diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'fetchmail.man')
| -rw-r--r-- | fetchmail.man | 150 |
1 files changed, 78 insertions, 72 deletions
diff --git a/fetchmail.man b/fetchmail.man index 60a0604f..c90600f3 100644 --- a/fetchmail.man +++ b/fetchmail.man @@ -1,14 +1,14 @@ .\" Copyright 1993-95 by Carl Harris, Jr. Copyright 1996 by Eric S. Raymond .\" All rights reserved. .\" For license terms, see the file COPYING in this directory. -.TH popclient LOCAL +.TH fetchmail LOCAL .SH NAME -popclient \- retrieve mail from a mailserver using POP or IMAP +fetchmail \- retrieve mail from a mailserver using POP or IMAP .SH SYNOPSIS -.B popclient +.B fetchmail [\fI options \fR] \fI [server-host...]\fR .SH DESCRIPTION -.I popclient +.I fetchmail is a mail retrieval client which supports POP2 (as specified in RFC 937), POP3 (RFC 1725), IMAP2bis (as implemented by the 4.4BSD imapd program), and IMAP4 (RFC1730). @@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ It can use (but does not require) the RPOP and LAST facilities removed from later POP3 versions. .PP The, -.I popclient +.I fetchmail program may be used to download mail in batch from the remote mailserver specified by .I host @@ -27,22 +27,22 @@ or .I elm. .PP To facilitate the use of -.I popclient +.I fetchmail in scripts, pipelines, etc, it returns an appropriate exit code upon termination -- see EXIT CODES below. .PP The behavior of -.I popclient +.I fetchmail is controlled by comand-line options and a control file, -.I ~/.poprc +.I ~/.fetchrc the syntax of which we describe below. Command-line options override -.I ~/.poprc +.I ~/.fetchrc declarations. .SH OPTIONS Each server name that you specify (following the options on the command line) will be queried. If you don't specify any servers on the command line, each server in your -.I ~/.poprc +.I ~/.fetchrc file will be queried. .TP .B \-2 @@ -62,7 +62,7 @@ the mailserver. .B \-S host, --smtphost host Specify an SMTP forwarding host (other than localhost). Normally fetched mail is delivered by SMTP over a socket to the client machine -.I popclient +.I fetchmail is running on (this simulates the way mail would be delivered to the client by a normal Internet TCP/IP connection). With this option you can specify another host to deliver to. @@ -90,8 +90,8 @@ options on the same command line. POP3 only. Delete old (previously retrieved) messages from the mailserver before retrieving new messages. .TP -.B \-f pathname, --poprc pathname -Specify an alternate name for the .poprc file. +.B \-f pathname, --fetchrc pathname +Specify an alternate name for the .fetchrc file. .TP .B \-i pathname, --idfile pathname Specify an alternate name for the .popids file. @@ -100,14 +100,14 @@ Specify an alternate name for the .popids file. Keep retrieved messages in folder on remote mailserver. Normally, messages are deleted from the folder on the mailserver after they have been retrieved (unless -.I popclient +.I fetchmail was compiled with the KEEP_IS_DEFAULT option). Specifying the .B keep option causes retrieved messages to remain in your folder on the mailserver. .TP .B \-K, --kill Delete retrieved messages from the remote mailserver. If -.I popclient +.I fetchmail is compiled with the KEEP_IS_DEFAULT option, the .B kill option forces retrieved mail to be deleted. @@ -126,7 +126,7 @@ option remain on the remote mailserver. .B \-p, \--protocol proto Specify the protocol to used when communicating with the remote mailserver. If no protocol is specified, -.I popclient +.I fetchmail will try each of the supported protocols in turn, terminating after any successful attempt. .I proto @@ -174,12 +174,12 @@ option takes precedence. Specifies the user idenfication to be used when logging-in to the mailserver. The appropriate user identification is both server and user-dependent. The default is your login name on the machine that is running -.I popclient. +.I fetchmail. See USER AUTHENTICATION below for a complete description. .TP .B \-v, --verbose Verbose mode. All control messages passed between -.I popclient +.I fetchmail and the mailserver are echoed to stderr. Specifying .B verbose causes normal progress/status messages which would be redundant or meaningless @@ -187,7 +187,7 @@ to be modified or omitted. .TP .B \-N, --norewrite Normally, -.I popclient +.I fetchmail edits RFC-822 address headers (To, From, Cc, Bcc, and Reply-To) in fetched mail so that any mail IDs local to the server are expanded to full addresses (@ and the POP host name are appended). This enables @@ -197,16 +197,16 @@ client machine). This option disables the rewrite. .TP .B \-V, --version Displays the version information for your copy of -.I popclient. +.I fetchmail. No POP connection is made. Instead, for each server specified, all option information that would be computed if -.I popclient. +.I fetchmail. were connecting to that server is displayed. .TP .SH USER AUTHENTICATION User authentication in -.I popclient +.I fetchmail is very much like the authentication mechanism of .I ftp(1). The correct user-id and password depend upon the underlying security @@ -214,7 +214,7 @@ system at the mailserver. .PP If the mailserver is a Unix machine on which you have an ordinary user account, your regular login name and password are used with -.I popclient. +.I fetchmail. If you use the same login name on both the server and the client machines, you needn't worry about specifying a user-id with the .B \-u @@ -225,21 +225,21 @@ on the server machine, specify that login name with the .B \-u option. e.g. if your login name is 'jsmith' on a machine named 'mailgrunt', you would start -.I popclient +.I fetchmail as follows: .IP -popclient -u jsmith mailgrunt +fetchmail -u jsmith mailgrunt .PP The default behavior of -.I popclient +.I fetchmail is to prompt you for your mailserver password before the POP connection is established. This is the safest way to use -.I popclient +.I fetchmail and ensures that your password will not be compromised. You may also specify your password in your -.I ~/.poprc +.I ~/.fetchrc file. This is convenient when using -.I popclient +.I fetchmail with automated scripts. .PP On mailservers that do not provide ordinary user accounts, your user-id and @@ -250,20 +250,20 @@ the correct user-id and password for your mailbox account. POP3 versions up to the RFC1225 version supported an alternate authentication mechanism called RPOP intended to remove the security risk inherent in sending unencrypted account passwords across the net -(in RFC1460 this facility was replaced with APOP). If your .poprc +(in RFC1460 this facility was replaced with APOP). If your .fetchrc file specifies an RPOP id and a connection port in the privileged range (1..1024), -.I popclient will +.I fetchmail will ship the id with an RPOP command rather than sending a password. -(Note: you'll need to be running popclient setuid root for RPOP to +(Note: you'll need to be running fetchmail setuid root for RPOP to work -- -.I popclient +.I fetchmail has to bind to a privileged port locally in order for the mail server to believe it's allowed to bind to a privileged remote port.) .PP .SH OUTPUT OPTIONS The default behavior of -.I popclient +.I fetchmail is to ship mail to the the SMTP port on the machine it is running on (localhost), as though it were being passed over a normal TCP/IP link. This normally results in the mail being delivered locally via your @@ -280,7 +280,7 @@ Using the .B \-o option, you can specify a mail folder to which retrieved messages will be appended; -.I popclient +.I fetchmail always writes the retrieved messages using Unix mail folder format so the folder will be parsed correctly by Unix mail programs such as .I elm @@ -291,20 +291,20 @@ If you prefer, for example, to have your POP mail from a machine called 'mailgrunt' stored in the .I mbox file in your home directory, you would start -.I popclient +.I fetchmail as follows: .IP -popclient \-o $HOME/mbox mailgrunt +fetchmail \-o $HOME/mbox mailgrunt .PP Note that the folder specified with .B \-o -is write-locked while popclient is writing to it, +is write-locked while fetchmail is writing to it, .PP -.I popclient +.I fetchmail can be used in a shell pipeline by using the .B \-c option. In this mode, -.I popclient +.I fetchmail writes the retrieved messages to stdout, instead of a mail folder. This would allow you, for instance, to pass the incoming mail through a filter that discards mail marked as 'Precedence: junk'. Suppose you've written an AWK @@ -313,7 +313,7 @@ syntax to retrieve your mail from 'mailgrunt', pass it through the filter, and write it to a folder called 'realmail' in your home directory would be: .nf - popclient -c mailgrunt | awk -f dumpjunk.awk >$HOME/realmail + fetchmail -c mailgrunt | awk -f dumpjunk.awk >$HOME/realmail .fi .PP The progress/status messages written to stderr when the @@ -331,13 +331,13 @@ to insure that your messages will not be lost if part of the shell pipeline does not function incorrectly. The safest bet would be something like: .nf - popclient -k -c mailgrunt | myfilter >$HOME/filtered.mail + fetchmail -k -c mailgrunt | myfilter >$HOME/filtered.mail .fi .PP followed by .nf - popclient -c mailgrunt > /dev/null + fetchmail -c mailgrunt > /dev/null .fi .PP when you're sure the messages were correctly processed by 'myfilter'. @@ -348,25 +348,25 @@ The or .B -d option runs -.I popclient +.I fetchmail in daemon mode. You must specify a numeric argument which is a polling interval in seconds. .PP In daemon mode, -.I popclient +.I fetchmail puts itself in background and runs forever, querying each specified host and then sleeping for the given polling interval. .PP Simply invoking .IP -popclient -d 900 +fetchmail -d 900 .PP will, therefore, poll the hosts described in your -.I ~/.poprc +.I ~/.fetchrc file once every fifteen minutes. .PP Only one daemon process is permitted per user; in daemon mode, -.I popclient +.I fetchmail makes a per-user lockfile to guarantee this. The option .B --quit will kill a running daemon process. @@ -378,12 +378,12 @@ or option allows you to redirect status messages emitted while in daemon mode into a specified logfile (follow the option with the logfile name). This is primarily useful for debugging configurations. -.SH THE POPRC FILE -The preferred way to set up popclient (and the only way if you want to -specify a password) is to write a .poprc file in your home directory. -To protect the security of your passwords, your ~/.poprc may not have +.SH THE FETCHRC FILE +The preferred way to set up fetchmail (and the only way if you want to +specify a password) is to write a .fetchrc file in your home directory. +To protect the security of your passwords, your ~/.fetchrc may not have more than u+r,u+w permissions; -.I popclient +.I fetchmail will complain and exit otherwise. .PP Comments begin with a '#' and extend through the end of the line. @@ -486,13 +486,13 @@ by individual server descriptions. So, you could write: .fi .SH EXIT CODES To facilitate the use of -.I popclient +.I fetchmail in shell scripts and the like, an exit code is returned to give an indication of what occured during a given POP connection. The exit code can be tested by the script and appropriate action taken. .PP A simple example follows. This Bourne shell script executes -.I popclient +.I fetchmail and, if some messages were successfully retrieved from a mailserver retrieved from the command line, it starts the .I mail @@ -501,7 +501,7 @@ exits. .EX 0 #!/bin/sh -if popclient $1 +if fetchmail $1 then mail else @@ -510,7 +510,7 @@ fi .EE .PP The exit codes returned by -.I popclient +.I fetchmail are as follows: .IP 0 One or more messages were successfully retrieved. @@ -527,55 +527,55 @@ user-id, password, or RPOP id was specified. Some sort of fatal protocol error was detected. .IP 5 There was a syntax error in the arguments to -.I popclient. +.I fetchmail. .IP 6 Some kind of I/O woes occurred when writing to the local folder. .IP 7 There was an error condition reported by the server (POP3 only). .IP 8 Exclusion error. This means -.I popclient +.I fetchmail either found another copy of itself already running, or failed in such a way that it isn't sure whether another copy is running. .IP 9 The -.I popclient. +.I fetchmail. run failed while trying to do an SMTP port open or transaction. .IP 10 Something totally undefined occured. This is usually caused by a bug within -.I popclient. +.I fetchmail. Do let me know if this happens. .PP When -.I popclient +.I fetchmail queries more than one host, the returned status is that of the last host queried. .SH AUTHOR -.I popclient +.I fetchmail was originated by Carl Harris at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (a.k.a. Virginia Tech). Version 3.0 was extensively improved by Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> and is now maintained by esr. .PP .SH FILES .TP 5 -~/.poprc +~/.fetchrc default configuration file .TP 5 ~/.popids default location of file associating hosts with last message IDs seen (used only with newer RFC1725-compliant servers supporting the UIDL command). .TP 5 -${TMPDIR}/poplock-${HOST}-${USER} +${TMPDIR}/fetchmail-${HOST}-${USER} lock file to help prevent concurrent runs. .SH ENVIRONMENT For correct initialization, -.I popclient +.I fetchmail requires either that both the USER and HOME environment variables are correctly set, or that \fBgetpwuid\fR(3) be able to retrieve a password entry from your user ID. .SH BUGS Running more than one concurrent instance of -.I popclient +.I fetchmail on the same mailbox may cause messages to be lost or remain unfetched. .PP When using POP2, the --smtphost option doesn't work, and mail headers @@ -592,19 +592,25 @@ without LAST, are not yet well tested. Send comments, bug reports, gripes, and the like to Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>. .SH NOTE -The --password option of previous versions has been removed -- it +This program used to be called `popclient' (the name was changed +because it supports IMAP now and may well support more remote-fetch +protocols such as DMSP in the future). +.PP +The --password option of previous (popclient) versions has been removed -- it encouraged people to expose passwords in scripts. Passwords must now be specified either interactively or in your -.I ~/.poprc +.I ~/.fetchrc file. The short-form -p option now specifies the protocol to use. .PP The reason the password isn't stored encrypted is because this doesn't actually add protection. Anyone who's acquired permissions to read your -poprc file will be able to run popclient as you anyway -- and if it's +fetchrc file will be able to run +.I fetchmail +as you anyway -- and if it's your password they're after, they'd be able to use the necessary decoder from -.I popclient +.I fetchmail itself to get it. All encryption would do in this context is give a false sense of security to people who don't think very hard. .SH SEE ALSO -mail(1), binmail(1), sendmail(8), popd(8), +mail(1), binmail(1), sendmail(8), popd(8), imapd(8) RFC 937, RFC 1081, RFC 1082, RFC 1225, RFC 1460, RFC 1725. |