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fetchmail README
fetchmail is a full-featured, robust, well-documented POP2, POP3,
APOP, and IMAP batch mail retrieval/forwarding utility intended to be
used over on-demand TCP/IP links (such as SLIP or PPP connections).
It retrieves mail from remote mail servers and forwards it to your
local (client) machine's delivery system, so it can then be be read by
normal mail user agents such as elm(1) or Mail(1).
The fetchmail code was developed under Linux, but has also been
extensively tested under 4.4BSD, Solaris and NEXTSTEP. It should be
readily portable to other Unix variants (it uses GNU autoconf). It
has also been ported to QNX; to build under QNX, see the header
comments in the Makefile.
For those of you already familiar with previous versions, here are the
major new features since 2.0:
** Support for secure use with ssh.
** Mailserver passwords can be parsed out of your .netrc file.
** When forwarding mail via SMTP, fetchmail respects the 571
"spam filter" response and discards any mail that triggers it.
** Transaction and error logging may optionally be done via syslog.
** (Linux only) Security option to permit fetchmail to poll a host
only when a point-to-point link to a particular IP address is up.
There have also been numerous improvements in multidrop mailbox handling.
Under many circumstances fetchmail can now determine a mail message's
envelope address from its headers, making multidrop forwarding more reliable.
Here are fetchmail's main features. Those unique to fetchmail
(relative to fetchpop1.9, PopTart-0.9.3, get-mail, gwpop, pimp-1.0,
pop-perl5-1.2, popc, popmail-1.6 and upop) are marked with **.
* **POP2, POP3, **APOP, **IMAP2bis, **IMAP4 support.
** Support for Kerberos user authentication (either MIT or Cygnus).
** Host is auto-probed for a working server if no protocol is
specified for the connection. Thus you don't need to know
what servers are running on your mail host in advance; the
verbose option will tell you which one succeeds.
** Delivery via via SMTP to the client machine's port 25. This
means the retrieved mail automatically goes to the system
default MDA as if it were normal sender-initiated SMTP mail.
** Configurable timeout to detect if server connection is dropped.
** Support for retrieving and forwarding from multi-drop mailboxes
that is guaranteed not to cause mail loops.
* Easy control via command line or free-format run control file.
* Daemon mode -- fetchmail can be run in background to poll
one or more hosts at a specified interval.
* From:, To:, Cc:, and Reply-To: headers are rewritten so that
usernames relative to the fetchmail host become fully-qualified
Internet addresses. This enables replies to work correctly.
(Would be unique to fetchmail if I hadn't added it to fetchpop.)
* Strict conformance to relevant RFCs and good debugging options.
You could use fetchmail to test and debug server implementatations.
* Carefully written, comprehensive and up-to-date man page describing
not only modes of operation but also (**) how to diagnose the most
common kinds of problems and what to do about deficient servers
* Rugged, simple, and well-tested code -- the author relies on it
every day and it has never lost mail, not even in experimental
versions.
* Large user community -- fetchmail has a large user base (the
author's beta list includes over a hundred fifty people). This
means feedback is rapid, bugs get found and fixed rapidly.
The fetchmail code appears to be stable and free of bugs affecting
normal operation (that is, retrieving from POP3 or IMAP in single-drop
mode and forwarding via SMTP to sendmail). It will probably undergo
substantial change only if and when support for a new retrieval
protocol or authentication mode is added. See the distribution files
NEWS for detailed information on recent changes and NOTES for design
notes.
You can easily fetch the latest version of fetchmail via FTP from the
following FTP directory:
ftp://ftp.ccil.org/pub/esr/fetchmail
Or you can get it from Eric's home page:
http://www.ccil.org/~esr
Just chase the link to Eric's Freeware Collection. Besides fetchmail, it
includes a tasty selection of Web authoring tools, programmer's aids,
graphics libraries, compilers for bizarre languages, games, and
miscellaneous interesting hacks. Enjoy!
-- esr
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