From e690041931ba761b5e9479a46bd9285441c57caf Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: "Eric S. Raymond"
Fetchmail retrieves mail from remote mail servers and forwards it via SMTP, so it can then be 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. +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 +href="http://www.openssh.com/">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.) +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. +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. +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. +Pentium under Linux.
Fetchmail is open-source software. The openness of the sources is your strongest possible -assurance of quality and reliability. +assurance of quality and reliability.
See the Fetchmail Feature List for more +about what fetchmail does.
See the on-line manual page for -basics. +basics.
See the HTML Fetchmail FAQ for -troubleshooting help. +troubleshooting help.
See the Fetchmail Design Notes -for discussion of some of the design choices in fetchmail. +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. +of known problems and requested features.
You can get any of the following leading-edge resources here:
The detached GPG +signature for the binary tarball can be used to check it for +correctness, with the command
MD5 checksums are available for these files; the checksum file is cryptographically signed and can be verified with the -command: +command:
The detached GPG signature for the +binary tarball can be used to check it for correctness, with the command
+
For differences between the leading-edge $version and gold $goldname versions, +see the distribution NEWS file.
EOF fi cat >>index.html <The latest version of fetchmail is also carried in the -Metalab remote mail tools directory. +Metalab remote mail tools directory.
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. +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. +FAQ covers them like a blanket.
Fetchmail was written and is maintained by Eric S. Raymond. There are some designated @@ -226,35 +227,35 @@ href="http://www.dallas.net/~fox/">David DeSimone aka Fuzzy Fox, Dave Bodenstab). 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. +reason.
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. +what I'm collecting is different kinds of servers.
-Before each release, I run a test harness that sends date-stamped +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. +of server that is not already on this list, please do.
Fetchmail entered full production status with the 2.0.0 version in
November 1996 after about five months of evolution from the ancestral
Somewhere around a thousand people have participated on the fetchmail beta lists (at time of current release there were $subscribers on the @@ -263,13 +264,13 @@ 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. +number well into the hundreds of thousands, and possibly over a million.
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. +Linux development model works.
I wrote a paper, The @@ -277,67 +278,66 @@ 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. +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. +levels of participation and release frequency over time.
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. Barring any urgent bug fixes, my -intention is to leave 5.0.0 alone for several months. +basically in maintainance mode.
Major changes or additions therefore seem unlikely until there are significant changes in or additions to the related protocol RFCs. One development that would stimulate a new release almost instantly is the deployment of a standard lightweight encrypted authentication method -for IMAP sessions. +for IMAP sessions.
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). +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. +AmigaOS, Rhapsody, and QNX as well.
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. +the contents of headers.
Scott Bronson has written a fetchmail plugin (actually, a specialist MDA) called trestlemail that -helps redirect multidrop mail. +helps redirect multidrop mail.
Donncha O Caoihm has written a Perl script called install-sendmail -that assists you in installing sendmail and fetchmail together/ +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. +Yahoo webmail.
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 domainpart of addresses if the offical domain is different to local domain. You can find it here. +href="http://www.steines.com/mailf/">here.
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. +the fetchmail author's hand.
There is a FTP mirror of the current sources and RPMs in Japan at ftp://ftp.win.ne.jp/pub/network/mail/fetchmail.
Fetchmail was DaveCentral's Best Of Linux winner for -June 30 1999. +June 30 1999.
-Fetchmail was a five-star Editor's Pick at Softlandindia. +
Fetchmail was a five-star Editor's Pick at Softlandindia.