INSTALL Instructions for fetchmail If you have installed binaries (e.g. from an RPM) you can skip to step 4. If you are a Linux system packager, be aware that the build process generates an RPM spec file at fetchmail.spec. 1. CONFIGURE Installing fetchmail is easy. From within this directory, type: ./configure The autoconfiguration script will spend a bit of time figuring out the specifics of your system. If you want to specify a particular compiler (e.g. you have gcc but want to compile with cc), set the environment variable CC before you run configure. The configure script accepts certain standard configuration options. These include --prefix, --exec-prefix, --bindir, --infodir, --mandir, and --srcdir. Do `config --help' for more. If you're running QNX, edit the distributed Makefile directly. The QNX values for various macros are there but commented out; all you have to do is uncomment them. 2. MAKE Next run make This will compile fetchmail for your system. Note that in order to build it, you may find you need flex at version 2.5.3 or greater. The stock lex distributed with Linux does not work -- it yields a parser which core-dumps on syntax errors. 3. INSTALL Lastly, become root and run make install This will install fetchmail. By default, fetchmail will be installed in /usr/local/bin, with the man page in /usr/local/man/man1. If you wish to change these defaults, edit the Makefile AFTER you run "configure" but BEFORE you run "make install." You can easily choose a prefix other than /usr/local, or you can choose completely different directories for each item. NOTE: If you are using exim, you must configure it to accept local addresses as valid RCPT TO lines. 4. SET UP A RUN CONTROL FILE See the man page or the file sample.rcfile for a description of how to configure your individual preferences. Note: if you have been using popclient (the ancestor of this program) at version 3.0b6 or later, do this (cd ~; mv ~/.poprc ~/.fetchmailrc) in order to migrate. Be aware that some of popclient's unnecessary options have been removed (see the NOTES file for explanation). You can't deliver to a local mail file anymore or to standard output any more, and using an MDA for delivery is discouraged. If you throw those options away, fetchmail will now forward your mail into your system's normal Internet-mail delivery path. Actually, using an MDA is now almost always the wrong thing; the MDA facility has been retained only for people who can't or won't run a sendmail-like SMTP listener on port 25. The default, SMTP forwarding to port 25, is better for at least two major reasons. One: it feeds retrieved POP and IMAP mail into your system's normal delivery path along with local mail and normal Internet mail. Two: because the port 25 listener returns a positive acknowledge, fetchmail can be sure you're not going to lose mail to a disk-full or some other resource-exhaustion problem. If you used to use -mda "procmail -d " or something similar, forward to port 25 and do "| procmail -d " in your ~/.forward file. 5. TEST I strongly recommend that your first fetchmail run use the -v and -k options, in case there is something not quite right with your server, your local delivery configuration or your port 25 listener. Also, beware of aliases that direct your local mail back to the server host! This software is known to work with the qpop/popper series of freeware POP3 servers; also with the imapd servers that are distributed with Pine from the University of Washington. Other POP3 servers have been known to give it indigestion. Test carefully! If you have problems, try to switch to IMAP. A couple of users have reported that some recent (post-2.7.2) versions of gcc seem to have an optimizer bug that affects fetchmail. If your fetchmail core dumps (especially near startup) try recompiling without -O. Alternatively, you can drop back to gcc 2.7.2 or below. 6. REPORTING BUGS When reporting bugs, please include the following: 1. Your operating system and compiler version. 2. The release and patch level of the fetchmail you are running. You can see your patchlevel by typing `fetchmail -V'. 3. The output of fetchmail -V (this will not reveal your password). 4. Any command-line options you used. It is helpful if you include your .fetchmailrc, but not necessary unless your symptom seems to involve an error in configuration parsing. A transcript of the failed session with -v on is almost always useful. If the bug involves a core dump, a gdb stack trace is good to have. Best of all is a mail file which, when fetched, will reproduce the bug. 7. USE IT Enjoy!