aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/fetchmail.man
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'fetchmail.man')
-rw-r--r--fetchmail.man25
1 files changed, 18 insertions, 7 deletions
diff --git a/fetchmail.man b/fetchmail.man
index 13a4df11..c0a5f8e8 100644
--- a/fetchmail.man
+++ b/fetchmail.man
@@ -85,6 +85,10 @@ Specify a non-default name for the
.I .fetchmailrc
run control file.
.TP
+.B \-i pathname, --idfile pathname
+Specify an alternate name for the .fetchids file used to save POP3
+UIDs.
+.TP
.B \-k, --keep
Keep retrieved messages in folder on remote mailserver. Normally, messages
are deleted from the folder on the mailserver after they have been retrieved.
@@ -300,13 +304,15 @@ One could be that you're using POP2. The POP2 protocol includes no
representation of `new' or `old' state in messages, so \fIfetchmail\fR
must treat all messages as new all the time. POP2 is obsolete.
.PP
-Under POP3, blame RFC1725. That late version of the POP3 protocol
-specification ill-advisedly removed the LAST command, and some POP
-servers (including the one distributed with at least some versions of
-SunOS) follow it (you can verify this by invoking \fIfetchmail -v\fR
-to the mail server and watching the response to LAST early in the
-query). The fix is to install an older POP3 server with LAST or
-(better) switch to an IMAP server.
+Under POP3, blame RFC1725. That version of the POP3 protocol
+specification removed the LAST command, and some POP servers follow it
+(you can verify this by invoking \fIfetchmail -v\fR to the mail server
+and watching the response to LAST early in the query). The
+\fIfetchmail\fR code tries to compensate by using POP3's UID feature,
+storing the identifiers of messages seen in each session until the
+next session,in the \fI.fetchids\fR file. But this doesn't track
+messages seen with other clients or read but not deleted directly with
+a mailer on the host. A better solution would be to switch to IMAP.
.PP
Another potential POP3 problem might be servers that insert messages
in the middle of mailboxes (some VMS implementations of mail are
@@ -580,6 +586,11 @@ created by the new SMTP forwarding default.
~/.fetchmailrc
default run control file
.TP 5
+~/.fetchids
+default location of file associating hosts with last message IDs seen
+(used only with newer RFC1725-compliant POP3 servers supporting the
+UIDL command).
+.TP 5
${TMPDIR}/fetchmail-${HOST}-${USER}
lock file to help prevent concurrent runs.
.SH ENVIRONMENT