>All that said, if you have a feature idea that really is about a
-transport problem that can't be handled anywhere but fetchmail, lay
-it on me. I'm very accommodating about good ideas.</p>
+from the same instance of fetchmail) see <a
+href="esrs-design-notes.html">ESR's design
+notes</a>. Note that this document is partially obsoleted by the
+<a href="design-notes.html">updated design notes.</a></p>
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="G5" name="G5">G5. I want to make fetchmail behave like
-Outlook Express.</a></h2>
+<h2><a id="G5" name="G5">G5. I want to make fetchmail remove kept mail after
+some days.</a></h2>
<p>The second-most-requested feature for fetchmail, after
content-based filtering, is the ability to have it remove messages
from a maildrop after N days, typically to be used with the
-<code>keep</code> option as a sort of poor man's newsgroup
-facility. Microsoft's Outlook Express supports this.</p>
+<code>keep</code> option. Several messaging programs with graphical
+user interface support this feature.</p>
-<p>This feature won't be added either. Repeat after me: fetchmail's
-job is transport, not policy. If you want this, write a Perl or
-Python script, to be run from a cron job, that deletes old messages
-off your maildrop. Send it to me and I'll put it in the contrib
-directory.</p>
+<p>This feature is not yet implemented. It may be at a future date,
+spare time of developers permitting.</p>
+
+<p>For the time being, the contrib/ directory contains some <em>unsupported</em>
+ tools that may help, namely mold-remover.py and delete-later.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="G6" name="G6">G6. Is there a mailing list for exchanging
tips?</a></h2>
-<p>There is a fetchmail-friends list
-(fetchmail-friends@lists.ccil.org) for people who want to discuss
+<p>There is a fetchmail-users list
+<fetchmail-users@lists.berlios.de>
+for bug reports and people who want to discuss configuration issues of
+fetchmail. Please see <a href="#G3">G3 above for information you need to
+report.</a> It's a Mailman list, see <a
+ href="http://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-users">http://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-users</a>
+for info and subscription.</p>
+<p>There is a fetchmail-devel list
+<fetchmail-devel@lists.berlios.de> for people who want to discuss
fixes and improvements in fetchmail and help co-develop it. It's a
-Mail
Man list, which you can sign up for at <a
-href="http://lists.ccil.org/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-friends">http://lists.ccil.org/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-friends</a>.
-There is also an announcements-only list,
-
fetchmail-announce@lists.ccil.org, which you can sign up for at <a
-href="http://lists.ccil.org/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-announce">http://lists.ccil.org/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-announce</a>.</p>
+Mail
man list, which you can sign up for at <a
+href="http://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-devel">http://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-devel</a>.</p>
+<p>There is also an announcements-only list,
+
<fetchmail-announce@lists.berlios.de>, which you can sign up for at <a
+href="http://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-announce">http://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/fetchmail-announce</a>.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="G7" name="G7">G7. So, what's this I hear about a
fetchmail paper?</a></h2>
-<p>The fetchmail development was also a sociological experiment, an
-extended test to see if my theory about the critical features of
-the Linux development model is correct.</p>
+<p>Eric S. Raymond also considered fetchmail development a sociological
+experiment, an extended test to see if my theory about the critical
+features of the Linux development model is correct.</p>
-<p>
The experiment was a success. I wrote a paper about it titled <a
-href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral.html">The
+<p>
He considers the experiment a success. He wrote a paper about it titled <a
+href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral.html">The
Cathedral and the Bazaar</a> which was first presented at Linux
Kongress '97 in Bavaria and very well received there. It was also
given at Atlanta Linux Expo, Linux Pro '97 in Warsaw, and the first
Perl Conference, at UniForum '98, and was the basis of an invited
-presentation at Usenix '98. The folks at Netscape tell me it helped
+presentation at Usenix '98. The folks at Netscape told ESR it helped
them decide to <a
-href="http://www.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease558.html">give
+href="http://wp.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease558.html">give
away the source for Netscape Communicator</a>.</p>
<p>If you're reading a non-HTML dump of this FAQ, you can find the
paper on the Web with a search for that title.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="G8" name="G8">G8. What is the best server to use with
fetchmail?</a></h2>
-<p>The short answer: IMAP 2000 running over Unix.</p>
-
-<p>Here's a longer answer:</p>
-
<p>Fetchmail will work with any POP, IMAP, ETRN, or ODMR server
-that conforms to the relevant RFCs (and even some outright broken
-ones like <a href="#S2">Microsoft Exchange</a> and <a
-href="#S12">Novell GroupWise</a>). This doesn't mean it works
-equally well with all, however. POP2 servers, and POP3 servers
-without LAST, limit fetchmail's capabilities in various ways
-described on the manual page.</p>
+that conforms to the relevant standards/RFCs (and even some outright
+
broken ones like <a href="#S2">Microsoft Exchange</a> and <a
+ href="#S6">Novell GroupWise</a>). This doesn't mean it works equally
+well with all, however. POP2 servers, and POP3 servers without UIDL,
+limit fetchmail's capabilities in various ways described on the manual
+page.</p>
<p>Most modern Unixes (and effectively all Linux/*BSD systems) come
with POP3 support preconfigured (but beware of the horribly broken
POP3 server mentioned in <a href="#D2">D2</a>). An increasing
-minority also feature IMAP (you can detect IMAP support by running
-fetchmail in AUTO mode, or by using the `Probe for supported
-protocols' function in the fetchmailconf utility).</p>
+minority also feature IMAP (you can detect IMAP support by using the
+'Probe for supported protocols' function in the fetchmailconf
+utility - unfortunately it does not detect SSL-wrapped variants).</p>
<p>If you have the option, we recommend using or installing an
-IMAP4rev1 server; it has the best facilities for tracking message
-`seen' states. It also recovers from interrupted connections more
-gracefully than POP3, and enables some significant performance
-optimizations. The new <a
-href="ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/imap/imap.tar.Z">IMAP 2000</a>
-is particularly nice, as it supports CRAM-MD5 so you don't have to
-ship your mail password over the net en clair (fetchmail
-autodetects this capability). Older versions had support for GSSAPI
-giving a similar effect.</p>
-
-<p>Don't be fooled by NT/Exchange propaganda. M$ Exchange is just
-plain broken (see item <a href="#S2">S2</a>) and NT cannot handle
-the sustained load of a high-volume remote mail server. Even
-Microsoft itself knows better than to try this; their own Hotmail
-service runs over Solaris! For extended discussion, see John
-Kirch's excellent <a href="http://unix-vs-nt.org/kirch/">white
-paper</a> on Unix vs. NT performance.</p>
-
-<p>Source for a high-quality supported implementation of POP is
-available from the <a
-href="ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com/eudora/servers/unix/popper/">Eudora
-FTP site</a>. Don't use 2.5, which has a rather restrictive
-license. The 2.5.2 version appears to restore the open-source
-license of previous versions.</p>
+IMAP4rev1 or UIDL-capable POP3 server.</p>
+
+<p>A decent POP3/IMAP server that has recently become popular is <a
+ href="http://dovecot.org/">Dovecot</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Avoid <a href="http://home.pages.de/~mandree/qmail-bugs.html">qmail,
+ it's broken and unmaintained.</a></p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="G9" name="G9">G9. What is the best mail program to use
with fetchmail?</a></h2>
transport programs</a>. It also doesn't care which user agent you
use, and user agents are as a rule almost equally indifferent to
how mail is delivered into your system mailbox. So any of the
-popular Unix mail agents
-- <a
-href="http://www.
myxa.com/old/elm.html">elm</a>, <a
+popular Unix mail agents
– <a
+href="http://www.
instinct.org/elm/">elm</a>, <a
href="http://www.washington.edu/pine/">pine</a>, <a
href="http://www.cs.indiana.edu/docproject/mail/mh.html">mh</a>, or
-<a href="http://www.mutt.org">mutt</a> -- will work fine with
+<a href="http://www.mutt.org">mutt</a> – will work fine with
fetchmail.</p>
<p>All this having been said, I can't resist putting in a discreet
-plug for <a href="http://www.mutt.org">mutt</a>. My own personal
-mail setup is sendmail plus fetchmail plus mutt. Mutt's interface
+plug for <a href="http://www.mutt.org">mutt</a>. Mutt's interface
is only a little different from that of its now-moribund ancestor
-elm, but its excellent handling of MIME and PGP put it in a class
-by itself. You won't need its built-in POP3 support, though; most
-of the mutt developers will cheerfully admit that fetchmail's is
-better :-).</p>
+elm, but its flexibility and excellent handling of MIME and PGP put it
+in a class by itself. You won't need its built-in POP3 support, though.
+</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="G10" name="G10">G10. How can I avoid sending my password
en clair?</a></h2>
ranges from trivial to impossible. It may even be next to
useless.</p>
-<p>Most people use fetchmail over phone wires, which are hard to
-tap. Anybody with the skill and resources to do this could get into
-your server mailbox with much less effort by subverting the server
-host. So if your provider setup is modem wires going straight into
-a service box, you probably don't need to worry.</p>
-
-<p>In general there is little point in trying to secure your
-fetchmail transaction unless you trust the security of the server
-host you are retrieving mail from. Your vulnerability is more
-likely to be an insecure local network on the server end (e.g. to
-somebody with a TCP/IP packet sniffer intercepting Ethernet traffic
-between the modem concentrator you dial in to and the mailserver
-host).</p>
+<p>In general there is little point in trying to secure your fetchmail
+transaction unless you trust the security of the server host you are
+retrieving mail from. Your vulnerability is more likely to be an
+insecure local network on the server end (e.g. to somebody with a
+TCP/IP packet sniffer intercepting Ethernet traffic between the modem
+concentrator or DSL POP you dial in to and the mailserver host).</p>
<p>Having realized this, you need to ask whether password
encryption alone will really address your security exposure. If you
think you might be snooped between server and client, it's better
-to use end-to-end encryption on your whole mail stream so none of
-it can be read. One of the advantages of fetchmail over
-conventional SMTP-push delivery is that you may be able to arrange
-t
his by using ssh(1); see <a href="#K3">K3</a>.</p>
+to use end-to-end encryption such as GnuPG (see below) on your whole
+mail stream so none of it can be read. One of the advantages of
+fetchmail over conventional SMTP-push delivery is that you may be able
+t
o arrange encryption by using ssh(1); see <a href="#K3">K3</a>.</p>
<p>Note that ssh is not a complete privacy solution either, as your
mail could have been snooped in transit to your POP server from
wherever it originated. For best security, agree with your
correspondents to use a tool such as <a
-href="http://www.gnupg.org/">GPG</a> (Gnu Privacy Guard) or PGP
+ href="http://www.gnupg.org/">GnuPG</a> (Gnu Privacy Guard) or PGP
(Pretty Good Privacy).</p>
<p>If ssh/sshd isn't available, or you find it too complicated for
these, or telnet direct to the server port (110 for POP3, 143 for
IMAP).</p>
-<p>If your mailserver is using IMAP 2000, you'll have CRAM-MD5
+<p>If your mailserver is using IMAP 2000, it'll have CRAM-MD5
support built in. Fetchmail autodetects this; you can skip the rest
of this section.</p>
you see something in the greeting line that looks like an
angle-bracket-enclosed Internet address with a numeric left-hand
part, that's an APOP challenge (it will vary each time you log in).
-You can register a secret on the host (using
-<code>popauth(8)</code> or some program like it). Specify the
+For some hosts, you need to register a secret on the host (using
+<code>popauth(8)</code> or some program like that). Specify the
secret as your password in your .fetchmailrc; it will be used to
encrypt the current challenge, and the encrypted form will be sent
-back the the server for verification.</p>
+back the the server for verification. Note that APOP is no longer
+considered secure since March 2007.</p>
<p>Alternatively, you may have Kerberos available. This may require
you to set up some magic files in your home directory on your
response.</p>
<p>If you are fetching mail from a CompuServe POP3 account, you can
-use their RPA authentication (which works much like APOP). See <a
-href="#S3">S3</a> for details. If you are fetching mail from
+use their RPA authentication. See <a href="#I1">I1</a> for details.
+If you are fetching mail from
Microsoft Exchange using IMAP, you will be able to use NTLM.</p>
<p>Your POP3 server may have the RFC1938 OTP capability to use
<p>You can get both POP3 and IMAP OTP patches from <a id="cmetz"
name="cmetz">Craig Metz</a> at <a
-href="http://www.inner.net/pub/">http://www.inner.net/pub/</a>.</p>
+href="http://www.inner.net/opie">http://www.inner.net/opie</a>.</p>
<p>These patches use a SASL authentication method named "X-OTP"
because there is not currently a standard way to do this; fetchmail
<p>Finally, you can use <a href="#K5">SSL</a> for complete
end-to-end encryption if you have an SSL-enabled mailserver.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="G11" name="G11">G11. Is any special configuration needed
to use a dynamic IP address?</a></h2>
<p>Yes. In order to avoid giving indigestion to certain picky MTAs
-(notably <a href="#T3">exim</a>), fetchmail always makes the RCPT
-TO address it feeds the MTA a fully qualified one with a hostname
+(notably <a href="#T3">exim</a>), fetchmail always makes the RCPT TO
+address it feeds the MTA a fully qualified one with a hostname
part. Normally it does this by appending @ and "localhost", but
when you are using Kerberos or ETRN mode it will append @ and your
machine's fully-qualified domain name (FQDN).</p>
in daemon mode and outlasts the dynamic IP address assignment your
client machine had when it started up.</p>
-<p>Since the new IP address (looked up at RCPT TO interpretation
+<p>Since the new IP address (looked up at RCPT TO interpretation
time) doesn't match the original, the most benign possible result
is that your MTA thinks it's seeing a relaying attempt and refuses.
More frequently, fetchmail will try to connect to a nonexistent
<p>Use the <code>smtpaddress</code> option to force the appended
hostname to one with a (fixed) IP address of 127.0.0.1 in your
-<code>/etc/hosts</code>. (The name `localhost' will usually work;
-or you can use the IP address itself).</p>
+<code>/etc/hosts</code>. (The name 'localhost' will usually work;
+or you can use the IP address itself.)</p>
<p>Only one fetchmail option interacts directly with your IP
-address, `<code>interface</code>'. This option can be used to set
+address, '<code>interface</code>'. This option can be used to set
the gateway device and restrict the IP address range fetchmail will
use. Such a restriction is sometimes useful for security reasons,
especially on multihomed sites. See <a href="#C3">C3</a>.</p>
<p>I recommend against trying to set up the <code>interface</code>
-option when initially developing your poll configuration -- it's
+option when initially developing your poll configuration – it's
never necessary to do this just to get a link working. Get the link
working first, observe the actual address range you see on
connections, and add an <code>interface</code> option (if you need
<p>You can use On-Demand Mail Relay (ODMR) with a dynamic IP
address; that's what it was designed for, and it provides
capabilities very similar to ETRN. Unfortunately ODMR servers are
-not yet widely deployed, as of early 2001.</p>
+still not yet widely deployed, as of 2006.</p>
<p>If you're using a dynamic-IP configuration, one other
(non-fetchmail) problem you may run into with outgoing mail is that
-some sites will bounce your email because the hostname your giving
+some sites will bounce your email because the hostname you're giving
them isn't real (and doesn't match what they get doing a reverse
DNS on your dynamically-assigned IP address). If this happens, you
need to hack your sendmail so it masquerades as your host.
href="http://www.lege.com/sendmail-FAQ.txt">sendmail FAQ</a> for
more details.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="G12" name="G12">G12. Is any special configuration needed
to use firewalls?</a></h2>
<p>The specific recipe for using fetchmail with a firewall is at <a
href="#K1">K1</a></p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="G13" name="G13">G13. Is any special configuration needed
to <em>send</em> mail?</a></h2>
automatically dial out when your kernel is called to open a TCP/IP
connection, this will ensure that the mail gets out.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="G14" name="G14">G14. Is fetchmail
Y2K-compliant?</a></h2>
aren't running on a 64-bit machine by then, you'll deserve to
lose.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="G15" name="G15">G15. Is there a way in fetchmail to
support disconnected IMAP mode?</a></h2>
operation requires an elaborate interactive client. It's a very
different problem.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="G16" name="G16">G16. How will fetchmail perform under
heavy loads?</a></h2>
<p>Fetchmail streams message bodies line-by-line; the most core it
ever requires per message is enough memory to hold the RFC822
header, and that storage is freed when body processing begins. It
-is, accordingly, quite economical in its use of memory.</p>
+is, accordingly, quite economical in its use of memory. It will store
+the UID or UIDL data in core however, which can become considerable if
+you are keeping lots of messages on the server.</p>
<p>After startup time, a fetchmail running in daemon mode stats its
configuration file once per poll cycle to see whether it has
but not necessarily latency).</p>
<hr/>
-<h2><a id="B1" name="B1">B1. Make coughs and dies when building on
-FreeBSD.</a></h2>
+<h1>Build-time problems</h1>
+<h2><a id="B1" name="B1"><strike>B1. Make coughs and dies when building on
+FreeBSD.</strike></a></h2>
-<p>The vendor-supplied make on FreeBSD systems can only be used
-within FreeBSD's "scope", e.g. the ports collection. Type "gmake"
-to run GNU make and better things will happen.</p>
+<p style="font-style:italic;">As of release 6.3.0, fetchmail's
+Makefile[.in] should work flawlessly with BSD's portable make used on
+FreeBSD. With older releases, use GNU make (usually installed as
+<code>gmake</code>; otherwise try <kbd>pkg_add -r gmake</kbd>).</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="B2" name="B2">B2. Lex bombs out while building the
fetchmail lexer.</a></h2>
-<p>In the immortal words of Alan Cox the last time this came up:
-``Take the Solaris lex and stick it up the backside of a passing
-Sun salesman, then install <a
-href="ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/non-gnu/flex/">flex</a> and use that.
-All will be happier.''</p>
+<p>fetchmail 6.3.0 and newer ship with the lexer and parser in .c
+formats, so you do not need to use lex unless you hacked the .l or .y
+files.</p>
-<p>I couldn't have put it better myself, and ain't going to try
-now.</p>
+<p>fetchmail's lexer has been developed with GNU flex and uses some of
+its specialties, so the lexer cannot be compiled with the lex tools
+shipped by some UNIX vendors (HP, SGI, Sun).</p>
-<p>(The same problem has been reported under HP-UX v10.20 and
-IRIX)</p>
-
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="B3" name="B3">B3. I get link failures when I try to
build fetchmail.</a></h2>
-<p>If you get errors resembling these</p>
+<p>If you get errors resembling these:</p>
<pre>
-mxget.o(.text+0x35): undefined referenceto `__res_search'
-mxget.o(.text+0x99): undefined reference to`__dn_skipname'
-mxget.o(.text+0x11c): undefined reference to`__dn_expand'
-mxget.o(.text+0x187): undefined reference to`__dn_expand'
+mxget.o(.text+0x35): undefined referenceto '__res_search'
+mxget.o(.text+0x99): undefined reference to '__dn_skipname'
+mxget.o(.text+0x11c): undefined reference to '__dn_expand'
+mxget.o(.text+0x187): undefined reference to '__dn_expand'
make: *** [fetchmail] Error 1
</pre>
<p>then you must add "-lresolv" to the LOADLIBS line in your
-Makefile once you have installed the `bind' package.</p>
+Makefile once you have installed the 'bind' package.</p>
<p>If you get link errors involving <tt>dcgettext</tt>, like
-this:</p>
+these:</p>
<pre>
-rcfile_y.o: In function `yyparse':
-rcfile_y.o(.text+0x3aa): undefined reference to `dcgettext__'
-rcfile_y.o(.text+0x4f2): undefined reference to `dcgettext__'
-rcfile_y.o(.text+0x5ee): undefined reference to `dcgettext__'
-rcfile_y.o: In function `yyerror':
-rcfile_y.o(.text+0xc7c): undefined reference to `dcgettext__'
-rcfile_y.o(.text+0xcc8): undefined reference to `dcgettext__'
-rcfile_y.o(.text+0xdf9): more undefined references to `dcgettext__' follow
+rcfile_y.o: In function 'yyparse':
+rcfile_y.o(.text+0x3aa): undefined reference to 'dcgettext__'
+rcfile_y.o(.text+0x4f2): undefined reference to 'dcgettext__'
+rcfile_y.o(.text+0x5ee): undefined reference to 'dcgettext__'
+rcfile_y.o: In function 'yyerror':
+rcfile_y.o(.text+0xc7c): undefined reference to 'dcgettext__'
+rcfile_y.o(.text+0xcc8): undefined reference to 'dcgettext__'
+rcfile_y.o(.text+0xdf9): more undefined references to 'dcgettext__' follow
</pre>
-<p>reconfigure with <tt>configure --with-included-gettext</tt>.
-This is due to some brain-damage in the GNU internationalization
-libraries.</p>
+<p>install an up to date version of GNU gettext, reconfigure and rebuild
+fetchmail. If that does not help, reconfigure with '--disable-nls' added
+to the "./configure" command and rebuild.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="B4" name="B4">B4. I get build failures in the intl
directory.</a></h2>
<p>Reconfigure with <tt>--disable-nls</tt> and recompile.</p>
-<p>GNU gettext is an overengineered, fragile pile of crap. I have
-teetered on the brink of removing support for it entirely several
-times.</p>
-
<hr/>
+<h1>Fetchmail configuration file grammar questions</h1>
<h2><a id="F1" name="F1">F1. Why does my old .fetchmailrc file no
longer work?</a></h2>
+<h3>If your file predates 6.3.0</h3>
+
+<p>The <tt>netsec</tt> option was discontinued and needs to be
+removed.</p>
+
<h3>If your file predates 5.8.9</h3>
<p>If you were using ETRN mode, change your <tt>smtphost</tt>
<h3>If your file predates 5.8.3</h3>
-<p>The `via localhost' special case for use with ssh tunnelling is
-gone. Use the %h feature of <tt>plugin</tt> instead.</p>
+<p>The <tt>'via localhost'</tt> special case for use with ssh tunnelling is
+gone. Use the <tt>%h</tt> feature of <tt>plugin</tt> instead.</p>
<h3>If your file predates 5.6.8</h3>
support any of those will it ship your password en clair.</p>
<p>Setting the <tt>preauth</tt> option to any value other than
-`password' will prevent from looking for a password in your
+'password' will prevent from looking for a password in your
<tt>.netrc</tt> file or querying for it at startup time.</p>
<h3>If your file predates 5.1.0</h3>
<h3>If your file predates 4.0.6:</h3>
-<p>Just after the `<code>via</code>' option was introduced, I
-realized that the interactions between the `<code>via</code>',
-`<code>aka</code>', and `<code>localdomains</code>' options were
+<p>Just after the '<code>via</code>' option was introduced, I
+realized that the interactions between the '<code>via</code>',
+'<code>aka</code>', and '<code>localdomains</code>' options were
out of control. Their behavior had become complex and confusing, so
much so that I was no longer sure I understood it myself. Users
were being unpleasantly surprised.</p>
configurations.</p>
<p>Any multidrop configurations that depended on the name just
-after the `<code>poll</code>' or `<code>skip</code>' keyword being
+after the '<code>poll</code>' or '<code>skip</code>' keyword being
still interpreted as a DNS name for address-matching purposes, even
-in the presence of a `<code>via</code>' option, will break.</p>
+in the presence of a '<code>via</code>' option, will break.</p>
<p>It is theoretically possible that other unusual configurations
(such as those using a non-FQDN poll name to generate Kerberos IV
<h3>If your file predates 3.9.5:</h3>
-<p>The `<code>remote</code>' keyword has been changed to
-`<code>folder</code>'. If you try to use the old keyword, the
+<p>The '<code>remote</code>' keyword has been changed to
+'<code>folder</code>'. If you try to use the old keyword, the
parser will utter a warning.</p>
<h3>If your file predates 3.9:</h3>
<p>It could be because you're using a .fetchmailrc that's written
in the old popclient syntax without an explicit
-`<code>username</code>' keyword leading the first user entry
+'<code>username</code>' keyword leading the first user entry
attached to a server entry.</p>
<p>This error can be triggered by having a user option such as
-`<code>keep</code>' or `<code>fetchall</code>' before the first
+'<code>keep</code>' or '<code>fetchall</code>' before the first
explicit username. For example, if you write</p>
<pre>
keep user "Hal DeVore" there is hdevore here
</pre>
-<p>the `<code>keep</code>' option will generate an entire user
+<p>the '<code>keep</code>' option will generate an entire user
entry with the default username (the name of fetchmail's invoking
user).</p>
<h3>If your file predates 2.8:</h3>
-<p>The `<code>interface</code>', `<code>monitor</code>' and
-`<code>batchlimit</code>' options changed after 2.8.</p>
+<p>The '<code>interface</code>', '<code>monitor</code>' and
+'<code>batchlimit</code>' options changed after 2.8.</p>
-<p>They used to be global options with `<code>set</code>' syntax
+<p>They used to be global options with '<code>set</code>' syntax
like the batchlimit and logfile options. Now they're per-server
-options, like `<code>protocol</code>'.</p>
+options, like '<code>protocol</code>'.</p>
<p>If you had something like</p>
</pre>
<p>in your .fetchmailrc file, simply delete that line and insert
-`interface sl0/10.0.2.15' in the server options part of your
-`defaults' declaration.</p>
+'interface sl0/10.0.2.15' in the server options part of your
+'defaults' declaration.</p>
-<p>Do similarly for any `<code>monitor</code>' or
-`<code>batchlimit</code>' options.</p>
+<p>Do similarly for any '<code>monitor</code>' or
+'<code>batchlimit</code>' options.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="F2" name="F2">F2. The .fetchmailrc parser won't accept
my all-numeric user name.</a></h2>
<p>The lexical analyzer in 5.0.6 and beyond is smarter and assumes
any token following "username" or "password" is a string.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="F3" name="F3">F3. The .fetchmailrc parser won't accept
-my host or username beginning with `no'.</a></h2>
+my host or username beginning with 'no'.</a></h2>
-<p>See <a href="#F2">F2</a> You're caught in an unfortunate crack
-between the newer-style syntax for negated options (`no keep', `no
-rewrite' etc.) and the older style run-on syntax (`nokeep',
-`norewrite' etc.).</p>
+<p>See <a href="#F2">F2</a>. You're caught in an unfortunate crack
+between the newer-style syntax for negated options ('no keep', 'no
+rewrite' etc.) and the older style run-on syntax ('nokeep',
+'norewrite' etc.).</p>
<p>Upgrade to a 5.0.6 or later fetchmail, or put string quotes
around your token.</p>
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="F4" name="F4">F4. I'm getting a `parse error' message I
+<h2><a id="F4" name="F4">F4. I'm getting a 'parse error' message I
don't understand.</a></h2>
<p>The most common cause of mysterious parse errors is putting a
server option after a user option. Check the manual page; you'll
probably find that by moving one or more options closer to the
-`poll' keyword you can eliminate the problem.</p>
+'poll' keyword you can eliminate the problem.</p>
<p>Yes, I know these ordering restrictions are hard to understand.
-Unfortunately, they're necessary in order to allow the `defaults'
+Unfortunately, they're necessary in order to allow the 'defaults'
feature to work.</p>
<hr/>
+<h1>Configuration questions</h1>
<h2><a id="C1" name="C1">C1. Why do I need a .fetchmailrc when
running as root on my own machine?</a></h2>
<p>It won't work if the second line is just "<code>user
itz</code>". This is silly.</p>
-<p>It seems fetchmail decides to RECP the `default local user'
+<p>It seems fetchmail decides to RECP the 'default local user'
(i.e. the uid running fetchmail) unless there are local aliases,
-and the `default' aliases (itz->itz) don't count. They
+and the 'default' aliases (itz->itz) don't count. They
should.</p>
<p>Answer:</p>
<p>No they shouldn't. I thought about this for a while, and I don't
much like the conclusion I reached, but it's unavoidable. The
problem is that fetchmail has no way to know, in general, that a
-local user `itz' actually exists.</p>
+local user 'itz' actually exists.</p>
<p>"Ah!" you say, "Why doesn't it check the password file to see if
the remote name matches a local one?" Well, there are two
that all the alternatives to the present default are worse or
unacceptably more complicated or both.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="C2" name="C2">C2. How can I arrange for a fetchmail
daemon to get killed when I log out?</a></h2>
<p>The easiest way to dispatch fetchmail on logout (which will work
reliably only if you have just one login going at any time) is to
-arrange for the command `fetchmail -q' to be called on logout.
-Under bash, you can arrange this by putting `fetchmail -q' in the
-file `~/.bash_logout'. Most csh variants execute `~/.logout' on
+arrange for the command 'fetchmail -q' to be called on logout.
+Under bash, you can arrange this by putting 'fetchmail -q' in the
+file '~/.bash_logout'. Most csh variants execute '~/.logout' on
logout. For other shells, consult your shell manual page.</p>
<p>Automatic startup/shutdown of fetchmail is a little harder to
<p>Some people start up and shut down fetchmail using the ppp-up
and ppp-down scripts of pppd.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="C3" name="C3">C3. How do I know what interface and
address to use with --interface?</a></h2>
ppp0.</li>
<li>If you're using a direct connection over a local network such
-as an ethernet, use the command `netstat -r' to look at your
+as an ethernet, use the command 'netstat -r' to look at your
routing table. Try to match your mailserver name to a destination
-entry; if you don't see it in the first column, use the `default'
+entry; if you don't see it in the first column, use the 'default'
entry. The device name will be in the rightmost column.</li>
</ol>
10.0.2.15, with no netmask specified. (It's possible to configure
slirp to present other addresses, but that's the default.)</li>
-<li>If you have a static IP address, run `ifconfig <device>',
+<li>If you have a static IP address, run 'ifconfig <device>',
where <device> is whichever one you've determined. Use the IP
address given after "inet addr:". That is the IP address for your
end of the link, and is what you need. You won't need to specify a
interface "sl0/205.164.0.0/255.255.0.0"
</pre>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="C4" name="C4">C4. How can I set up support for
sendmail's anti-spam features?</a></h2>
cyberspammer.com (or any host within the cyberspammer.com domain),
and any host on the 192.168.212.* network. (This feature can be
used to do other things as well; see the <a
-href="http://www.sendmail.org/m4/anti-spam.html">sendmail
+href="http://www.sendmail.org/m4/anti_spam.html">sendmail
documentation</a> for details)</p>
<p>To actually set up the database, run</p>
your reject file. You <strong>will</strong> lose mail if you do
this!!!</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="C5" name="C5">C5. How can I poll some of my mailboxes
more/less often than others?</a></h2>
every 5 minutes means that secondary.example.com will be polled
every 30 minutes.</p>
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="C6" name="C6">Fetchmail works OK started up manually,
+<h2><a id="C6" name="C6">C6. Fetchmail works OK started up manually,
but not from an init script.</a></h2>
<p>Often, startup scripts have a different environment than an
-f option to point fetchmail at it. That should solve the
problem.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="C7" name="C7">C7. How can I forward mail to another
host?</a></h2>
fetchmail on, use the <code>smtphost</code> or
<code>smtpname</code> option. See the manual page for details.</p>
+<h2><a id="C8" name="C8">C8. Why is "NOMAIL" an error?/I frequently get messages
+from cron!</a></h2>
+
+<p>Some users want to write scripts that take action only if mail
+could/could not be retrieved, thus fetchmail reports if it has retrieved
+messages or not.</p>
+
+<p>If you do not want "no mail" to be an error condition (for instance,
+for cron jobs), use a POSIX-compliant shell and add this to the end of
+the fetchmail command line, it will change an exit code of 1 to 0 and
+others to 1:</p>
+<pre>
+|| [ $? -eq 1 ]
+</pre>
+
+<p>If you want to map more than one code to 0, you cannot cascade multiple
+<strong>|| [ $? -eq N ]</strong>, but you must instead use the
+<strong>-o</strong> operator inside the brackets, (see the test(1)
+manpage for details), such as:</p>
+
+<pre>
+|| [ $? -eq 1 -o $? -eq 9 ]
+</pre>
+
+<p>A full cron line might then look like this:</p>
+
+<pre>
+*/15 * * * * fetchmail -s || [ $? -eq 1 ]
+</pre>
+
+
<hr/>
+<h1>How to make fetchmail play nice with various MTAs</h1>
<h2><a id="T1" name="T1">T1. How can I use fetchmail with
sendmail?</a></h2>
included in sendmail's configuration, you can leave the
<code>rewrite</code> option off.</p>
-<p>If your sendmail complains ``sendmail does not relay'', make
+<p>If your sendmail complains "sendmail does not relay", make
sure your sendmail.cf file says <code>Cwlocalhost</code> so that
-sendmail recognizes `localhost' as a name of its host.</p>
+sendmail recognizes 'localhost' as a name of its host.</p>
<p>If you're mailing from another machine on your local network,
also ensure that its IP address is listed in ip_allow or name in
name_allow (usually in /etc/mail/)</p>
<p>If you find that your sendmail doesn't like the address
-`FETCHMAIL-DAEMON@localhost' (which is used in the bouncemail that
+'FETCHMAIL-DAEMON@localhost' (which is used in the bouncemail that
fetchmail generates), you may have to set
<code>FEATURE(accept_unqualified_senders)</code>.</p>
<pre>
H?J?Delivered-To: $u
-Mmdrop, P=/usr/bin/procmail, F=lsDFMqSPfhnu9J,
+Mmdrop, P=/usr/bin/procmail, F=lsDFMqSPfhnu9J,
S=EnvFromSMTP/HdrFromSMTP, R=EnvToSMTP/HdrToSMTP,
T=DNS/RFC822/X-Unix,
A=procmail -Y -a $u -d $h
</pre>
-<p>For both hacks, you have to declare `<code>envelope
+<p>For both hacks, you have to declare '<code>envelope
"Delivered-To:"</code>' on the fetchmail side, to put the virtual
-domain (e.g. `domain.com') with RELAY permission into your access
-file and to add a line reading `<code>domain.com
-local:local-pop-user</code>' for the first and `<code>domain.com
+domain (e.g. 'domain.com') with RELAY permission into your access
+file and to add a line reading '<code>domain.com
+local:local-pop-user</code>' for the first and '<code>domain.com
mdrop:local-pop-user</code>' for the second hack to your
mailertable.</p>
<p>You will notice that if the mail already has a Delivered-To
header, sendmail will not add another.  Further, editing
sendmail.cf directly is not very comfortable.  Solutions for
-both problems can be found in Peter `Rattacresh' Backes' `hybrid'
+both problems can be found in Peter 'Rattacresh' Backes' 'hybrid'
patch against sendmail.  Have a look at it, you can find it in
the contrib subdirectory.</p>
sendmail instance dies. The problem is messages with a single dot
at start of a text line.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="T2" name="T2">T2. How can I use fetchmail with
qmail?</a></h2>
+<h3>qmail as your local SMTP server</h3>
+
+<p>Avoid <a href="http://home.pages.de/~mandree/qmail-bugs.html">qmail,
+ it's broken and unmaintained.</a></p>
+
<p>Turn on the <code>forcecr</code> option; qmail's listener mode
doesn't like header or message lines terminated with bare
-linefeeds.</p>
-
-<p>(This information is thanks to Robert de Bath
+linefeeds.<br/>
+(This information contributed by Robert de Bath
<robert@mayday.cix.co.uk>.)</p>
-<p>If a mailhost is using the qmail package (see <a
-href="http://pobox.com/~djb/qmail.html">http://pobox.com/~djb/qmail.html</a>)
-then, providing the local hosts are also using qmail, it is
-possible to set up one fetchmail link to be reliably collect the
-mail for an entire domain.</p>
+<h3>qmail as your ISP's POP3 server</h3>
-<p>One of the basic features of qmail is the `Delivered-To:'
+<p>Note that qmail's POP3 server, as of version 1.03 and netqmail 1.05,
+miscalculates the message sizes, so you may see size-related fetchmail
+warnings.</p>
+
+<p>If a mailhost is using the qmail package, then it is usually possible
+to set up one fetchmail link to reliably collect the mail for an entire
+domain.</p>
+
+<p>One of the basic features of qmail is the 'Delivered-To:'
message header. Whenever qmail delivers a message to a local
mailbox it puts the username and hostname of the envelope recipient
-on this line. The major reason for this is to prevent mail
-loops.</p>
+on this line. One major reason for this is to prevent mail
+loops, the other is to transport envelope information which is essential
+for multidrop (domain-in-a-mailbox) schemes.</p>
-<p>To set up qmail to batch mail for a disconnected site the
-ISP-mailhost will have normally put that site in its `virtualhosts'
+<p>To set up qmail to batch mail for a disconnected site, the
+ISP-mailhost will have normally put that site in its 'virtualhosts'
control file so it will add a prefix to all mail addresses for this
site. This results in mail sent to
-'username@userhost.userdom.dom.com' having a 'Delivered-To:' line
+'username@userhost.userdom.example.com' having a 'Delivered-To:' line
of the form:</p>
<pre>
- Delivered-To: mbox-userstr-username@userhost.userdom.dom.com
+ Delivered-To: mbox-userstr-username@userhost.userdom.example.com
</pre>
<p>A single host maildrop will be slightly simpler:</p>
<pre>
- Delivered-To: mbox-userstr-username@userhost.dom.com
+ Delivered-To: mbox-userstr-username@userhost.example.com
</pre>
<p>The ISP can make the 'mbox-userstr-' prefix anything they choose
<p>To use this line you must:</p>
<ol>
-<li>Ensure the option `envelope Delivered-To:' is in the fetchmail
+ <li>Ensure the option '<code>envelope "Delivered-To"</code>' is in the fetchmail
config file.</li>
-<li>Ensure you have a localdomains containing 'userdom.dom.com' or
-`userhost.dom.com' respectively.</li>
-</ol>
-
-<p>So far this reliably delivers messages to the correct machine of
-the local network, to deliver to the correct user the
-'mbox-userstr-' prefix must be stripped off of the user name. This
-can be done by setting up an alias within the qmail MTA on each
-local machine. Simply create a dot-qmail file called
-'.qmail-mbox-userstr-default' in the alias directory (normally
-/var/qmail/alias) with the contents:</p>
-
-<pre>
- | ../bin/qmail-inject -a -f"$SENDER" "${LOCAL#mbox-userstr-}@$HOST"
-</pre>
-
-<p>Note this <em>does</em> require a modern /bin/sh.</p>
-
-<p>Peter Wilson adds:</p>
-
-<p>``My ISP uses "alias-unzzippedcom-" as the prefix, which means
-that I need to name my file ".qmail-unzzippedcom-default". This is
-due to qmail's assumption that a message sent to user-xyz is
-handled by the file ~user/.qmail-xyz (or
-~user/.qmail-default).''</p>
-
-<p>Luca Olivetti adds:</p>
+<li>Ensure the option '<code>qvirtual "mbox-userstr-"</code>' is
+in the fetchmail config file, in order to remove this prefix from the
+username. (added by Luca Olivetti)</li>
-<p>If you aren't using qmail locally, or you don't want to set up
-the alias mechanism described above, you can use the option
-`<code>qvirtual "mbox-userstr-"</code>' in your fetchmail config
-file to strip the prefix from the local user name.</p>
+<li>Ensure you have a <code>localdomains</code> option containing
+'<code>userdom.example.com</code>' or '<code>userhost.userdom.example.com</code>'
+respectively.</li>
+</ol>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="T3" name="T3">T3. How can I use fetchmail with
exim?</a></h2>
addresses you pass to it have to be canonical (e.g. with a fully
qualified hostname part). Therefore fetchmail tries to pass fully
qualified RCPT TO addresses. But exim does not by default accept
-`localhost' as a fully qualified domain. This can be fixed.</p>
+'localhost' as a fully qualified domain. This can be fixed.</p>
-<p>In exim.conf, add `localhost' to your local_domains declaration
+<p>In exim.conf, add 'localhost' to your local_domains declaration
if it's not already present. For example, the author's site at
thyrsus.com would have a line reading:</p>
attached to their return address (your SMTP listener's hostname
rather than that of the remote mail server).</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="T4" name="T4">T4. How can I use fetchmail with
smail?</a></h2>
single fetchmail session, smail sometimes delivers them in an order
other than received-date order. This can be annoying because it
scrambles conversational threads. This is not fetchmail's problem,
-it is an smail `feature' and has been reported to the maintainers
+it is an smail 'feature' and has been reported to the maintainers
as a bug.</p>
<p>Very recent smail versions require an
to accept the "localhost" that fetchmail normally appends to
recipient addresses.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="T5" name="T5">T5. How can I use fetchmail with SCO's
MMDF?</a></h2>
<p>MMDF itself is difficult to configure, but it turns out that
connecting fetchmail to MMDF's SMTP channel isn't that hard. You
can read an <a
-href="http://www.aplawrence.com/Unixart/uucptofetch.html">MMDF
+href="http://aplawrence.com/Unixart/uucptofetch.html">MMDF
recipe</a> that describes replacing a UUCP link with fetchmail
feeding MMDF.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="T6" name="T6">T6. How can I use fetchmail with Lotus
Notes?</a></h2>
<p>The Lotus Notes SMTP gateway tries to deduce when it should
convert \n to \r\n, but its rules are not the intuitive and
-correct-for-RFC822 ones. Use `forcecr'.</p>
+correct-for-RFC822 ones. Use 'forcecr'.</p>
<h2><a id="T7" name="T7">T7. How can I use fetchmail with Courier
IMAP?</a></h2>
<code>someone@localhost</code>. Work around this with an
<code>smtphost</code> or <code>smtpaddress</code>.</p>
-<hr/>
-<h2><a href="T8">T8. How can I use fetchmail with vbmailshield?</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="T8">T8. How can I use fetchmail with vbmailshield?</a></h2>
<p>vbmailshield's SMTP interpreter is broken. It doesn't understand RSET.</p>
<p>As a workaround, you can set batchlimit to 1 so RSET is never used.</p>
<hr/>
-<h2><a id="S1" name="S1">S1. How can I use fetchmail with
-qpopper?</a></h2>
-
-<p>Qualcomm's qpopper is probably the best-of-breed among POP3
-servers, and is very widely deployed. Nevertheless, it has some
-problems which fetchmail exposes. We recommend using <a
-href="#G8">IMAP</a> instead if at all possible. If you must talk to
-qpopper, here are some problems to be aware of:</p>
-
-<h3>Problems with retrieving large messages from qpopper 2.53</h3>
-
-<p>Tony Tang <a
-href="mailto:tony@atn.com.hk"><tony@atn.com.hk></a> reports
-that there is a bad intercation between fetchmail and qpopper 2.5.3
-under Red Hat Linux versions 5.0 to 5.2, kernels 2.0.34 to 2.0.35.
-When fetching very large messages (over 700K) from 2.5.3, fetchmail
-will hang with a socket error.</p>
-
-<p>This is probably not a fetchmail bug, but rather a symptom of
-some problem in the networking stack that qpopper's transmission
-pattern is tickling, as fetchpop (another Linux POP client) also
-displays the hang but Netscape running under Win95 does not. The
-problem can also be banished by <a
-href="http://www.eudora.com/freeware/qpop.html">upgrading to
-qpopper 3.0b1</a>.</p>
-
-<h3>Bad interaction with fetchmail 4.4.2 to 4.4.7</h3>
-
-<p>Versions of fetchmail from 4.4.2 through 4.4.7 had a bad
-interaction with Eudora qpopper versions 2.3 and later. See <a
-href="#X5">X5</a> for details. The solution is to upgrade your
-fetchmail.</p>
+<h1>How to make fetchmail work with various servers</h1>
+<h2><a id="S1" name="S1"><strike>S1. How can I use fetchmail with
+ qpopper?</strike></a></h2>
+
+<p><em>The information that used to be here was obsolete and dropped.</em></p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="S2" name="S2">S2. How can I use fetchmail with Microsoft
Exchange?</a></h2>
with no terminating newline added. This will hang fetchmail or any
other RFC-compliant server. IMAP is alleged to work OK, though.</p>
-<p>Older versions of Exchange are semi-usable.</p>
+<p>Older versions of Exchange are semi-usable. They randomly drop
+attachments on the floor, though. Microsoft acknowledges this
+as a known bug and apparently has no plans to fix it.</p>
-<p>Fetchmail using IMAP supports the proprietary NTLM mode used
-with M$ Exchange servers. To enable this, configure fetchmail with
+<p>Fetchmail using IMAP usually supports the proprietary NTLM mode used
+with Microsoft Exchange servers. "Usually" here means that it fails on some
+servers for reasons that we haven't been able to debug yet, perhaps it's
+related to the NTLM domain.</p>
+
+<p>To enable this NTLM mode, configure fetchmail with
the --enable-NTLM option and recompile it. Specify a user option
-value that looks like `user@domain': the part to the left of the @
+value that looks like 'user@domain': the part to the left of the @
will be passed as the username and the part to the right as the
NTLM domain.</p>
-<p>M$ Exchange violates the POP3 and IMAP RFCs. Its LIST command
+<p>Microsoft Exchange violates the POP3 and IMAP RFCs. Its LIST command
does not reveal the real sizes of mail in the pop mailbox, but the
sizes of the compressed versions in the exchange mail database
(thanks to Arjan De Vet and Guido Van Rooij for alerting us to this
problem).</p>
-<p>Fetchmail works with M$ Exchange, despite this brain damage. Two
-features are compromised. One is that the --limit option will not
+<p>Fetchmail works with Microsoft Exchange, despite this brain damage.
+Two features are compromised. One is that the --limit option will not
work right (it will check against compressed and not actual sizes).
The other is that a too-small SIZE argument may be passed to your
ESMTP listener, assuming you're using one (this should not be a
problem unless the actual size of the message is above the
listener's configured length limit).</p>
-<p>Somewhat belatedly, I've learned that there's supposed to be a
+<p>ESR learned that there's supposed to be a
registry bit that can fix this breakage:</p>
<pre>
deleted.</dd>
</dl>
-<p>The Microsoft pod-person who revealed this information to me
+<p>The Microsoft employee who revealed this information to ESR
admitted that he couldn't find it anywhere in their public
knowledge base.</p>
as its symptom a response to LOGIN that says "NO Ambiguous Alias".
Grant Edwards writes:</p>
-<p>This means that Exchange Server is too f*&#ing stupid to
+<blockquote><p>This means that Exchange Server is too [...] stupid to
figure out which mailbox belongs to you. Instead of actually
keeping track of which inbox belongs to which user, it uses some
half-witted, guess-o-matic heuristic to try to guess your mailbox
<p>In your case it doesn't work because your username maps to more
than one mailbox. For some people it doesn't work because their
-username maps to zero mailboxes. This is yet another inept, lame,
-almost criminally negligent design decision from our friends in
-Redmond.</p>
+username maps to zero mailboxes.</p>
<p>You've got several options:</p>
<li>Get your administrator to add an alias that maps your username
explicitly to your mailbox name.</li>
</ul>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>But, the best option involves finding a server that runs better
+software.</p>
+
+<h2><a id="S3" name="S3">S3. How can I use fetchmail with HP
+OpenMail?</a></h2>
+
+<p>No special configuration is required, but OpenMail versions
+prior to 6.0 have an annoying bug similar to the big one in <a
+href="#S2">Microsoft Exchange</a>. The message sizes it gives in
+the LIST are rounded to the nearest 1024 bytes. It also has a nasty
+habit of discarding headers it doesn't recognize, such as X- and
+Resent- headers.</p>
+<p>OpenMail's project manager claims these bugs have been fixed in
+6.0.</p>
+
+<p>We've had a more recent report (December 2001) that the TOP
+command fails, returning only one line regardless of its argument,
+on something identifying itself as "OpenMail POP3 interface".</p>
+
+<h2><a id="S4" name="S4">S4. How can I use fetchmail with Novell GroupWise?</a></h2>
+
+<p>The Novell GroupWise IMAP server is (according to the designer of
+IMAP) unusably broken. Among other things, it doesn't include a required
+content length in its BODY[TEXT] response.</p>
+
+<p>Fetchmail works around this problem to some extent, but no guarantees.</p>
+
+<h2><a id="S5" name="S5">S5. How can I use fetchmail with
+InterChange?</a></h2>
+
+<p>You can't. At least not if you want to be able to see
+attachments. InterChange has a bug similar to the MailMax server (<a
+ href="#S6">see below</a>):
+it reports the message length with attachments but doesn't download
+them on TOP or RETR.</p>
+
+<p>On Jan 9 2001, the people at InfiniteMail sent ESR mail informing
+him that their new 3.61.08 release of InterChange fixed this
+problem.</p>
+
+<h2><a id="S6" name="S6">S6. How can I use fetchmail with MailMax?</a></h2>
+
+<p>You can't. At least not if you want to be able to see
+attachments. MailMax has a bug; it reports the message length with
+attachments but doesn't download them on TOP or RETR.</p>
+
+<p>Also, we're told that TOP sometimes fails to retrieve the entire
+message even when enough lines have been specified. The MailMax
+developers have acknowledged this bug as of 4 May 2000, but there
+is no fix yet. If you must use this server, force RETR with the
+<tt>fetchall</tt> option.</p>
-<p>But, the best option involves a tactical nuclear weapon (an old
-ASROC will do), pissing off a lot people who live downwind from
-Redmond, and your choice of any Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, or Solaris
-CD.</p>
+<h2><a id="S7" name="S7">S7. How can I use fetchmail with FTGate?</a></h2>
-<p>I'll provide the CD.</p>
+<p>The FTGate V2 server (and possibly older versions as well) has a
+weird bug. It answers OK twice to a TOP request! Use the
+<code>fetchall</code> option to force use of RETR and work around
+this bug.</p>
<hr/>
-<h2><a id="S3" name="S3">S3. How can I use fetchmail with
-CompuServe RPA?</a></h2>
+<h1>How to fetchmail work with specific ISPs</h1>
+<h2><a id="I1" name="I1">I1. How can I use fetchmail with CompuServe RPA?</a></h2>
<p>First, make sure your fetchmail has the RPA support compiled in.
Stock fetchmail binaries (such as you might get from an RPM) don't.
directions).</p>
<p>Give your CompuServe pass-phrase in lower case as your password.
-Add `@compuserve.com' to your user ID so that it looks like `user
+Add '@compuserve.com' to your user ID so that it looks like 'user
<UserID>@compuserve.com', where <UserID> can be either
your numerical userID or your E-mail nickname. An RPA-enabled
fetchmail will automatically check for csi.com in the POP server's
greeting line. If that's found, and your user ID ends with
-`@compuserve.com', it will query the server to see if it is
+'@compuserve.com', it will query the server to see if it is
RPA-capable, and if so do an RPA transaction rather than a
plain-text password handshake.</p>
is LOCAL_USER here options fetchall stripcr
</pre>
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="S4" name="S4">S4. How can I use fetchmail with Demon
+<h2><a id="I2" name="I2">I2. How can I use fetchmail with Demon
Internet's SDPS?</a></h2>
<h3>Single-drop mode</h3>
<p>Note that Demon may delete mail on the server which is more than
30 days old; see their <a
-href="http://www.demon.net/helpdesk/products/mail/sdps-tech.shtm">POP3
+href="http://www.demon.net/helpdesk/producthelp/mail/sdps-tech.html/">POP3
page</a> for details.</p>
<h3>The SDPS extension</h3>
greeting line; if you're accessing Demon Internet through a proxy
it may fail. To force SDPS mode, pick "sdps" as your protocol.</p>
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="S5" name="S5">S5. How can I use fetchmail with usa.net's
+<h2><a id="I3" name="I3">I3. How can I use fetchmail with usa.net's
servers?</a></h2>
-<p>Enable `<code>fetchall</code>'. A user reports that the 2.2
+<p>Enable '<code>fetchall</code>'. A user reports that the 2.2
version of USA.NET's POP server reports that you must use the
-`<code>fetchall</code>' option to make sure that all of the mail is
+'<code>fetchall</code>' option to make sure that all of the mail is
retrieved, otherwise some may be left on the server. This is almost
certainly a server bug.</p>
don't handle the TOP command properly, either. Regardless of the
argument you give it, they retrieve only about 10 lines of the
message. Fetchmail normally uses TOP for message retrieval in order
-to avoid marking messages seen, but `<code>fetchall</code>' forces
+to avoid marking messages seen, but '<code>fetchall</code>' forces
it to use RETR instead.</p>
<p>Also, we're told USA.NET adds a ton of hops to your messages.
You may need to raise the MaxHopCount parameter in your sendmail.cf
to avoid having fetched mail rejected.</p>
-<p>(Note: Other failure modes have been reported on usa.net's
-servers. They seem to be chronically flaky. We recommend finding
-another provider.)</p>
-
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="S6" name="S6">S6. How can I use fetchmail with HP
-OpenMail?</a></h2>
-
-<p>No special configuration is required, but OpenMail versions
-prior to 6.0 have an annoying bug similar to the big one in <a
-href="#S2">Microsoft Exchange</a>. The message sizes it gives in
-the LIST are rounded to the nearest 1024 bytes. It also has a nasty
-habit of discarding headers it doesn't recognize, such as X- and
-Resent- headers.</p>
-
-<p>As with M$ Exchange, the only real fix for these problems is to
-get a POP (or preferably IMAP) server that isn't brain-dead.
-OpenMail's project manager claims these bugs have been fixed in
-6.0.</p>
-
-<p>We've had a more recent report (December 2001) that the TOP
-command fails, returning only one line regrardless of its argument,
-on something identifying itself as "OpenMail POP3 interface".</p>
-
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="S7" name="S7">S7. How can I use fetchmail with geocities
+<h2><a id="I4" name="I4">I4. How can I use fetchmail with geocities
POP3 servers?</a></h2>
<p>Nathan Cutler reports that the the mail.geocities.com POP3
interprets Received continuations as body lines and doesn't parse
any of the following headers.</p>
-<p>Workaround is to use "mda" keyword or "-mda" switch:</p>
+<p>Workaround is to use "mda" keyword or "--mda" switch:</p>
<pre>
mda "sed -e '1s/^\t/Received: /' | formail | /usr/bin/procmail -d <user>"
Geocities' servers sometimes think that the first 45 messages have
already been read.</p>
-<p>Fix: Get an email provider that doesn't suck. The pop-up ads on
-Geocities are lame, you should boycott them anyway.</p>
+<h2><a id="I5" name="I5">I5. How can I use fetchmail with Hotmail or Lycos Webmail?</a></h2>
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="S8" name="S8">S8. How can I use fetchmail with Hotmail?</a></h2>
+<p>You can't directly. But you can use fetchmail with hotmail or lycos
+webmail with the help of the <a
+href='http://people.freenet.de/courierdave/'>HotWayDaemon</a>
+daemon. You don't even need to install hotwayd as a daemon in
+<samp>inetd.conf</samp> but can use it as a plugin. Your
+configuration should look like this:</p>
-<p>You can't, yet. But <a
-href="http://linux.cudeso.be/linuxdoc/gotmail.php">gotmail</a> might
-be what you need.</p>
+<pre>
+poll localhost protocol pop3 tracepolls
+ plugin "/usr/local/sbin/hotwayd -l 0 -p yourproxy:yourproxyport"
+ username "youremail@hotmail.com" password "yourpassword"
+ fetchall
+</pre>
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="S9" name="S9">S9. How can I use fetchmail with MSN?</a></h2>
+<p>As a second option you may consider using <a
+href="http://linux.cudeso.be/linuxdoc/gotmail.php">gotmail</a>.</p>
+
+<h2><a id="I6" name="I6">I6. How can I use fetchmail with MSN?</a></h2>
<p>You can't. MSN uses something that looks like POP3, except the
authentication part is nonstandard. And of course they don't
MSN; if so, somebody should report it so this FAQ can be
corrected.</p>
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="S10" name="S10">S10. How can I use fetchmail with
-SpryNet?</a></h2>
+<h2><a id="I7" name="I7">I7. How can I use fetchmail with SpryNet?</a></h2>
<p>The SpryNet POP3 servers mark a message queried with TOP as
seen. This means that if your connection drops in mid-message, it
<code>fetchall</code> flag to ensure that it's recovered on the
next cycle.</p>
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="S11" name="S11">S11. How can I use fetchmail with
-FTGate?</a></h2>
-
-<p>The FTGate V2 server (and possibly older versions as well) has a
-weird bug. It answers OK twice to a TOP request! Use the
-<code>fetchall</code> option to force use of RETR and work around
-this bug.</p>
-
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="S12" name="S12">S12. How can I use fetchmail with
-MailMax?</a></h2>
-
-<p>You can't. At least not if you want to be able to see
-attachments. MailMax has a bug; it reports the message length with
-attachments but doesn't download them on TOP or RETR.</p>
-
-<p>Also, we're told that TOP sometimes fails to retrieve the entire
-message even when enough lines have been specified. The MailMax
-developers have acknowledged this bug as of 4 May 2000, but there
-is no fix yet. If you must use this server, force RETR with the
-<tt>fetchall</tt> option.</p>
-
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="S13" name="S13">S13. How can I use fetchmail with Novell
-GroupWise?</a></h2>
-
-<p>The Novell GroupWise IMAP server would be better named
-GroupFoolish; it is (according to the designer of IMAP) unusably
-broken. Among other things, it doesn't include a required content
-length in its BODY[TEXT] response.</p>
-
-<p>Fetchmail works around this problem, but we strongly recommend
-voting with your dollars for a server that isn't brain-dead. If you
-stick with code as shoddy as GroupWise seems to be, you will
-probably pay for it with other problems.</p>
-
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="S14" name="S14">S14. How can I use fetchmail with
-InterChange?</a></h2>
-
-<p>You can't. At least not if you want to be able to see
-attachments. InterChange has a bug similar to the MailMax server;
-it reports the message length with attachments but doesn't download
-them on TOP or RETR.</p>
-
-<p>On Jan 9 2001, the people at InfiniteMail sent me mail informing
-me that their new 3.61.08 release of InterChange fixes this
-problem. I don't have any reports one way or the other yet.</p>
-
-<h2><a id="S15" name="S15">S15. How can I use fetchmail with
-GMX?</a></h2>
-
-<p>Use IMAP. The GMX StreamProxy server behaves badly on
-authentication failures, sending back a non-conformant error
-message (missing an <code>-ERR</code> tag) that confuses
-fetchmail.</p>
+<h2><a id="I8" name="I8">I8. How can I use fetchmail with comcast.net or
+ other Maillennium servers?</a></h2>
+
+<p>Stock fetchmail will work with a
+Maillennium POP3/PROXY server... <em>but</em> this server will
+truncate "TOP" responses after 64 - 82 kB (we have varying reports),
+in violation of Internet Standard #53 aka. RFC-1939 (POP3). Don't
+mistake this for a fetchmail bug. (Reported July 2003.) Comcast
+documented they haven't understood what this is about in <a
+ href="http://lists.ccil.org/pipermail/fetchmail-friends/2004-April/008523.html">two
+messages from April 2004.</a></p>
+
+<p>Beginning with version 6.3.2, fetchmail will fall back to the RETR
+command if the greeting string contains "Maillennium POP3/PROXY server",
+and print a warning message. This means however that fetchmail has no
+means to prevent the "seen" flag from being set on the server (Note that
+officially, POP3 has no notion of seen tracking, but it works for some
+sites.)</p>
+
+<p>Workaround for older versions: use the <tt>fetchall</tt> option.</p>
+
+<h2><a id="I9" name="I9">I9. How can I use fetchmail with GMail/Google Mail?</a></h2>
+
+<p>Google's IMAP servers, as of April 2008, are broken and re-encode
+MIME-encoded headers improperly and are not feature-complete yet. The
+model how their servers organize mail also deviates in significant ways
+from what the POP3 or IMAP protocol 'fathers' conceived. This means all
+sorts of strange effects, for instance, your sent mail may show up in
+the mail that fetchmail fetches. It's best to avoid fetching mail from
+Google until they are using standards-compliant software.</p>
+
+<p>If you still need to use Google's mail service, these links may help (valid as of 2011-04-13):</p>
+<ul>
+ <li><a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=12805">Other ways to access Gmail > POP</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=12806">Other ways to access Gmail > IMAP</a></li>
+<li><a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=47948">Using POP on multiple clients or mobile devices</a></li>
+<li><a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=13291">Some [POP3] mail was not downloaded</a></li>
+<li><a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=78774">I'm having problems downloading [IMAP] mail</a></li>
+</ul>
<hr/>
-<h2><a id="K1" name="K1">K1. How can I use fetchmail with
-SOCKS?</a></h2>
+<h1>How to set up well-known security and authentication
+methods</h1>
+<h2><a id="K1" name="K1">K1. How can I use fetchmail with SOCKS?</a></h2>
-<p>Giuseppe Guerini added a --with-socks option that supports
-linking with socks library. If you specify the value of this option
-as ``yes'', the configure script will try to find the Rconnect
+<p>Giuseppe Guerini added a <kbd>--with-socks</kbd> compile-time option
+that supports linking with socks library. If you specify the value of
+this option as "yes", the configure script will try to find the Rconnect
library and set the makefile up to link it. You can also specify a
directory containing the Rconnect library.</p>
-<p>Alan Schmitt has added a similar --with-socks5 option that may
+<p>Alan Schmitt has added a similar <kbd>--with-socks5</kbd> option that may
work better if you have a recent version of the SOCKS library.</p>
-<hr/>
+<p>In either case, fetchmail has no direct configuration hooks, but you
+can specify which socks configuration file the library should read by
+means of the <tt>SOCKS_CONF</tt> environment variable. In order to
+bypass the SOCKS proxy altogether, you could run (adding your usual
+options to the end of this line):</p>
+
+<pre>env SOCKS_CONF=/dev/null fetchmail</pre>
+
<h2><a id="K2" name="K2">K2. How can I use fetchmail with IPv6 and
IPsec?</a></h2>
<p>To use fetchmail with IPv6, you need a system that supports
IPv6, the "Basic Socket Interface Extensions for IPv6" (RFC 2133).
-This currently means that you need to have a BSD/OS or NetBSD
-system with the NRL IPv6+IPsec software distribution or a Linux
-system with a 2.2 or later kernel and net-tools. It should not be
-hard to build fetchmail on other IPv6 implementations if you can
-port the inet6-apps kit.</p>
-
-<p>To use fetchmail with networking security (read: IPsec), you
-need a system that supports IPsec, the API described in the
-"Network Security API for Sockets"
-(draft-metz-net-security-api-01.txt), and the inet6-apps kit. This
-currently means that you need to have a BSD/OS or NetBSD system
-with the NRL IPv6+IPsec software distribution. A Linux IPsec
-implementation supporting this API will probably appear in the
-coming months.</p>
+</p>
<p>The NRL IPv6+IPsec software distribution can be obtained from:
<a
-href="http://web.mit.edu/network/isakmp">http://web.mit.edu/network/isakmp</a></p>
-
-<p>The inet6-apps kit can be obtained from <a
-href="http://ftp.ps.pl/pub/linux/IPv6/inet6-apps/">http://ftp.ps.pl/pub/linux/IPv6/inet6-apps/</a>.</p>
+href="http://web.mit.edu/network/isakmp/">http://web.mit.edu/network/isakmp/</a></p>
<p>More information on using IPv6 with Linux can be obtained
from:</p>
<li><a
href="http://www.bieringer.de/linux/IPv6/IPv6-HOWTO/IPv6-HOWTO.html">
http://www.bieringer.de/linux/IPv6/IPv6-HOWTO/IPv6-HOWTO.html</a></li>
-
-<li><a
-href="http://www.ipv6.inner.net/ipv6">http://www.ipv6.inner.net/ipv6</a>
-(via IPv6)</li>
-
-<li><a
-href="http://www.inner.net/ipv6">http://www.inner.net/ipv6</a> (via
-IPv4)</li>
</ul>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="K3" name="K3">K3. How can I get fetchmail to work with
ssh?</a></h2>
password. It will be under ssh encryption, though, so that
shouldn't be a problem.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="K4" name="K4">K4. What do I have to do to use the
IMAP-GSS protocol?</a></h2>
<p>Fetchmail can use RFC1731 GSSAPI authorization to safely
-identify you to your IMAP server, as long as you can share Kerberos
-V credentials with your mail host and you have a GSSAPI-capable
-IMAP server. UW-IMAP (available via FTP at <a
-href="ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/mail/">ftp.cac.washington.edu</a>)
-is the only one I'm aware of and the one I recommend anyway for
-other reasons. You'll need version 4.1-FINAL or greater though, and
-it has to have GSS support compiled in.</p>
-
-<p>Neither UW-IMAP nor fetchmail compile in support for GSS by
-default, since it requires libraries from the Kerberos V
-distribution (available via FTP at <a
-href="ftp://athena-dist.mit.edu/pub/ATHENA/kerberos">athena-dist.mit.edu</a>).
-If you have these, compiling in GSS support is simple: add a
+identify you to your IMAP server, as long as you can share
+Kerberos V credentials with your mail host and you have a GSSAPI-capable
+IMAP server.</p>
+
+<p>fetchmail does not compile in support for GSS by
+default, since it requires libraries from a Kerberos V
+distribution, such as <a href="http://web.mit.edu/Kerberos/">MIT
+ Kerberos</a> or <a href="http://www.h5l.org/">Heimdal
+ Kerberos</a>.</p>
+
+<p>If you have these, compiling in GSS support is simple: add a
<code>--with-gssapi=[/path/to/krb5/root]</code> option to
configure. For instance, I have all of my Kerberos V libraries
installed under /usr/krb5 so I run <code>configure
<p>Now you don't have to worry about your password appearing in
cleartext in your .fetchmailrc, or across the network.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="K5" name="K5">K5. How can I use fetchmail with
SSL?</a></h2>
<p>You'll need to have the <a
-href="http://www.openssl.org/">OpenSSL</a> libraries installed.
+href="http://www.openssl.org/">OpenSSL</a> libraries installed, and they
+should at least be version 0.9.7.
Configure with --with-ssl. If you have the OpenSSL libraries
-installed in the default location (/usr/local/ssl) ths will
+installed in commonly-used default locations, this will
suffice. If you have them installed in a non-default location,
-you'll need to specify it as an argument to --with-ssl after an
-equal sign.</p>
-
-<p>Note that there is a known bug in the implementation of SSL_peek
-under OpenSSL versions 0.9.5 and older that fetchmail occasionally
-tripped over, causing hangs. It is recommended that you install
-0.9.6 or later.</p>
+you'll need to specify the OpenSSL installation directory as an argument
+to --with-ssl after an equal sign.</p>
<p>Fetchmail binaries built this way support <code>ssl</code>,
<code>sslkey</code>, and <code>sslcert</code> options that control
-SSL encryption. You will need to have an SSL-enabled mailserver to
+SSL encryption, and will automatically use <code>tls</code> if the
+server offers it. You will need to have an SSL-enabled mailserver to
use these options. See the manual page for details and some words
of care on the limited security provided.</p>
daemon, that option is not available in this case.</p>
<p>If you don't have the libraries installed, but do have the
-OpenSSL utility toolkit, something like this may work:</p>
+OpenSSL utility toolkit, something like this may work (but will not
+authenticate the server):</p>
<pre>
-poll MYSERVER port 993 plugin "openssl s_client -connect %h:%p"
+poll MYSERVER port 993 plugin "openssl s_client -connect %h:%p"
protocol imap username MYUSERNAME password MYPASSWORD
</pre>
+<p>You should note that SSL is only secure against a "man-in-the-middle"
+attack if the client is able to verify that the peer's public key is the
+correct one, and has not been substituted by an attacker. fetchmail can do
+this in one of two ways: by verifying the SSL certificate, or by checking
+the fingerprint of the peer's public key.</p>
+
+<p>There are three parts to SSL certificate verification: checking that the
+domain name in the certificate matches the hostname you asked to connect to;
+checking that the certificate expiry date has not passed; and checking that
+the certificate has been signed by a known Certificate Authority (CA). This
+last step takes some preparation, as you need to install the root
+certificates of all the CA's which you might come across.</p>
+
+<p>The easiest way to do this is using the root CA keys supplied in the
+OpenSSL distribution, which means you need to download and unpack the
+source tarball from www.openssl.org. Once you have done that:</p>
+
+<ol>
+<li><code>mkdir /etc/ssl/certs</code></li>
+<li>in the openssl-x.x.x/certs directory: <code>cp *.pem /etc/ssl/certs/</code></li>
+<li>in the openssl-x.x.x/tools directory: edit c_rehash and set
+<code>$dir="/etc/ssl"</code></li>
+<li>run "perl c_rehash". This generates a number of symlinks within the
+/etc/ssl/certs/ directory</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>Now in .fetchmailrc, set option sslcertpath to point to this
+directory:</p>
+
+<pre>
+poll pop3.example.com proto pop3 uidl no dns
+ user foobar@example.com password xyzzy is foobar ssl sslcertpath /etc/ssl/certs
+</pre>
+
+<p>If the server certificate has not been signed by a known CA (e.g. it is a
+self-signed certificate), then this certificate validation will always
+fail.</p>
+
+<p>Certificate verification is always attempted. If it fails, by default a
+warning is printed but the connection carries on (which means you are not
+protected against attack). If your server's certificate has been properly
+set up and verifies correctly, then add the "sslcertck" option to enforce
+validation. If your server doesn't have a valid certificate though (e.g. it
+has a self-signed certificate) then it will never verify, and the only way
+you can protect yourself is by checking the fingerprint.</p>
+
+<p>To check the peer fingerprint: first use fetchmail -v once to connect to
+the host, at a time when you are pretty sure that there is no attack in
+progress (e.g. you are not traversing any untrusted network to reach the
+server). Make a note of the fingerprint shown. Now embed this in your
+.fetchmailrc using the sslfingerprint option: e.g.</p>
+
+<pre>
+poll pop3.example.com proto pop3 uidl no dns
+ user foobar@example.com password xyzzy is foobar
+ ssl sslfingerprint "67:3E:02:94:D3:5B:C3:16:86:71:37:01:B1:3B:BC:E2"
+</pre>
+
+<p>When you next connect, the public key presented by the server will be
+verified against the fingerprint given. If it's different, it may mean that
+a man-in-the-middle attack is in progress - or it might just mean that the
+server changed its key. It's up to you to determine which has happened.</p>
+
+<h2><a id="K6" name="K6">K6. How can I tell fetchmail not to use TLS
+ if the server advertises it? Why does fetchmail use SSL even
+ though not configured?</a></h2>
+
+<p>Some servers advertise STLS (POP3) or STARTTLS (IMAP), and fetchmail
+will automatically attempt TLS negotiation if SSL was enabled at compile
+time. This can however cause problems if the upstream didn't configure
+his certificates properly.</p>
+
+<p>In order to prevent fetchmail from trying TLS (STLS, STARTTLS)
+negotiation, add this option:</p>
+
+<pre>sslproto ssl23</pre>
+
+<p>This restricts fetchmail's SSL/TLS protocol choice from the default
+"SSLv2, SSLv3, TLSv1" to the two SSL variants, disabling TLSv1. Note
+however that this causes the connection to be unencrypted unless an
+encrypting "plugin" is used or SSL is requested explicitly.</p>
+
<hr/>
+<h1>Runtime fatal errors</h1>
<h2><a id="R1" name="R1">R1. Fetchmail isn't working, and -v shows
-`SMTP connect failed' messages.</a></h2>
+'SMTP connect failed' messages.</a></h2>
<p>Fetchmail itself is probably working, but your SMTP port 25
listener is down or inaccessible.</p>
<p>The first thing to check is if you can telnet to port 25 on your
-smtp host (which is normally `localhost' unless you've specified an
+smtp host (which is normally 'localhost' unless you've specified an
smtp option in your .fetchmailrc or on the command line) and get a
greeting line from the listener. If the SMTP host is inaccessible
or the listener is down, fix that first.</p>
-<p>In Red Hat Linux 6.9, SMTP is disabled by default. To fix this,
+<p>In Red Hat Linux 6.x, SMTP is disabled by default. To fix this,
set "DAEMON=yes" in your /etc/sysconfig/sendmail file, then restart
sendmail by running "/sbin/service sendmail restart".</p>
momentary seizure due to resource exhaustion while fetchmail was
polling it -- process table full or some other problem that stopped
the listener process from forking. If your SMTP host is not
-`localhost' or something else in /etc/hosts, the fetchmail glitch
+'localhost' or something else in /etc/hosts, the fetchmail glitch
could also have been caused by transient nameserver failure.</p>
<p>Try running fetchmail -v again; if it succeeds, you had one of
library is linked only if it is actually needed. So under Linux it
won't be, and this particular cause should go away.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="R2" name="R2">R2. When I try to configure an MDA,
fetchmail doesn't work.</a></h2>
problem in <a href="#X1">X1</a>.)</p>
<p>Try sending yourself test mail and retrieving it using the
-command-line options `<code>-k -m cat</code>'. This will dump
+command-line options '<code>-k -m cat</code>'. This will dump
exactly what fetchmail retrieves to standard output (plus the
Received line fetchmail itself adds to the headers).</p>
match what you sent, then fetchmail or something on the server is
broken.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="R3" name="R3">R3. Fetchmail dumps core when given an
invalid rc file.</a></h2>
+<p>Note that this bug should no longer occur when using prepackaged
+fetchmail versions or installing unmodified original tarballs, since
+these ship with a proper parser .c file.</p>
+
<p>This is usually reported from AIX or Ultrix, but has even been
known to happen on Linuxes without a recent version of
<code>flex</code> installed. The problem appears to be a result of
<p>Workaround: fix the syntax of your .fetchmailrc file.</p>
<p>Fix: build and install the latest version of <a
-href="ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/~ftp/pub/gnu">flex</a> from the Free
-Software Foundation. An FSF <a
-href="http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/order/ftp.html">mirror site</a>
-will help you get it faster.</p>
-
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="R4" name="R4">R4. Fetchmail dumps core in -V mode, but
-operates normally otherwise.</a></h2>
-
-<p>We've had this reported to us under Linux using libc-5.4.17 and
-gcc-2.7.2. It does not occur with libc-5.3.12 or earlier
-versions.</p>
+ href="http://flex.sourceforge.net/">flex</a>.</p>
-<p>Workaround: link with GNU malloc rather than the stock C library
-malloc.</p>
+<h2><a id="R4" name="R4"><strike>R4. Fetchmail dumps core in -V mode, but
+ operates normally otherwise.</strike></a></h2>
-<p>We're told there is some problem with the malloc() code in that
-version which makes it fragile in the presence of multiple free()
-calls on the same pointer (the malloc arena gets corrupted).
-Unfortunately it appears from doing gdb traces that whatever free()
-calls producing the problem are being made by the C library itself,
-not the fetchmail code (they're all from within fclose, and not an
-fclose called directly by fetchmail, either).</p>
+<p><em>The information that used to be here referred to bugs in Linux libc5
+ systems, which are deemed obsolete by now.</em></p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="R5" name="R5">R5. Running fetchmail in daemon mode
doesn't work.</a><br/>
</h2>
fetchmail in detached daemon mode doesn't work, but that using the
same options with -N (nodetach) is OK. We have another report of
similar behavior from one Linux user, but many other Linux users
-reportt no problem.</p>
+report no problem.</p>
<p>If this happens, you have a specific portability problem with
the code in daemon.c that detaches and backgrounds the daemon
interactively and than quit interactive shell. The line above makes
sure fetchmail lives after that!</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="R6" name="R6">R6. Fetchmail randomly dies with socket
errors.</a></h2>
either to the real name of one of the servers in the ring or to a
corresponding IP address.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="R7" name="R7">R7. Fetchmail running as root stopped
working after an OS upgrade</a></h2>
file. (Oddly, a similar problem has been reported from Debian
systems.)</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="R8" name="R8">R8. Fetchmail is timing out after fetching
certain messages but before deleting them</a></h2>
<p>There's a TCP/IP stalling problem under Redhat 6.0 (and possibly
other recent Linuxes) that can cause this symptom. Brian Boutel
-writes:<</p></p>
+writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>TCP timestamps are turned on on my Linux boxes (I assume it's
blocking.</p>
</blockquote>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="R9" name="R9">R9. Fetchmail is timing out during message
fetches</a></h2>
<p>This is probably a general networking issue. Sending a "RETR"
command will cause the server to start sending large amounts of
data, which means large packets. If your networking layer has a
-packet-fragmentation problem, that's where you'll see it.</p>
+packet-fragmentation problem or improper firewall settings break Path
+MTU discovery (when for instance all ICMP traffic is blocked), that's
+where you'll see it.</p>
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="R10" name="R10">R10. Fetchmail is dying with
-SIGPIPE.</a></h2>
+<h2><a id="R10" name="R10"><strike>R10. Fetchmail is dying with
+ SIGPIPE.</strike></a></h2>
-<p>This probably means you have an <code>mda</code> option. Your
-MDA is croaking while being passed a message. Best fix is to remove
-the <code>mda</code> option and pass mail to your port 25 SMTP
-listener.</p>
-
-<p>If for some reason you are invoking sendmail via the
-<tt>mda</tt> option (rather than delivering to port 25 via smtp),
-don't forget to include the -i switch. Otherwise you will
-occasionally get mysterious delivery failures with a SIGPIPE as the
-sendmail instance dies. The problem is messages with a single dot
-at start of a text line.</p>
+<p><em>Fetchmail 6.3.5 and newer block SIGPIPE, and many older versions have
+ already handled this signal, so you shouldn't be seeing SIGPIPE
+at all.</em></p>
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="R11" name="R11">R11. My server is hanging up or emitting
+<h2><a id="R11" name="R11">R11. My server is hanging or emitting
errors on CAPA.</a></h2>
<p>Your POP3 server is broken. You can work around this with the
declaration <tt>auth password</tt> in your .fetchmailrc.</p>
-<hr/>
+<h2><a id="R12" name="R12">R12. Fetchmail isn't working and reports
+ getaddrinfo errors.</a></h2>
+<ol><li>Make sure you haven't mistyped the host name or address, and that
+ your DNS is working. If you cannot fix DNS, give the numeric host
+ literal, for instance, 192.168.0.1</li>
+ <li>Make sure your <code>/etc/services</code> file (or other
+ services database) contains the necessary service entries. If you
+ cannot fix the services database, use the --service option and give the
+ numeric port address. Common port addresses are:<table
+ summary="Common port addresses for IMAP, POP3 and their SSL
+ complements.">
+ <tr><th>service</th><th>port</th></tr>
+ <tr><td>IMAP</td><td>143</td></tr>
+ <tr><td>IMAP+SSL</td><td>993</td></tr>
+ <tr><td>POP3</td><td>110</td></tr>
+ <tr><td>POP3+SSL</td><td>995</td></tr>
+</table></li></ol>
+
+<h2><a id="R13" name="R13">R13. What does "Interrupted system call"
+ mean?</a></h2>
+
+<p>Non-fatal signals (such as timers set by fetchmail itself) can
+interrupt long-running functions and will then be reported as
+"Interrupted system call". These can sometimes be timeouts.</p>
+
+<h2><a id="R14" name="R14">R14. Since upgrading fetchmail/OpenSSL, I can no longer connect!</a></h2>
+
+<p>If the upgrade you did encompassed an upgrade to OpenSSL 1.0.0 or newer, you
+may need to run <code>c_rehash</code> on your certificate directories,
+particularly if you are using local certs directories (f. i. through fetchmail's <code>--sslcertpath</code> option).</p>
+
+<p>Reason: OpenSSL 1.0.0, relative to earlier versions, uses a different hash
+for the symbolic links (symlinks) in its <code>certs/</code> directory, so you
+need to recreate the symlinks by running <kbd>c_rehash
+ /etc/ssl/certs</kbd> (adjust this to where your installation keeps its
+certificates), and you cannot easily share this certs directory with
+applications linked against older OpenSSL versions.</p>
+
+<p>Note: OpenSSL's <code>c_rehash</code> script is broken in several versions,
+which can cause malfunction if several OpenSSL tools versions are installed in
+parallel in separate directories. In such cases, you may need a workaround to
+get things going. Assuming your OpenSSL 1.0.0 is installed in
+<code>/opt/openssl1.0.0</code> and your certificates are in
+<code>/home/hans/certs</code>, you'd do this (the corresponding fetchmail
+option is <kbd>--sslcertpath /home/hans/certs</kbd> on the commandline and
+<kbd>sslcertpath /home/hans/cert</kbd> in the rcfile):</p>
+
+<pre>
+env PATH=/opt/openssl1.0.0/bin /opt/openssl1.0.0/bin/c_rehash /home/hans/certs
+</pre>
+
+<h2><a id="R15" name="R15">R15. Help, I'm getting Authorization failure!</a></h2>
+
+<p>First, try upgrading to fetchmail 6.3.18 or newer. Release 6.3.18 has
+received a considerable number of bug fixes for the authentication
+feature (AUTH, AUTHENTICATE, SASL). Most notably, fetchmail aborts SASL
+authentication attempts properly with an asterisk if it detects that it
+cannot make progress with a particular authentication scheme. This fixes
+issues where GSSAPI-enabled fetchmail cannot authenticate against
+Microsoft Exchange 2007 and 2010. <strong>Note</strong> that this is a
+bug in old fetchmail versions!</p>
+
+<p>Fetchmail by default attempts to authenticate using various schemes.
+Fetchmail tries these schemes in order of descending security, meaning
+the most secure schemes are tried first.</p>
+
+<p>However, sometimes the server offers a secure authentication scheme
+that is not properly configured, or an authentication scheme such as
+GSSAPI that requires credentials to be acquired externally. In some
+situations, fetchmail cannot know that the scheme will fail beforehand,
+without trying it. In most cases, fetchmail should proceed to the next
+authentication scheme automatically, but this sometimes does not
+work.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Solution:</strong> Configure the right authentication scheme
+explicitly, for instance, with <kbd>--auth cram-md5</kbd> or <kbd>--auth
+ password</kbd> on the command line or <code>auth "cram-md5"</code> or
+ <code>auth "password"</code> in the rcfile. Details can be found
+ in the manual page.<br />
+ <strong>Note</strong> that auth password should only be used
+ across secure links (see the sslcertck and ssl/sslproto options).
+ </p>
+
+<hr/>
+<h1>Hangs and lockups</h1>
<h2><a id="H1" name="H1">H1. Fetchmail hangs when used with
pppd.</a></h2>
-<p>Your problem may be with pppd's `demand' option. We have a
+<p>Your problem may be with pppd's 'demand' option. We have a
report that fetchmail doesn't play well with it, but works with
-pppd if `demand' is turned off. We have no idea why this is.</p>
+pppd if 'demand' is turned off. We have no idea why this is.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="H2" name="H2">H2. Fetchmail hangs during the MAIL FROM
exchange.</a></h2>
<li># cp sendmail.mc sendmail-mine.mc</li>
-<li>Edit sendmail-mine.mc and add lines:
+<li>Edit sendmail-mine.mc and add lines:
<pre>
FEATURE(nodns)
</pre>
</li>
-<li>Build a new sendmail.cf
+<li>Build a new sendmail.cf
<pre>
# m4 sendmail-mine.cf > /etc/sendmail.cf
<p>For more details consult the file
/usr/share/sendmail-cf/README.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="H3" name="H3">H3. Fetchmail hangs while fetching
mail.</a></h2>
-<p>The symption: 'fetchmail -v' retrieves the first few messages,
+<p>Symptom: 'fetchmail -v' retrieves the first few messages,
but hangs returning:</p>
<pre>
this problem.</p>
<hr/>
+<h1>Disappearing mail</h1>
<h2><a id="D1" name="D1">D1. I think I've set up fetchmail
correctly, but I'm not getting any mail.</a></h2>
<p>make sure that 'localuser' does exist and can receive mail.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="D2" name="D2">D2. All my mail seems to disappear after a
dropped connection.</a></h2>
<p>One POP3 daemon used in the Berkeley Unix world that reports
itself as POP3 version 1.004 actually throws the queue away. 1.005
fixed that. If you're running this one, upgrade immediately. (It
-also truncates long lines at column 1024)</p>
+also truncates long lines at column 1024.)</p>
<p>Many POP servers, if an interruption occurs, will restore the
-whole mail queue after about 10 minutes. Others will restore it
+whole mail queue after about 10 minutes. Better ones will restore it
right away. If you have an interruption and don't see it right
away, cross your fingers and wait ten minutes before retrying.</p>
-<p>Some servers (such as Microsoft's NTMail) are mis-designed to
-restore the entire queue, including messages you have deleted. If
-you have one of these and it flakes out on you a lot, try setting a
-small <code>--fetchlimit</code> value. This will result in more IP
-connects to the server, but will mean it actually executes changes
-to the queue more often.</p>
-
-<p>Qualcomm's qpopper, used at many BSD Unix sites, is better
-behaved. If its connection is dropped, it will first execute all
-DELE commands as though you had issued a QUIT (this is a technical
-violation of the POP3 RFCs, but a good idea in a world of flaky
-phone lines). Then it will re-queue any message that was being
-downloaded at hangup time. Still, qpopper may require a noticeable
-amount of time to do deletions and clean up its queue. (Fetchmail
-waits a bit before retrying in order to avoid a `lock busy'
-error.)</p>
+<p>Good servers are designed to restore the entire queue, including
+messages you have deleted. If you have one of these and it flakes out on
+you a lot, try setting a small <code>--fetchlimit</code> value. This
+will result in more IP connects to the server, but will mean it actually
+executes changes to the queue more often.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="D3" name="D3">D3. Mail that was being fetched when I
interrupted my fetchmail seems to have been vanished.</a></h2>
listener. No interrupt can cause it to lose mail.</p>
<p>However, IMAP2bis has a design problem in that its normal fetch
-command marks a message `seen' as soon as the fetch command to get
+command marks a message 'seen' as soon as the fetch command to get
it is sent down. If for some reason the message isn't actually
delivered (you take a line hit during the download, or your port 25
listener can't find enough free disk space, or you interrupt the
-delivery in mid-message) that `seen' message can lurk invisibly in
+delivery in mid-message) that 'seen' message can lurk invisibly in
your server mailbox forever.</p>
-<p>Workaround: add the `<code>fetchall</code>' keyword to your
+<p>Workaround: add the '<code>fetchall</code>' keyword to your
fetch options.</p>
-<p>Solution: switch to an <a href="http://www.imap.org">IMAP4</a>
+<p>Solution: switch to an <a href="http://www.imap.org/">IMAP4</a>
server.</p>
<hr/>
+<h1>Multidrop-mode problems</h1>
<h2><a id="M1" name="M1">M1. I've declared local names, but all my
multidrop mail is going to root anyway.</a></h2>
<p>Somehow your fetchmail is never recognizing the hostname part of
-recipient names it parses out of To/Cc/envelope-header lines as
-matching the name of the mailserver machine. To check this, run
+recipient names it parses out of Envelope-header lines (or these are
+improperly configured) as
+matching a name within the designated domains. To check this, run
fetchmail in foreground with -v -v on. You will probably see a lot
-of messages with the format ``line rejected, %s is not an alias of
-the mailserver'' or ``no address matches; forwarding to %s.''</p>
-
-<p>These errors usually indicate some kind of DNS configuration
-problem either on the server or your client machine.</p>
+of messages with the format "line rejected, %s is not an alias of
+the mailserver" or "no address matches; forwarding to %s."</p>
-<p>The easiest workaround is to add a `<code>via</code>' option (if
-necessary) and add enough aka declarations to cover all of your
-mailserver's aliases, then say `<code>no dns</code>'. This will
-take DNS out of the picture (though it means mail may be
-uncollected if it's sent to an alias of the mailserver that you
-don't have listed).</p>
+<p>These errors usually indicate some kind of configuration
+problem.</p>
-<p>It would be better to fix your DNS, however. DNS problems can
-hurt you in lots of ways, for example by making your machines
-intermittently or permanently unreachable to the rest of the
-net.</p>
+<p>The easiest workaround is to add a '<code>via</code>' option (if
+necessary) and add enough '<code>aka</code>' declarations to cover all
+of your mailserver's aliases, then say '<code>no dns</code>'. This will
+take DNS out of the picture (though it means mail may be uncollected if
+it's sent to an alias of the mailserver that you don't have listed).</p>
<p>Occasionally these errors indicate the sort of header-parsing
problem described in <a href="#M7">M7</a>.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="M2" name="M2">M2. I can't seem to get fetchmail to route
to a local domain properly.</a></h2>
<p>If neither of these alternatives is available, multidrop mode
may do (though you <em>are</em> going to get hurt by some mailing
list software; see the caveats under THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP
-MAILBOXES on the man page). If you want to try it, the way to do it
-is with the `<code>localdomains</code>' option.</p>
+MAILBOXES on the man page, and check what is needed at <a
+ href="http://home.pages.de/~mandree/mail/multidrop">Matthias
+ Andree's "Requisites for working multidrop
+ mailboxes"</a>). If you want to try it, the way to do it is
+with the '<code>localdomains</code>' option.</p>
<p>In general, if you use localdomains you need to make sure of two
other things:</p>
<p><strong>1. You've actually set up your .fetchmailrc entry to
invoke multidrop mode.</strong></p>
-<p>Many people set a `<code>localdomains</code>' list and then
+<p>Many people set a '<code>localdomains</code>' list and then
forget that fetchmail wants to see more than one name (or the
-wildcard `*') in a `<code>here</code>' list before it will do
+wildcard '*') in a '<code>here</code>' list before it will do
multidrop routing.</p>
-<p><strong>2. You may have to set `no envelope'.</strong></p>
+<p><strong>2. You may have to set 'no envelope'.</strong></p>
<p>Normally, multidrop mode tries to deduce an envelope address
from a message before parsing the To/Cc/Bcc lines (this enables it
<p>Some ways of accumulating a whole domain's messages in a single
server mailbox mean it all ends up with a single envelope address
-that is useless for rerouting purposes. You may have to set
-`<code>no envelope</code>' to prevent fetchmail from being
-bamboozled by this.</p>
+that is useless for rerouting purposes. In this particular case, sell
+your ISP a clue. If that does not work, you may have to set
+'<code>no envelope</code>' to prevent fetchmail from being
+bamboozled by this, but a missing envelope makes multidrop routing
+unreliable.</p>
<p>Check also answer <a href="#T1">T1</a> on a reliable way to do
multidrop delivery if your ISP (or your mail redirection provider)
is using qmail.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="M3" name="M3">M3. I tried to run a mailing list using
multidrop, and I have a mail loop!</a></h2>
<p>If you use sendmail, you can check the list expansion with
<code>sendmail -bv</code>.</p>
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="M4" name="M4">M4. My multidrop fetchmail seems to be
-having DNS problems.</a></h2>
+<h2><a id="M4" name="M4"><strike>M4. My multidrop fetchmail seems to be
+having DNS problems.</strike></a></h2>
-<p>We have one report from a Linux user (not the same one as in <a
-href="#R1">R1</a>!) who solved this problem by removing the
-reference to -lresolv from his link line and relinking. Apparently
-in some older Linux distributions the libc5 bind library version
-works better.</p>
+<p><em>The answer that used to be here no longer applies to
+ fetchmail.</em></p>
-<p>As of 2.2, the configure script has been hacked so the bind
-library is linked only if it is actually needed. So under Linux it
-won't be, and this problem should go away.</p>
-
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="M5" name="M5">M5. I'm seeing long DNS delays before each
message is processed.</a></h2>
-<p>Use the `<code>aka</code>' option to pre-declare as many of your
+<p>Use the '<code>aka</code>' option to pre-declare as many of your
mailserver's DNS names as you can. When an address's host part
matches an aka name, no DNS lookup needs to be done to check
it.</p>
<p>If you're sure you've pre-declared all of your mailserver's DNS
-names, you can use the `<code>no dns</code>' option to prevent
+names, you can use the '<code>no dns</code>' option to prevent
other hostname parts from being looked up at all.</p>
<p>Sometimes delays are unavoidable. Some SMTP listeners try to
call DNS on the From-address hostname as a way of checking that the
address is valid.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="M6" name="M6">M6. How do I get multidrop mode to work
with majordomo?</a></h2>
majordomo on my inside pop3 server with fetchmail and sendmail
8.83</blockquote>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="M7" name="M7">M7. Multidrop mode isn't parsing envelope
addresses from my Received headers as it should.</a></h2>
<p>Some (unusual) mailserver configurations will generate extra
Received lines which you need to skip. To arrange this, use the
-optional skip prefix argument of the `envelope' option; you may
-need to say something like `<code>envelope 1 Received</code>' or
-`<code>envelope 2 Received</code>'.</p>
+optional skip prefix argument of the 'envelope' option; you may
+need to say something like '<code>envelope 1 Received</code>' or
+'<code>envelope 2 Received</code>'.</p>
-<h3>The `by' clause doesn't contain a mailserver alias:</h3>
+<h3>The 'by' clause doesn't contain a mailserver alias:</h3>
<p>When fetchmail parses a Received line that looks like</p>
for <ksturgeon@fbceg.org>; Wed, 9 Sep 1998 17:01:59 -0700
</pre>
-<p>it checks to see if `iserv.ttns.net' is a DNS alias of your
-mailserver before accepting `ksturgeon@fbceg.org' as an envelope
+<p>it checks to see if 'iserv.ttns.net' is a DNS alias of your
+mailserver before accepting 'ksturgeon@fbceg.org' as an envelope
address. This check might fail if your DNS were misconfigured, or
-if you were using `no dns' and had failed to declare iserv.ttns.net
+if you were using 'no dns' and had failed to declare iserv.ttns.net
as an alias of your server.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="M8" name="M8">M8. Users are getting multiple copies of
messages.</a></h2>
operation that might significantly slow down the retrieval of large
mail batches.</p>
+<p>The real solution however is to make sure that fetchmail can find the
+envelope recipient properly, which will reliably prevent this message
+duplication.</p>
+
<hr/>
+<h1>Mangled mail</h1>
<h2><a id="X1" name="X1">X1. Spurious blank lines are appearing in
the headers of fetched mail.</a></h2>
installing a current version of <em>deliver</em>. If this doesn't
work, try to figure out which other program in your mail path is
inserting the blank line and replace that. If you can't do either
-of these things, pick a different MDA (such as procmail) and
-declare it with the `<code>mda</code>' option.</p>
+of these things, pick a different MDA (such as maildrop) and
+declare it with the '<code>mda</code>' option.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="X2" name="X2">X2. My mail client can't see a Subject
line.</a></h2>
suggest is replacing IDA sendmail, because it's broken and not
RFC822 conformant.</p>
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="X3" name="X3">X3. Messages containing "From" at start of
-line are being split.</a></h2>
+<h2><a id="X3" name="X3">X3. Messages containing "From" at the start of
+ line are being split.</a></h2>
<p>If you know the messages aren't split in your server mailbox,
then this is a problem with your POP/IMAP server, your client-side
the BSD popper program (as distributed on Solaris 2.5 and
elsewhere) is broken this way.</p>
-<p>You can test this. Declare an mda of `cat' and send yourself one
+<p>You can test this. Declare an mda of 'cat' and send yourself one
piece of mail containing "From" at start of a line. If you see a
split message, your POP/IMAP server is at fault. Upgrade to a more
recent version.</p>
Mlocal, P=/usr/bin/procmail, F=lsDFMShP, S=10, R=20/40, A=procmail -Y -d $u
</pre>
-<p>describing your local delivery agent. Try inserting the `E'
+<p>describing your local delivery agent. Try inserting the 'E'
option in the flags part (the F= string). This will make sendmail
turn each dangerous start-of-line From into a >From, preventing
programs further downstream from acting up.</p>
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="X4" name="X4">X4.</a><a id="generic_mangling"
+<h2><a id="X4" name="X4">X4.</a> <a id="generic_mangling"
name="generic_mangling">My mail is being mangled in a new and
different way</a></h2>
simulation along with the other things described in the FAQ entry
on <a href="#G3">reporting bugs</a>.</p>
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="X5" name="X5">X5. Using POP3, retrievals seems to be
-fetching too much!</a></h2>
-
-<p>This may happen in versions of fetchmail after 4.4.1 and before
-4.4.8. Versions after 4.4.1 use POP3's TOP command rather than
-RETR, in order to avoid marking the message seen (leaving it unseen
-is helpful for later recovery if you lose your connection in the
-middle of a retrieval).</p>
-
-<p>Versions of fetchmail from 4.4.2 through 4.4.7 had a bad
-interaction with Eudora qpopper versions 2.3 and later. The TOP
-bounds check was fooled by an overflow condition in the TOP
-argument. Decrementing the TOP argument in 4.4.7 fixed this.</p>
+<h2><a id="X5" name="X5"><strike>X5. Using POP3, retrievals seems to be
+ fetching too much!</strike></a></h2>
-<p>Fix: Upgrade to a later version of fetchmail.</p>
+<p><em>The information that used to be here pertained to fetchmail 4.4.7 or
+ older, which should not be used. Use a recent fetchmail version.</em></p>
-<p>Workaround: set the <code>fetchall</code> option. Under POP3
-this has the side effect of forcing RETR use.</p>
-
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="X6" name="X6">X6. My mail attachments are being dropped
or mangled.</a></h2>
-<p>This isn't fetchmail's doing -- fetchmail never drops lines in
-message bodies or attachments. It may be your POP server, or it may
-be the sender's mail user agent (or a bad combination of both).</p>
+<p>Fetchmail doesn't discard attachments; fetchmail doesn't have any idea
+that attachments are there. Fetchmail treats the body of each message as
+an uninterpreted byte stream and passes it through without alteration.
+If you are not receiving attachments through fetchmail, it is because
+your mailserver is not sending them to you.</p>
-<p>The Mail Max POP3 server and the InterChange and Imail IMAP
-servers are known to simply drop MIME attachments when uploading
-messages. We've had sporadic reports of problems with Microsoft
-Exchange and Outlook servers. Windows- and NT-based POP servers
+<p>The fix for this is to replace your mailserver with one that works.
+If its operating system makes this difficult, you should replace its
+operating system with one that works. Windows- and NT-based POP servers
seem especially prone to mangle attachments. If you are running one
of these, replacing your server with a Unix machine is probably the
only effective solution.</p>
+<p>We've had sporadic reports of problems with Microsoft Exchange and
+Outlook servers. These sometimes randomly fail to ship
+attachments to your client. This is a known bug, acknowledged by
+Microsoft.</p>
+
+<p>They may also mangle the attachments they do pass through. If you
+see unreadable attachments with a ContentType of "application/x-tnef",
+you're having this problem. The <a
+href="http://world.std.com/~damned/software.html">TNEF</a> utility may
+help.</p>
+
+<p>The Mail Max POP3 server and the InterChange and Imail IMAP
+servers are known to simply drop MIME attachments when uploading
+messages.</p>
+
<p>We've also had a report that Lotus Notes sometimes trashes the
MIME type of messages. In particular, it seems to modify MIME
-headers introducing type application/pdf, mangling the type to
+headers of type application/pdf, mangling the type to
application/octet-stream. It may corrupt other MIME types as
well.</p>
Messenger and other clients use a FETCH BODY[] to grab the whole
message. When fetchmail uses FETCH RFC822.HEADER and FETCH
RFC822.TEXT to get first the header and then the body, Domino
-generates different Boundary tags for each part, .e.g. one tag is
+generates different Boundary tags for each part, e.g. one tag is
declared in the Content-type header and another is used to separate
the MIME parts in the body. This doesn't work. (I have heard a
rumor that this bug is scheduled to be fixed in Domino release 6;
you can find a workaround at contrib/domino.)</p>
-<p>Another rich source of attachment problems is Microsoft Exchange
-and Microsoft Outlook. If you see unreadable attachments with a
-ContentType of "application/x-tnef", you're having this problem.
-The <a href="http://world.std.com/~damned/software.html">TNEF</a>
-utility may help.</p>
-
<p>Rob Funk explains: Unfortunately there also remain many mail
user agents that don't write correct MIME messages. One big
offender is Sun MailTool attachments, which are formatted enough
used at all), and make sure dtmail is set to use MIME rather than
mailtool's format.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="X7" name="X7">X7. Some mail attachments are hanging
fetchmail.</a></h2>
-<p>This isn't fetchmail's problem either; fetchmail doesn't know
-anything about mail attachments and doesn't treat them any
-differently from plain message data.</p>
+<p>Fetchmail doesn't know anything about mail attachments and doesn't
+treat them any differently from plain message data.</p>
<p>The most usual cause of this problem seems to be bugs in your
network transport layer's capability to handle the very large
a modem in the link, it may be because the attachment contains the
Hayes mode escape "+++".</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="X8" name="X8">X8. A spurious ) is being appended to my
messages.</a></h2>
-<p>Blame it on that rancid pile of dung and offal called Microsoft
-Exchange. Due to the problem described in <a href="#S2">S2</a>, the
-IMAP support in fetchmail cannot follow the IMAP protocol 100%.
+<p>Due to the problem described in <a href="#S2">S2</a>, the
+IMAP support in fetchmail cannot follow the IMAP protocol 100 %.
Most of the time it doesn't matter, but if you combine it with an
SMTP server that behaves unusually, you'll get a spurious ) at
-message end.</p>
+the message end.</p>
<p>One piece of software that can trigger this is the Interchange
mail server, as used by, e.g., mailandnews.com. Here's what
happens:</p>
-<p>1. Someone sends mail to your account. The last line of the
+<ol><li>Someone sends mail to your account. The last line of the
message contains text. So at the SMTP level, the message ends with,
-e.g. "blahblah\r\n.\r\n"</p>
+e.g. "blahblah\r\n.\r\n"</li>
-<p>2. The SMTP handler sees the final "\r\n.\r\n" and recognizes
+<li>The SMTP handler sees the final "\r\n.\r\n" and recognizes
the end of the message. However, instead of doing the normal thing,
which is tossing out the ".\r\n" and leaving the first '\r\n' as
part of the email body, Interchange throws out the whole
"\r\n.\r\n", and leaves the email body without any line terminator
at the end of it. RFC821 does not forbid this, though it probably
-should.</p>
+should.</li>
-<p>3. Fetchmail, or some other IMAP client, asks for the message.
+<li>Fetchmail, or some other IMAP client, asks for the message.
IMAP returns it, but it's enclosed inside parentheses, according to
the protocol. The message size in bytes is also present. Because
the message doesn't end with a line terminator, the IMAP client
-sees:</p>
+sees:
<pre>
-
....blahblah)...
</pre>
-<p>where the ')' is from IMAP.</p>
+<p>where the ')' is from IMAP.</p></li>
-<p>4. Fetchmail only deals with complete lines, and can't trust the
-stated message size because Microsoft Exchange fscks it up.</p>
+<li>Fetchmail only deals with complete lines, and can't trust the
+stated message size because Microsoft Exchange goofs it up.</li>
-<p>5. As a result, fetchmail takes the final 'blahblah)' and puts
+<li>As a result, fetchmail takes the final 'blahblah)' and puts
it at the end of the message it forwards on. If you have verbosity
-on, you'll get a message about actual != expected.</p>
+on, you'll get a message about actual != expected.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>There is no fix for this.</p>
+
+<h2><a id="X9" name="X9">X9. Missing "Content-Transfer-Encoding" header
+ with Domino IMAP</a></h2>
+
+<p>Domino 6 IMAP was found by Anthony Kim in February 2006 to
+erroneously omit the "Content-Transfer-Encoding" header in messages
+downloaded through IMAP, causing messages to display improperly. This
+happened with Domino's incoming mail format configured to "Prefers
+MIME". Solution: switch Domino to "Keep in Sender's format".</p>
+
+<p>Reference: <a
+ href="http://lists.ccil.org/pipermail/fetchmail-friends/2006-March/010015.html">Anthony
+ Kim's list post</a>
+</p>
-<p>There is no fix for this. The nuke mentioned in <a
-href="#S2">S2</a> looks more tempting all the time.</p>
+<h2><a id="X10" name="X10">X10. Fetchmail delivers partial
+ messages</a></h2>
+
+<p>Fetchmail is sometimes reported to deliver partial messages. This
+is usually related to network outages that occur while fetchmail is
+downloading a message body. In such cases, fetchmail has downloaded a
+complete header, so your header will be intact. The message body will be
+truncated, and fetchmail will later attempt to redownload the
+message (providing the server is standards conformant).</p>
+
+<p>The reason for the truncation is that fetchmail streams the body
+directly from the POP3/IMAP server into the SMTP/LMTP server or MDA (in
+order to save memory), so fetchmail has already written a part of the
+message before it notices it will be incomplete, and fetchmail cannot
+abort a transaction it has started, and it's unclear if it ever will be
+able to, because this is not standardized and the outcome will depend on
+the receiving software (be it SMTP/LMTP or MDA).</p>
<hr/>
+<h1>Other problems</h1>
<h2><a id="O1" name="O1">O1. The --logfile option doesn't work if
the logfile doesn't exist.</a></h2>
<p>This is a feature, not a bug. It's in line with normal practice
for system daemons and allows you to suppress logging by removing
-the log, without hacking potentially fragile startup scripts. To
-get around it, just touch(1) the logfile before you run fetchmail
-(this will have no effect on the contents of the logfile if it
-already exists).</p>
+the log file, without hacking potentially fragile startup scripts.
+To get around it, just touch(1) the logfile before you run fetchmail
+(this will have no effect on the contents of the logfile if it already
+exists).</p>
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="O2" name="O2">O2. Every time I get a POP or IMAP message
+<h2><a id="O2" name="O2">O2. Every time I get a POP or IMAP message,
the header is dumped to all my terminal sessions.</a></h2>
<p>Fetchmail uses the local sendmail to perform final delivery,
-which Netscape and other clients doesn't do; the announcement of
+which Mozilla and other clients don't do; the announcement of
new messages is done by a daemon that sendmail pokes. There should
-be a ``biff'' command to control this. Type</p>
+be a "biff" command to control this. Type</p>
<pre>
biff n
<p>to turn it off. If this doesn't work, try the command</p>
<pre>
-chmod -x `tty`
+chmod -x $(tty)
</pre>
<p>which is essentially what <code>biff -n</code> will do. If this
-doesn't work, comment out any reference to ``comsat'' in your
-/etc/inetd.conf file and restart inetd.</p>
+doesn't work, comment out any reference to "comsat" in your
+/etc/inetd.conf file and reload (or restart) inetd.</p>
<p>In Slackware Linux distributions, the last line in /etc/profile
is</p>
biff y
</pre>
-Change this to
+Change this to
<pre>
biff n
</pre>
-to solve the problem system-wide.
+to solve the problem system-wide.
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="O3" name="O3">O3. Does fetchmail reread its rc file
every poll cycle?</a></h2>
<p>No, but versions 5.2.2 and later will notice when you modify
-your rc file and restart, reading it.</p>
+your rc file and restart, reading it. Note that this causes troubles if
+you need to provide a password via the console, unless you're running in
+--nodetach mode.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="O4" name="O4">O4. Why do deleted messages show up again
when I take a line hit while downloading?</a></h2>
-<p>Because you're using a POP3 other than Qualcomm qpopper, or an
-IMAP with a long expunge interval.</p>
-
<p>According to the POP3 RFCs, deletes aren't actually performed
until you issue the end-of-session QUIT command. Fetchmail cannot
-fix this, because doing it right takes cooperation from the server.
-There are two possible remedies:</p>
-
-<p>One is to switch to qpopper (the free POP3 server from Qualcomm,
-the Eudora people). The qpopper software violates the POP3 RFCs by
-doing an expunge (removing deleted messages) on a line hangup, as
-well as on processing a QUIT command.</p>
+fix this, but there is a workaround: use the --expunge option with a
+reasonably low figure that works for you. Try 10 for a start.</p>
-<p>The other (which we recommend) is to switch to <a
-href="http://www.imap.org">IMAP</a>. IMAP has an explicit expunge
-command and fetchmail normally uses it to delete messages
-immediately after they are downloaded.</p>
+<p>IMAP is less susceptible to this problem, because the "deleted"
+message marks are persistent, but they aren't in POP3. Note that the
+--expunge default for IMAP is different than the default for POP3.</p>
<p>If you get very unlucky, you might take a line hit in the window
between the delete and the expunge. If you've set a longer expunge
interval, the window gets wider. This problem should correct itself
the next time you complete a successful query.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="O5" name="O5">O5. Why is fetched mail being logged with
my name, not the real From address?</a></h2>
back to the calling-user ID. So if your SMTP listener isn't picky,
the log will look right.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="O6" name="O6">O6. I'm seeing long sendmail delays or
hangs near the start of each poll cycle.</a></h2>
also each time it gets a HELO in listener mode.</p>
<p>Your resolver configuration may be causing one of these lookups
-to fail and time out. Check <code>/etc/resolv.conf</code> and
-<code>/etc/hosts</code> file. Make sure your hostname and
-fully-qualified domain name are both in <code>/etc/hosts</code>,
-and that hosts is looked at before DNS is queried. You probably
-also want your remote mail server(s) to be in the hosts file.</p>
+to fail and time out. Check your <code>/etc/resolv.conf</code>,
+<code>/etc/host.conf</code>, <code>/etc/nsswitch.conf</code> (if you
+have the latter two) and you <code>/etc/hosts</code> files. Make sure
+your hostname and fully-qualified domain name are both in
+<code>/etc/hosts</code>, and that hosts is looked at before DNS is
+queried. You probably also want your remote mail server(s) to be in the
+hosts file.</p>
-<p>You can suppress the startup-time lookup if need to by
-reconfiguring with <code>FEATURE(nodns)</code>.</p>
+<p>You can suppress the startup-time lookup if need to by reconfiguring
+with <code>FEATURE(nodns)</code>.</p>
<p>Configuring your bind library to cache DNS lookups locally may
help, and is a good idea for speeding up other services as well.
-Switching to a faster MTA like qmail or exim might help.</p>
+Switching to a faster MTA like <a
+ href="http://www.postfix.org/">Postfix</a> might help.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="O7" name="O7">O7. Why doesn't fetchmail deliver mail in
date-sorted order?</a></h2>
<p>Re-ordering messages is a user-agent function, anyway.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="O8" name="O8">O8. I'm using pppd. Why isn't my monitor
option working?</a></h2>
own delay interval and thus preventing the pppd link from ever
reaching its inactivity timeout.</p>
-<hr/>
<h2><a id="O9" name="O9">O9. Why does fetchmail keep retrieving the
same messages over and over?</a></h2>
<p>First, check to see that you haven't enabled the
<cite>keep</cite> and <cite>fetchall</cite> option. If you have,
-turn <cite>keep</cite> off.</p>
-
-<p>There are various forms of lossage involving the POP3 UIDL
-feature that can lead to all your old messages being seen again
-after a line drop. I have given up trying to fix these, as the UIDL
-code breaks worse every time I touch it. The problem is
-fundamental; maintaining and garbage-collecting the right kind of
-client-side state is just hard. Whoever put UIDLs in RFC1725 and
-removed LAST should be hung up by his thumbs and whipped with
-scorpions. The right answers are either (a) live with the
-occasional breakage, (b) switch to IMAP4, or (c) fix the code
-yourself and send me a patch. Unless you choose (c), I don't want
-to hear about it.</p>
+turn one of them off - which one, depends on why they have been set in
+the first place, and to a lesser degree on the upstream server.</p>
<p>This can also happen when some other mail client is logged in to
your mail server, if it uses a simple exclusive-locking scheme (and
messages seen or delete them. The solution is to either (a) wait
for the other client to finish, or (b) terminate it.</p>
-<p>James Stevens <James.Stevens@kyzo.com> writes:</p>
+<h2><a id="O10" name="O10"><strike>O10. Why is the received date on all my
+ messages the same?</strike></a></h2>
-<p><em>We had a Linux box dialing the Net and collecting mail from
-an NT POP3 server. Fetchmail was correctly collecting and deleting
-each e-mail one by one. However,the dial-up connection was very
-unreliable and would often just drop out in the middle of a
-session.</em></p>
+<p><em>The answer that used to be here made no sense and was dropped.</em></p>
-<p><em>Interestingly, unless the TCP POP3 connection was terminated
-normally (I guess with a POP3 "QUIT" command) NT would then roll
-back all the deletes !!!</em></p>
+<h2><a name="O11">O11. I keep getting messages that say "Repoll
+immediately" in my logs.</a></h2>
-<p><em>This meant if the first e-mail was very large it might just
-end up continuously collecting it, basically jamming the queue. Or,
-if the queue became very full itmight never get a long enough phone
-connection to retrieve the entire mailbox, and NT would roll back
-any deletes, so it would end up collecting (and delivering) the
-first few e-mails again and again. As the POP3 mailbox became
-fuller and fuller the chances of getting a connection long enough
-to collect theentire mailbox became smaller and smaller.</em></p>
+<p>This is your server barfing on the CAPA probe that fetchmail sends.
+Because some servers like to drop the connection after that probe,
+fetchmail will re-poll immediately with this probe defeated.</p>
-<p><em>Our solution was to make fetchmail only collect a few (say 5
-or 10) e-mails at atime, thus trying to ensure that the POP3
-connection is terminated correctly.</em></p>
+<p>If you run fetchmail in daemon mode (say "set daemon 600"), you will
+get the message only once per run.</p>
-<p>Unfortunately, this is exactly the way POP3 servers are supposed
-to behave on a line drop, according to the RFCs. I recommend
-switching to IMAP and using a short expunge interval.</p>
+<p>If you set an authentication method explicitly (say, with
+<code>auth password</code>), you will never get the message.</p>
-<hr/>
-<h2><a id="O10" name="O10">O10. Why is the received date on all my
-messages the same?</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="O12">O12. Fetchmail no longer expunges mail on a 451 SMTP response.</a></h2>
+
+<p>This is a feature, not a bug.</p>
+
+<p>Any 4xx response (like 451) indicates a transient (temporary) error.
+This means that the mail could be accepted if retried later. Lookup
+failures are normally transient errors as a mail should not get
+rejected if a dns server is unreachable or down.</p>
+
+<p>A permanent reject response is of the form 5xx (like 550).</p>
-<p>This is a design choice in your MTA, not fetchmail. It's taking
-the received date from the last Received header.</p>
+<p>You could tell your SMTP server to not lookup any addresses if you are
+not keen on checking the sender addresses. This problem typically
+occurs if your mail server is not checking the sender addresses, but
+your local server is.</p>
+<p>Or you could declare <code>antispam 451</code>, which is not
+recommended though, as it may cause mail loss.</p>
+
+<p>Or, you could check your nameserver configuration and query logs for
+dns errors.</p>
+
+<p>All these issues are not related to fetchmail directly.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="O13">O13. I want timestamp information in my fetchmail logs.</a></h2>
+
+<p>Write a <code>preconnect</code> command in your configuration file that
+does something like "date >> $HOME/fetchmail.log".</p>
+
+<h2><a name="O14">O14. Fetchmail no longer deletes oversized mails with
+--flush.</a></h2>
+
+<p>Use <code>--limitflush</code> (available since release 6.3.0) to
+delete oversized mails along with the <code>--limit</code> option. If
+you are already having <code>flush</code> in your rcfile to delete
+oversized mails, <em>replace</em> it with <code>limitflush</code> to
+avoid losing mails unintentionally.</p>
+
+<p>The <code>--flush</code> option is primarily designed to delete
+mails which have been read/downloaded but not deleted yet. This option
+cannot be overloaded to delete oversized mails as it cannot be guessed
+whether the user wants to delete only read/downloaded mails or only
+oversized mails or both when a user specifies both
+<code>--limit</code> and <code>--flush</code>. Hence, a separate
+<code>--limitflush</code> has been added to resolve the ambiguity.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="O15">O15. Fetchmail always retains the first message in the
+ mailbox.</a></h2>
+
+<p>This happens when fetchmail sees an "X-IMAP:" header in the very
+first message in your mailbox. This usually stems from a message like
+the one shown below, which is automatically created on your server. This
+message shows up if the University of Washington IMAP or PINE software
+is used on the server together with a POP2 or POP3 daemon that is not
+aware of these messages, such as some versions of Qualcomm Popper
+(QPOP):</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<pre>
+From MAILER-DAEMON Wed Nov 23 11:38:42 2005
+Date: 23 Nov 2005 11:38:42 +0100
+From: Mail System Internal Data <MAILER-DAEMON@imap.example.org>
+Subject: DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE -- FOLDER INTERNAL DATA
+Message-ID: <1132742322@imap.example.org>
+X-IMAP: 1132742306 0000000001
+Status: RO
+
+This text is part of the internal format of your mail folder, and is not
+a real message. It is created automatically by the mail system software.
+If deleted, important folder data will be lost, and it will be re-created
+with the data reset to initial values.
+</pre>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>As this message does not contain useful information, fetchmail is not
+retrieving it. And deleting it might slow down the server if you are
+keeping messages on the server, and the server would recreate it
+anyways, that's why fetchmail does not bother to delete it either.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="O16">O16. Why is the Fetchmail FAQ only available in
+ ISO-216 A4 format? How do I get the FAQ in Letter format?</a></h2>
+
+<p>All the world uses ISO-216:1975 "A4" paper except for North America.
+Using A4 format reaches far more people than (formerly known as DIN A4,
+from DIN 476) format. Besides that, A4 paper <em>is</em> available in North
+America.
+For further information on the Letter-vs-A4 story, see:</p>
+<ul><li><a href="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html">Markus
+ Kuhn: "International standard paper sizes"</a></li>
+ <li><a
+ href="http://betweenborders.com/wordsmithing/a4-vs-us-letter/">Brian
+ Forte: "A4 vs US Letter"</a></li></ul>
+
+<p>Offering the document formatted for two different paper sizes would
+bloat the package beyond reason, and formatting in a way that fits A4
+and Letter paper formats would be a waste of paper in most parts of the
+world. For that reason, fetchmail only ships with an A4 formatted PDF
+document.</p>
+
+<p>To create a letter-sized PDF, install <a
+ href="http://www.htmldoc.org/">HTMLDOC</a>, edit
+<code>fetchmail-FAQ.book</code> in the source directory with your
+favorite text editor, replace <samp>--size A4</samp> by <samp>--size
+ letter</samp>, and type:
+</p>
+<pre>
+make fetchmail-FAQ.pdf
+</pre>
+
+<h2><a name="O17">O17. Linux logs "TCP(fetchmail:...): Application bug, race
+ in MSG_PEEK."</a></h2>
+<p>That's in fact a bug in Linux kernels around the late 2.6.2X versions,
+rather than fetchmail. Fetchmail has no race bugs around MSG_PEEK,
+as of version 6.3.9. The message can safely be ignored.</p>
<hr/>
+
<table width="100%" cellpadding="0" summary="Canned page footer">
<tr>
<td width="30%">Back to <a href="index.html">Fetchmail Home
Page</a></td>
-<td width="30%" align="center">To <a href="/~esr/sitemap.html">Site
-Map</a></td>
-<td width="30%" align="right">$Date: 2002/09/04 13:58:24 $</td>
+<td width="30%" align="right">$Date$</td>
</tr>
</table>
<br clear="left"/>
<address>Eric S. Raymond <a
-href="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com"><esr@thyrsus.com></a></address>
+ href="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com"><esr@thyrsus.com></a><br />
+Matthias Andree</address>
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