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.

The Frequently Asked Questions list, included as the file FAQ in this
distributions, answers the most common questions about configuring and 
running fetchmail.

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 

You may find you need flex at version 2.5.3 or greater to build
fetchmail.  The stock lex distributed with Linux does not work -- it
yields a parser which core-dumps on syntax errors.

Run

	make

This should compile fetchmail for your system.

Some makes (on AIX and HPUX and possibly elsewhere) choke on the YACC
grammar dependencies.  If this happens to you, install the free GNU
make program and throw away your native one, it's broken.

If linking fails to resolve atexit(), go find a compiler that isn't lying
about being ANSI-compliant (such as gcc).  Some SunOS users have had this
problem.

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 an MTA other than sendmail (such as qmail or exim),
see the FAQ (section T) for discussion of any special configuration steps
that may be necessary.

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.

If you're upgrading from popclient, see question F4 in the FAQ 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 IMAP2bis and IMAP4 servers that are
distributed with Pine from the University of Washington.  

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

You should read the FAQ file question G1 before reporting a bug.

7. USE IT

Enjoy!