- -

The fetchmail Home Page

- - -

Note: if you are a stranded fetchmail.com user, we're sorry but -we have nothing to do with that site and cannot help you. It's just an -unfortunate coincidence of names.

- -

What fetchmail does:

- -

Fetchmail is a full-featured, robust, well-documented -remote-mail retrieval and forwarding utility intended to be used over -on-demand TCP/IP links (such as SLIP or PPP connections). It supports -every remote-mail protocol now in use on the Internet: POP2, POP3, -RPOP, APOP, KPOP, all flavors of IMAP, ETRN, and ODMR. It can even -support IPv6 and IPSEC.

- -

Fetchmail retrieves mail from remote mail servers and forwards it via -SMTP, so it can then be read by normal mail user agents such as mutt, elm(1) or BSD Mail. -It allows all your system MTA's filtering, forwarding, and aliasing -facilities to work just as they would on normal mail.

- -

Fetchmail offers better security than any other Unix remote-mail -client. It supports APOP, KPOP, OTP, Compuserve RPA, Microsoft NTLM, -and IMAP RFC1731 encrypted authentication methods including CRAM-MD5 -to avoid sending passwords en clair. It can be configured to support -end-to-end encryption via tunneling with ssh, the Secure Shell.

- -

Fetchmail can be used as a POP/IMAP-to-SMTP gateway for an entire DNS -domain, collecting mail from a single drop box on an ISP and -SMTP-forwarding it based on header addresses. (We don't really -recommend this, though, as it may lose important envelope-header -information. ETRN or a UUCP connection is better.)

- -

Fetchmail can be started automatically and silently as a system daemon -at boot time. When running in this mode with a short poll interval, -it is pretty hard for anyone to tell that the incoming mail link is -not a full-time "push" connection.

- -

Fetchmail is easy to configure. You can edit its dotfile directly, or -use the interactive GUI configurator (fetchmailconf) supplied with the -fetchmail distribution. It is also directly supported in linuxconf -versions 1.16r8 and later.

- -

Fetchmail is fast and lightweight. It packs all its standard -features (POP3, IMAP, and ETRN support) in ${fetchmailsize}K of core on a -Pentium under Linux.

- -

Fetchmail is open-source -software. The openness of the sources is your strongest possible -assurance of quality and reliability.

- -

Where to find out more about fetchmail:

- -

See the Fetchmail Feature List for more -about what fetchmail does.

- -

See the on-line manual page for -basics.

- -

See the HTML Fetchmail FAQ for -troubleshooting help.

- -

See the Fetchmail Design Notes -for discussion of some of the design choices in fetchmail.

- -

See the project's To-Do list for indications -of known problems and requested features.

- -

How to get fetchmail:

- -

You can get any of the following leading-edge resources here:

- -

MD5 checksums are available for these files; the -checksum file is cryptographically signed and can be verified with the -command:

- -

-gpg --verify checksums
-

- -EOF - -if [ $version != $goldvers ] -then - cat >>index.html <Or you can get the last \`gold' version, $goldname:

- -

The detached GPG -signature for the binary tarball can be used to check it for -correctness, with the command

- -

-gpg --verify fetchmail-$goldvers.tar.gz.asc fetchmail-$goldvers.tar.gz
-

- -

For differences between the leading-edge $version and gold $goldname versions, -see the distribution NEWS file.

-EOF -fi - -cat >>index.html <(Note that the binary RPMs don't have the POP2, OTP, IPv6, Kerberos, -GSSAPI, Compuserve RPA, Microsoft NTLM, or GNU gettext -internationalization support compiled in. To get any of these you -will have to build from sources.)

- -

The latest version of fetchmail is also carried in the - -Metalab remote mail tools directory.

- -

Getting help with fetchmail:

- -

There is a fetchmail-friends list for people who want to discuss -fixes and improvements in fetchmail and help co-develop it. It's a -MailMan list, which you can sign up for at -fetchmail-friends@ccil.org. There is also an announcements-only -list, -fetchmail-announce@lists.ccil.org.

- -

Note: before submitting a question to the list, please read -the FAQ (especially item G3 on how to report bugs). We -tend to get the same three newbie questions over and over again. The -FAQ covers them like a blanket.

- -

Fetchmail was written and is maintained by Eric S. Raymond. There are some designated -backup maintainers (Rob Funk, David DeSimone aka Fuzzy Fox, -Dave Bodenstab and Sunil Shetye). Other backup -maintainers may be added in the future, in order to ensure continued -support should Eric S. Raymond drop permanently off the net for any -reason.

- -

You can help improve fetchmail:

- -

I welcome your code contributions. But even if you don't write code, -you can help fetchmail improve.

- -

If you administer a site that runs a post-office server, you may be -able help improve fetchmail by lending me a test account on your site. -Note that I do not need a shell account for this purpose, just a -maildrop. Nor am I interested in collecting maildrops per se -- -what I'm collecting is different kinds of servers.

- -

Before each release, I run a test harness that sends date-stamped -test mail to each site on my regression-test list, then tries to -retrieve it. Please take a look at my -list of test servers. If you can lend me an account on a kind -of server that is not already on this list, please do.

- -

Who uses fetchmail:

- -

Fetchmail entered full production status with the 2.0.0 version in -November 1996 after about five months of evolution from the ancestral -popclient utility. It has since come into extremely wide use -in the Internet/Unix/Linux community. The Red Hat, Debian and -Suse Linux distributions and their derivatives all include it. A -customized version is used at Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link. Several -large ISPs are known to recommend it to Unix-using SLIP and PPP -customers.

- -

Somewhere around a thousand people have participated on the fetchmail -beta lists (at time of current release there were $subscribers on the -friends and announce lists). While it's hard to count the users of -open-source software, we can estimate based on (a) population figures -at the WELL and other known fetchmail sites, (b) the size of the -Linux-using ISP customer base, and (c) the volume of fetchmail-related -talk on USENET. These estimates suggest that daily fetchmail users -number well into the hundreds of thousands, and possibly over a million.

- -

The sociology of fetchmail:

- -

The fetchmail development project was a sociological experiment as well -as a technical effort. I ran it as a test of some theories about why the -Linux development model works.

- -

I wrote a paper, The -Cathedral And The Bazaar, about these theories and the project. -I developed the line of analysis it suggested in two later essays. -These papers became quite popular and (to my continuing astonishment) may -have actually helped change the world. Chase the title link, above, -for links to all three papers.

- -

I have done some analysis on the information in the project NEWS file. -You can view a statistical history showing -levels of participation and release frequency over time.

- -

Recent releases and where fetchmail is going:

- -

Fetchmail is now sufficiently stable and effective that I'm getting -very little pressure to fix things or add features. Development has -slowed way down, release frequency has dropped off, and we're -basically in maintainance mode.

- -

Major changes or additions therefore seem unlikely until there are -significant changes in or additions to the related protocol RFCs.

- -

Where you can use fetchmail:

- -

The fetchmail code was developed under Linux, but has also been -extensively tested under 4.4BSD, SunOS, Solaris, AIX, and NEXTSTEP. It -should be readily portable to other Unix variants (it requires only -POSIX plus BSD sockets, and uses GNU autoconf).

- -

Fetchmail is supported only for Unix by its official maintainers. -However, it is reported to build and run correctly under BeOS, -AmigaOS, Rhapsody, and QNX as well. There is a CygWin port.

- -

Related resources:

- -

Jochen Hayek is developing a set of - -IMAP tools in Python that read your .fetchmailrc file and are -designed to work with fetchmail. Jochen's tools can report selected -header lines, or move incoming messages to named mailboxes based on -the contents of headers.

- -

Donncha O Caoihm has written a Perl script called -install-sendmail -that assists you in installing sendmail and fetchmail together.

- -

Peter Hawkins has written a script called gotmail that -can retrieve Hotmail. Another script, yosucker, can retrieve -Yahoo webmail.

- -

There's a program called -mailfilter which can be used -to do span filtering, that works particularly well called from fetchmail's -preconnect directive,

- -

A hacker identifying himself simply as \`Steines' has written a -filter which rewrites the to-line with a line which only includes -receipients for a given domain and renames the old to-line. It also -rewrites the domain-part of addresses if the offical domain is -different from the local domain. You can find it here.

- -

Fetchmail's funniest fan letter:

- -This letter still cracks me up whenever I reread it. - -

The fetchmail button:

- -

If you use fetchmail and like it, here's a nifty fetchmail button you -can put on your web page:

- -

Thanks to Steve -Matuszek for the graphic design. The hand in the button (and the -larger top-of-page graphic) was actually derived from a color scan of -the fetchmail author's hand.

- -

Fetchmail mirror sites:

- -

There is a FTP mirror of the current sources and RPMs in Japan at - -ftp://ftp.win.ne.jp/pub/network/mail/fetchmail. - -

Reviews and Awards

- -

Fetchmail was DaveCentral's Best Of Linux winner for -June 30 1999.

- -

Fetchmail was a five-star Editor's Pick at Softlandindia.

- -