FETCHMAIL(1) fetchmail reference manual FETCHMAIL(1)
NAME
fetchmail - fetch mail from a POP, IMAP, ETRN, or ODMR-capable server
SYNOPSIS
fetchmail [option...] [mailserver...]
fetchmailconf
DESCRIPTION
fetchmail is a mail-retrieval and forwarding utility; it fetches mail
from remote mail servers and forwards it to your local (client) ma-
chine's delivery system. You can then handle the retrieved mail using
normal mail user agents such as mutt(1), elm(1) or Mail(1). The fetch-
mail utility can be run in a daemon mode to repeatedly poll one or more
systems at a specified interval.
The fetchmail program can gather mail from servers supporting any of
the common mail-retrieval protocols: POP2 (legacy, to be removed from
future release), POP3, IMAP2bis, IMAP4, and IMAP4rev1. It can also use
the ESMTP ETRN extension and ODMR. (The RFCs describing all these pro-
tocols are listed at the end of this manual page.)
While fetchmail is primarily intended to be used over on-demand TCP/IP
links (such as SLIP or PPP connections), it may also be useful as a
message transfer agent for sites which refuse for security reasons to
permit (sender-initiated) SMTP transactions with sendmail.
SUPPORT, TROUBLESHOOTING
For troubleshooting, tracing and debugging, you need to increase fetch-
mail's verbosity to actually see what happens. To do that, please run
both of the two following commands, adding all of the options you'd
normally use.
env LC_ALL=C fetchmail -V -v --nodetach --nosyslog
(This command line prints in English how fetchmail understands
your configuration.)
env LC_ALL=C fetchmail -vvv --nodetach --nosyslog
(This command line actually runs fetchmail with verbose English
output.)
Also see item #G3 in fetchmail's FAQ
⟨https://fetchmail.sourceforge.io/fetchmail-FAQ.html#G3⟩.
You can omit the LC_ALL=C part above if you want output in the local
language (if supported). However if you are posting to mailing lists,
please leave it in. The maintainers do not necessarily understand your
language, please use English.
TLS (SSL) QUICKSTART
Your fetchmail distribution should have come with a README.SSL file,
which see. It is recommended to configure all polls with --ssl --ssl-
proto tls1.2+ if supported by the server, which configures fetchmail
along recent IETF proposed standards and best current practices,
RFC-8314, RFC-8996, RFC-8997.
CONCEPTS
If fetchmail is used with a POP or an IMAP server (but not with ETRN or
ODMR), it has two fundamental modes of operation for each user account
from which it retrieves mail: singledrop- and multidrop-mode.
In singledrop-mode,
fetchmail assumes that all messages in the user's account (mail-
box) are intended for a single recipient. The identity of the
recipient will either default to the local user currently exe-
cuting fetchmail, or will need to be explicitly specified in the
configuration file.
fetchmail uses singledrop-mode when the fetchmailrc configura-
tion contains at most a single local user specification for a
given server account.
In multidrop-mode,
fetchmail assumes that the mail server account actually contains
mail intended for any number of different recipients. There-
fore, fetchmail must attempt to deduce the proper "envelope re-
cipient" from the mail headers of each message. In this mode of
operation, fetchmail almost resembles a mail transfer agent
(MTA).
Note that neither the POP nor IMAP protocols were intended for
use in this fashion, and hence envelope information is often not
directly available. The ISP must store the envelope information
in some message header and. The ISP must also store one copy of
the message per recipient. If either of the conditions is not
fulfilled, this process is unreliable, because fetchmail must
then resort to guessing the true envelope recipient(s) of a mes-
sage. This usually fails for mailing list messages and Bcc:d
mail, or mail for multiple recipients in your domain.
fetchmail uses multidrop-mode when more than one local user
and/or a wildcard is specified for a particular server account
in the configuration file.
In ETRN and ODMR modes,
these considerations do not apply, as these protocols are based
on SMTP, which provides explicit envelope recipient information.
These protocols always support multiple recipients.
As each message is retrieved, fetchmail normally delivers it via SMTP
to port 25 on the machine it is running on (localhost), just as though
it were being passed in over a normal TCP/IP link. fetchmail provides
the SMTP server with an envelope recipient derived in the manner de-
scribed previously. The mail will then be delivered according to your
MTA's rules (the Mail Transfer Agent is usually sendmail(8), exim(8),
or postfix(8)). Invoking your system's MDA (Mail Delivery Agent) is
the duty of your MTA. All the delivery-control mechanisms (such as
.forward files) normally available through your system MTA and local
delivery agents will therefore be applied as usual.
If your fetchmail configuration sets a local MDA (see the --mda op-
tion), it will be used directly instead of talking SMTP to port 25.
If the program fetchmailconf is available, it will assist you in set-
ting up and editing a fetchmailrc configuration. It runs under the X
window system and requires that the language Python and the Tk toolkit
(with Python bindings) be present on your system. If you are first
setting up fetchmail for single-user mode, it is recommended that you
use Novice mode. Expert mode provides complete control of fetchmail
configuration, including the multidrop features. In either case, the
'Autoprobe' button will tell you the most capable protocol a given mail
server supports, and warn you of potential problems with that server.
PREFACE ON THIS MANUAL
Fetchmail's run-time strings have been translated (localized) to some
languages, but the manual is only available in English. In some situa-
tions, for comparing output to manual, it may be helpful to switch
fetchmail to English output by overriding the locale variables, for in-
stance:
env LC_ALL=C fetchmail # add other options before the hash
env LANG=en fetchmail # other options before the hash
or similar. Details vary by operating system.
GENERAL OPERATION
The behavior of fetchmail is controlled by command-line options and a
run control file, ~/.fetchmailrc, the syntax of which we describe in a
later section (this file is what the fetchmailconf program edits).
Command-line options override ~/.fetchmailrc declarations.
Each server name that you specify following the options on the command
line will be queried. If you do not specify any servers on the command
line, each 'poll' entry in your ~/.fetchmailrc file will be queried,
unless the idle option is used, which see.
To facilitate the use of fetchmail in scripts and pipelines, it returns
an appropriate exit code upon termination -- see EXIT CODES below.
The following options modify the behavior of fetchmail. It is seldom
necessary to specify any of these once you have a working .fetchmailrc
file set up.
Almost all options have a corresponding keyword which can be used to
declare them in a .fetchmailrc file.
Some special options are not covered here, but are documented instead
in sections on AUTHENTICATION and DAEMON MODE which follow.
General Options
-? | --help
Displays option help.
-V | --version
Displays the version information for your copy of fetchmail. No
mail fetch is performed. Instead, for each server specified,
all the option information that would be computed if fetchmail
were connecting to that server is displayed. Any non-printable
characters in passwords or other string names are shown as back-
slashed C-like escape sequences. This option is useful for ver-
ifying that your options are set the way you want them.
-c | --check
Return a status code to indicate whether there is mail waiting,
without actually fetching or deleting mail (see EXIT CODES be-
low). This option turns off daemon mode (in which it would be
useless). It does not play well with queries to multiple sites,
and does not work with ETRN or ODMR. It will return a false
positive if you leave read but undeleted mail in your server
mailbox and your fetch protocol cannot tell kept messages from
new ones. This means it will work with IMAP, not work with
POP2, and may occasionally flake out under POP3.
-s | --silent
Silent mode. Suppresses all progress/status messages that are
normally echoed to standard output during a fetch (but does not
suppress actual error messages). The --verbose option overrides
this.
-v | --verbose
Verbose mode. All control messages passed between fetchmail and
the mail server are echoed to stdout. Overrides --silent. Dou-
bling this option (-v -v) causes extra diagnostic information to
be printed.
--nosoftbounce
(since v6.3.10, Keyword: set no softbounce, since v6.3.10)
Hard bounce mode. All permanent delivery errors cause messages
to be deleted from the upstream server, see "no softbounce" be-
low.
--softbounce
(since v6.3.10, Keyword: set softbounce, since v6.3.10)
Soft bounce mode. All permanent delivery errors cause messages
to be left on the upstream server if the protocol supports that.
This option is on by default to match historic fetchmail docu-
mentation, and will be changed to hard bounce mode in the next
fetchmail release.
Disposal Options
-a | --all | (since v6.3.3) --fetchall
(Keyword: fetchall, since v3.0)
Retrieve both old (seen) and new messages from the mail server.
The default is to fetch only messages the server has not marked
seen. Under POP3, this option also forces the use of RETR
rather than TOP. Note that POP2 retrieval behaves as though
--all is always on (see RETRIEVAL FAILURE MODES below) and this
option does not work with ETRN or ODMR. While the -a and --all
command-line and fetchall rcfile options have been supported for
a long time, the --fetchall command-line option was added in
v6.3.3.
-k | --keep
(Keyword: keep)
Keep retrieved messages on the remote mail server. Normally,
messages are deleted from the folder on the mail server after
they have been retrieved. Specifying the keep option causes re-
trieved messages to remain in your folder on the mail server.
This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR. If used with POP3,
it is recommended to also specify the --uidl option or uidl key-
word.
-K | --nokeep
(Keyword: nokeep)
Delete retrieved messages from the remote mail server. This op-
tion forces retrieved mail to be deleted. It may be useful if
you have specified a default of keep in your .fetchmailrc. This
option is forced on with ETRN and ODMR.
-F | --flush
(Keyword: flush)
POP3/IMAP only. This is a dangerous option and can cause mail
loss when used improperly. It deletes old (seen) messages from
the mail server before retrieving new messages. Warning: This
can cause mail loss if you check your mail with other clients
than fetchmail, and cause fetchmail to delete a message it had
never fetched before. It can also cause mail loss if the mail
server marks the message seen after retrieval (IMAP2 servers).
You should probably not use this option in your configuration
file. If you use it with POP3, you must use the 'uidl' option.
What you probably want is the default setting: if you do not
specify '-k', then fetchmail will automatically delete messages
after successful delivery.
--limitflush
POP3/IMAP only, since version 6.3.0. Delete oversized messages
from the mail server before retrieving new messages. The size
limit should be separately specified with the --limit option.
This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
Protocol and Query Options
-p <proto> | --proto <proto> | --protocol <proto>
(Keyword: proto[col])
Specify the protocol to use when communicating with the remote
mail server. If no protocol is specified, the default is AUTO.
proto may be one of the following:
AUTO Tries IMAP, POP3, and POP2 (skipping any of these for
which support has not been compiled in).
POP2 Post Office Protocol 2 (legacy, to be removed from future
release)
POP3 Post Office Protocol 3
APOP Use POP3 with old-fashioned MD5-challenge authentication.
Considered not resistant to man-in-the-middle attacks.
RPOP Use POP3 with RPOP authentication.
KPOP Use POP3 with Kerberos V4 authentication on port 1109.
SDPS Use POP3 with Demon Internet's SDPS extensions.
IMAP IMAP2bis, IMAP4, or IMAP4rev1 (fetchmail automatically
detects their capabilities).
ETRN Use the ESMTP ETRN option.
ODMR Use the On-Demand Mail Relay ESMTP profile.
All these alternatives work in basically the same way (communicating
with standard server daemons to fetch mail already delivered to a mail-
box on the server) except ETRN and ODMR. The ETRN mode allows you to
ask a compliant ESMTP server (such as BSD sendmail at release 8.8.0 or
higher) to immediately open a sender-SMTP connection to your client ma-
chine and begin forwarding any items addressed to your client machine
in the server's queue of undelivered mail. The ODMR mode requires an
ODMR-capable server and works similarly to ETRN, except that it does
not require the client machine to have a static DNS.
-U | --uidl
(Keyword: uidl)
Force UIDL use (effective only with POP3). Force client-side
tracking of 'newness' of messages (UIDL stands for "unique ID
listing" and is described in RFC1939). Use with 'keep' to use a
mailbox as a baby news drop for a group of users. The fact that
seen messages are skipped is logged, unless error logging is
done through syslog while running in daemon mode. Note that
fetchmail may automatically enable this option depending on up-
stream server capabilities. Note also that this option may be
removed and forced enabled in a future fetchmail version. See
also: --idfile.
--idle (since 6.3.3)
(Keyword: idle, since before 6.0.0)
Enable IDLE use (effective only with IMAP). Note that this works
with only one account and one folder at a given time, other
folders or accounts will not be polled when idle is in effect!
While the idle rcfile keyword had been supported for a long
time, the --idle command-line option was added in version 6.3.3.
IDLE use means that fetchmail tells the IMAP server to send no-
tice of new messages, so they can be retrieved sooner than would
be possible with regular polls.
-P <portnumber> | --service <servicename>
(Keyword: service) Since version 6.3.0.
The service option permits you to specify a service name to con-
nect to. You can specify a decimal port number here, if your
services database lacks the required service-port assignments.
See the FAQ item R12 and the --ssl documentation for details.
This replaces the older --port option.
Note that this does not magically switch between TLS-wrapped and START-
TLS modes, if you specify a port number or service name here that is
TLS-wrapped, meaning it starts to negotiate TLS before sending applica-
tion data in the clear, you may need to specify --ssl on the command
line or ssl in your rcfile.
--port <portnumber>
(Keyword: port)
Obsolete version of --service that does not take service names.
Note: this option may be removed from a future version.
--principal <principal>
(Keyword: principal)
The principal option permits you to specify a service principal
for mutual authentication. This is applicable to POP3 or IMAP
with Kerberos 4 authentication only. It does not apply to Ker-
beros 5 or GSSAPI. This option may be removed in a future
fetchmail version.
-t <seconds> | --timeout <seconds>
(Keyword: timeout)
The timeout option allows you to set a server-non-response time-
out in seconds. If a mail server does not send a greeting mes-
sage or respond to commands for the given number of seconds,
fetchmail will drop the connection to it. Without such a time-
out fetchmail might hang until the TCP connection times out,
trying to fetch mail from a down host, which may be very long.
This would be particularly annoying for a fetchmail running in
the background. There is a default timeout which fetchmail -V
will report. If a given connection receives too many timeouts
in succession, fetchmail will consider it wedged and stop retry-
ing. The calling user will be notified by email if this hap-
pens.
Beginning with fetchmail 6.3.10, the SMTP client uses the recom-
mended minimum timeouts from RFC-5321 while waiting for the
SMTP/LMTP server it is talking to. You can raise the timeouts
even more, but you cannot shorten them. This is to avoid a
painful situation where fetchmail has been configured with a
short timeout (a minute or less), ships a long message (many
MBytes) to the local MTA, which then takes longer than timeout
to respond "OK", which it eventually will; that would mean the
mail gets delivered properly, but fetchmail cannot notice it and
will thus re-fetch this big message over and over again.
--plugin <command>
(Keyword: plugin)
The plugin option allows you to use an external program to es-
tablish the TCP connection. This is useful if you want to use
ssh, or need some special firewall setup. The program will be
looked up in $PATH and can optionally be passed the host name
and port as arguments using "%h" and "%p" respectively (note
that the interpolation logic is rather primitive, and these to-
kens must be bounded by whitespace or beginning of string or end
of string). Fetchmail will write to the plugin's stdin and read
from the plugin's stdout.
--plugout <command>
(Keyword: plugout)
Identical to the plugin option above, but this one is used for
the SMTP connections.
-r <name> | --folder <name>
(Keyword: folder[s])
Causes a specified non-default mail folder on the mail server
(or comma-separated list of folders) to be retrieved. The syn-
tax of the folder name is server-dependent. This option is not
available under POP3, ETRN, or ODMR.
--tracepolls
(Keyword: tracepolls)
Tell fetchmail to poll trace information in the form 'polling
account %s' and 'folder %s' to the Received line it generates,
where the %s parts are replaced by the user's remote name, the
poll label, and the folder (mailbox) where available (the Re-
ceived header also normally includes the server's true name).
This can be used to facilitate mail filtering based on the ac-
count it is being received from. The folder information is writ-
ten only since version 6.3.4.
--ssl (Keyword: ssl)
Causes the connection to the mail server to be encrypted via
SSL, by negotiating SSL directly after connecting (called SSL-
wrapped mode, or Implicit TLS by RFC-8314). Please see the de-
scription of --sslproto below! More information is available in
the README.SSL file that ships with fetchmail.
Note that even if this option is omitted, fetchmail may still
negotiate SSL in-band for POP3 or IMAP, through the STLS or
STARTTLS feature. You can use the --sslproto option to modify
that behavior.
If no port is specified, the connection is attempted to the well
known port of the SSL version of the base protocol. This is
generally a different port than the port used by the base proto-
col. For IMAP, this is port 143 for the clear protocol and port
993 for the SSL secured protocol; for POP3, it is port 110 for
the clear text and port 995 for the encrypted variant.
If your system lacks the corresponding entries from /etc/ser-
vices, see the --service option and specify the numeric port
number as given in the previous paragraph (unless your ISP had
directed you to different ports, which is uncommon however).
--sslcert <name>
(Keyword: sslcert)
For certificate-based client authentication. Some SSL encrypted
servers require client side keys and certificates for authenti-
cation. In most cases, this is optional. This specifies the
location of the public key certificate to be presented to the
server at the time the SSL session is established. It is not
required (but may be provided) if the server does not require
it. It may be the same file as the private key (combined key
and certificate file) but this is not recommended. Also see
--sslkey below.
NOTE: If you use client authentication, the user name is fetched
from the certificate's CommonName and overrides the name set
with --user.
--sslkey <name>
(Keyword: sslkey)
Specifies the file name of the client side private SSL key.
Some SSL encrypted servers require client side keys and certifi-
cates for authentication. In most cases, this is optional.
This specifies the location of the private key used to sign
transactions with the server at the time the SSL session is es-
tablished. It is not required (but may be provided) if the
server does not require it. It may be the same file as the pub-
lic key (combined key and certificate file) but this is not rec-
ommended.
If a password is required to unlock the key, it will be prompted
for at the time just prior to establishing the session to the
server. This can cause some complications in daemon mode.
Also see --sslcert above.
--sslproto <value>
(Keyword: sslproto, NOTE: semantic changes since v6.4.0)
This option has a dual use, out of historic fetchmail behaviour.
It controls both the SSL/TLS protocol version and, if --ssl is
not specified, the STARTTLS behaviour (upgrading the protocol to
an SSL or TLS connection in-band). Some other options may how-
ever make TLS mandatory.
Only if this option and --ssl are both missing for a poll, there
will be opportunistic TLS for POP3 and IMAP, where fetchmail
will attempt to upgrade to TLSv1 or newer.
Recognized values for --sslproto are given below. You should
normally choose one of the auto-negotiating options, i. e.
'tls1.2+' or 'auto' or one of the other options ending in a plus
(+) character. Note that depending on OpenSSL library version
and configuration, some options cause run-time errors because
the requested SSL or TLS versions are not supported by the par-
ticular installed OpenSSL library.
'TLS1.2+'
(recommended). Since v6.4.0. Require TLS. Auto-negotiate
TLSv1.2 or newer.
'auto' (default). Since v6.4.0. Require TLS. Auto-negotiate
TLSv1 or newer, disable SSLv3 downgrade. (fetchmail
6.3.26 and older have auto-negotiated all protocols that
their OpenSSL library supported, including the broken
SSLv3).
'', the empty string
Disable STARTTLS. If --ssl is given for the same server,
log an error and pretend that 'auto' had been used in-
stead.
'SSL23'
see 'auto'.
'SSL3' Require SSLv3 exactly. SSLv3 is broken, not supported on
all systems, avoid it if possible. This will make fetch-
mail negotiate SSLv3 only, and is the only way besides
'SSL3+' to have fetchmail 6.4.0 or newer permit SSLv3.
'SSL3+'
same as 'auto', but permit SSLv3 as well. This is the
only way besides 'SSL3' to have fetchmail 6.4.0 or newer
permit SSLv3.
'TLS1' Require TLSv1. This does not negotiate TLSv1.1 or newer,
and is discouraged. Replace by TLS1+ unless the latter
chokes your server.
'TLS1+'
Since v6.4.0. See 'auto'.
'TLS1.1'
Since v6.4.0. Require TLS v1.1 exactly.
'TLS1.1+'
Since v6.4.0. Require TLS. Auto-negotiate TLSv1.1 or
newer.
'TLS1.2'
Since v6.4.0. Require TLS v1.2 exactly.
'TLS1.3'
Since v6.4.0. Require TLS v1.3 exactly.
'TLS1.3+'
Since v6.4.0. Require TLS. Auto-negotiate TLSv1.3 or
newer.
Unrecognized parameters
are treated the same as 'auto'.
NOTE: you should hardly ever need to use anything other than ''
(to force an unencrypted connection) or 'auto' (to enforce TLS).
--sslcertck
(Keyword: sslcertck, default enabled since v6.4.0)
--sslcertck causes fetchmail to require that SSL/TLS be used and
disconnect unless it can successfully negotiate SSL or TLS, or
if it cannot successfully verify and validate the certificate
and follow it to a trust anchor (or trusted root certificate).
The trust anchors are given as a set of local trusted certifi-
cates (see the sslcertfile and sslcertpath options). If the
server certificate cannot be obtained or is not signed by one of
the trusted ones (directly or indirectly), fetchmail will dis-
connect, regardless of the sslfingerprint option.
--nosslcertck
(Keyword: no sslcertck, only in v6.4.X)
The opposite of --sslcertck, this is a discouraged option. It
permits fetchmail to continue connecting even if the server cer-
tificate failed the verification checks. Should only be used
together with --sslfingerprint.
--sslcertfile <file>
(Keyword: sslcertfile, since v6.3.17)
Sets the file fetchmail uses to look up local certificates. The
default is empty. This can be given in addition to --sslcert-
path below, and certificates specified in --sslcertfile will be
processed before those in --sslcertpath. The option can be used
in addition to --sslcertpath.
The file is a text file. It contains the concatenation of
trusted CA certificates in PEM format.
Note that using this option will suppress loading the default
SSL trusted CA certificates file unless you set the environment
variable FETCHMAIL_INCLUDE_DEFAULT_X509_CA_CERTS to a non-empty
value.
--sslcertpath <directory>
(Keyword: sslcertpath)
Sets the directory fetchmail uses to look up local certificates.
The default is your OpenSSL default directory. The directory
must be hashed the way OpenSSL expects it - every time you add
or modify a certificate in the directory, you need to use the
c_rehash tool (which comes with OpenSSL in the tools/ sub-direc-
tory). Also, after OpenSSL upgrades, you may need to run c_re-
hash.
This can be given in addition to --sslcertfile above, which see
for precedence rules.
Note that using this option will suppress adding the default SSL
trusted CA certificates directory unless you set the environment
variable FETCHMAIL_INCLUDE_DEFAULT_X509_CA_CERTS to a non-empty
value.
--sslcommonname <common name>
(Keyword: sslcommonname; since v6.3.9)
Use of this option is discouraged. Before using it, contact the
administrator of your upstream server and ask for a proper SSL
certificate to be used. If that cannot be attained, this option
can be used to specify the name (CommonName) that fetchmail ex-
pects on the server certificate. A correctly configured server
will have this set to the host name by which it is reached, and
by default fetchmail will expect as much. Use this option when
the CommonName is set to some other value, to avoid the "Server
CommonName mismatch" warning, and only if the upstream server's
operator cannot be made to use proper certificates.
--sslfingerprint <fingerprint>
(Keyword: sslfingerprint)
Specify the fingerprint of the server key (an MD5 hash of the
key) in hexadecimal notation with colons separating groups of
two digits. The letter hex digits must be in upper case. This is
the format that fetchmail uses to report the fingerprint when an
SSL connection is established. When this is specified, fetchmail
will compare the server key fingerprint with the given one, and
the connection will fail if they do not match, regardless of the
sslcertck setting. The connection will also fail if fetchmail
cannot obtain an SSL certificate from the server. This can be
used to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, but the finger print
from the server must be obtained or verified over a secure chan-
nel, and certainly not over the same Internet connection that
fetchmail would use.
Using this option will prevent printing certificate verification
errors as long as --nosslcertck is in effect.
To obtain the fingerprint of a certificate stored in the file
cert.pem, try:
openssl x509 -in cert.pem -noout -md5 -fingerprint
For details, see x509(1ssl).
Delivery Control Options
-S <hosts> | --smtphost <hosts>
(Keyword: smtp[host])
Specify a hunt list of hosts to forward mail to (one or more
host names, comma-separated). Hosts are tried in list order; the
first one that is up becomes the forwarding target for the cur-
rent run. If this option is not specified, 'localhost' is used
as the default. Each host name may have a port number following
the host name. The port number is separated from the host name
by a slash; the default port is "smtp". If you specify an abso-
lute path name (beginning with a /), it will be interpreted as
the name of a UNIX socket accepting LMTP connections (such as is
supported by the Cyrus IMAP daemon) Example:
--smtphost server1,server2/2525,server3,/var/imap/socket/lmtp
This option can be used with ODMR, and will make fetchmail a re-
lay between the ODMR server and SMTP or LMTP receiver.
WARNING: if you use address numeric IP addresses here, be sure
to use --smtpaddress or --smtpname (either of which see) with a
valid SMTP address literal!
--fetchdomains <hosts>
(Keyword: fetchdomains)
In ETRN or ODMR mode, this option specifies the list of domains
the server should ship mail for once the connection is turned
around. The default is the FQDN of the machine running fetch-
mail.
-D <domain> | --smtpaddress <domain>
(Keyword: smtpaddress)
Specify the domain to be appended to addresses in RCPT TO lines
shipped to SMTP. When this is not specified, the name of the
SMTP server (as specified by --smtphost) is used for SMTP/LMTP
and 'localhost' is used for UNIX socket/BSMTP.
NOTE: if you intend to use numeric addresses, or so-called ad-
dress literals per the SMTP standard, write them in proper SMTP
syntax, for instance --smtpaddress "[192.0.2.6]" or --smtpad-
dress "[IPv6:2001:DB8::6]".
--smtpname <user@domain>
(Keyword: smtpname)
Specify the domain and user to be put in RCPT TO lines shipped
to SMTP. The default user is the current local user. Please
also see the NOTE about --smtpaddress and address literals
above.
-Z <nnn> | --antispam <nnn[, nnn]...>
(Keyword: antispam)
Specifies the list of numeric SMTP errors that are to be inter-
preted as a spam-block response from the listener. A value of
-1 disables this option. For the command-line option, the list
values should be comma-separated. Note that the antispam values
only apply to "MAIL FROM" responses in the SMTP/LMTP dialogue,
but several MTAs (Postfix in its default configuration, qmail)
defer the anti-spam response code until after the RCPT TO. --an-
tispam does not work in these circumstances. Also see --soft-
bounce (default) and its inverse.
-m <command> | --mda <command>
(Keyword: mda)
This option lets fetchmail use a Message or Local Delivery Agent
(MDA or LDA) directly, rather than forward via SMTP or LMTP.
To avoid losing mail, use this option only with MDAs like mail-
drop or MTAs like sendmail that exit with a nonzero status on
disk-full and other delivery errors; the nonzero status tells
fetchmail that delivery failed and prevents the message from be-
ing deleted on the server.
If fetchmail is running as root, it sets its user id while de-
livering mail through an MDA as follows: First, the FETCH-
MAILUSER, LOGNAME, and USER environment variables are checked in
this order. The value of the first variable from his list that
is defined (even if it is empty!) is looked up in the system
user database. If none of the variables is defined, fetchmail
will use the real user id it was started with. If one of the
variables was defined, but the user stated there is not found,
fetchmail continues running as root, without checking remaining
variables on the list. Practically, this means that if you run
fetchmail as root (not recommended), it is most useful to define
the FETCHMAILUSER environment variable to set the user that the
MDA should run as. Some MDAs (such as maildrop) are designed to
be setuid root and setuid to the recipient's user id, so you do
not lose functionality this way even when running fetchmail as
unprivileged user. Check the MDA's manual for details.
Some possible MDAs are "/usr/sbin/sendmail -i -f %F -- %T"
(Note: some several older or vendor sendmail versions mistake --
for an address, rather than an indicator to mark the end of the
option arguments), "/usr/bin/deliver" and "/usr/bin/maildrop -d
%T". Local delivery addresses will be inserted into the MDA
command wherever you place a %T; the mail message's From address
will be inserted where you place an %F.
Do NOT enclose the %F or %T string in single quotes! For both
%T and %F, fetchmail encloses the addresses in single quotes
('), after removing any single quotes they may contain, before
the MDA command is passed to the shell.
Do NOT use an MDA invocation that dispatches on the contents of
To/Cc/Bcc, like "sendmail -i -t" or "qmail-inject", it will cre-
ate mail loops and bring the just wrath of many postmasters down
upon your head. This is one of the most frequent configuration
errors!
Also, do not try to combine multidrop mode with an MDA such as
maildrop that can only accept one address, unless your upstream
stores one copy of the message per recipient and transports the
envelope recipient in a header; you will lose mail.
The well-known procmail(1) package is very hard to configure
properly, it has a very nasty "fall through to the next rule"
behavior on delivery errors (even temporary ones, such as out of
disk space if another user's mail daemon copies the mailbox
around to purge old messages), so your mail will end up in the
wrong mailbox sooner or later. The proper procmail configuration
is outside the scope of this document. Using maildrop(1) is usu-
ally much easier, and many users find the filter syntax used by
maildrop easier to understand.
Finally, we strongly advise that you do not use qmail-inject.
The command line interface is non-standard without providing
benefits for typical use, and fetchmail makes no attempts to ac-
commodate qmail-inject's deviations from the standard. Some of
qmail-inject's command-line and environment options are actually
dangerous and can cause broken threads, non-detected duplicate
messages and forwarding loops.
--lmtp (Keyword: lmtp)
Cause delivery via LMTP (Local Mail Transfer Protocol). A ser-
vice host and port must be explicitly specified on each host in
the smtphost hunt list (see above) if this option is selected;
the default port 25 will (in accordance with RFC 2033) not be
accepted.
--bsmtp <filename>
(Keyword: bsmtp)
Append fetched mail to a BSMTP file. This simply contains the
SMTP commands that would normally be generated by fetchmail when
passing mail to an SMTP listener daemon.
An argument of '-' causes the SMTP batch to be written to stan-
dard output, which is of limited use: this only makes sense for
debugging, because fetchmail's regular output is interspersed on
the same channel, so this is not suitable for mail delivery.
This special mode may be removed in a later release.
Note that fetchmail's reconstruction of MAIL FROM and RCPT TO
lines is not guaranteed correct; the caveats discussed under THE
USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP MAILBOXES below apply. This mode has
precedence before --mda and SMTP/LMTP.
--bad-header {reject|accept}
(Keyword: bad-header; since v6.3.15)
Specify how fetchmail is supposed to treat messages with bad
headers, i.e., headers with bad syntax. Traditionally, fetchmail
has rejected such messages, but some distributors modified
fetchmail to accept them. You can now configure fetchmail's be-
haviour per server.
Resource Limit Control Options
-l <maxbytes> | --limit <maxbytes>
(Keyword: limit)
Takes a maximum octet size argument, where 0 is the default and
also the special value designating "no limit". If nonzero, mes-
sages larger than this size will not be fetched and will be left
on the server (in foreground sessions, the progress messages
will note that they are "oversized"). If the fetch protocol
permits (in particular, under IMAP or POP3 without the fetchall
option) the message will not be marked seen.
An explicit --limit of 0 overrides any limits set in your run
control file. This option is intended for those needing to
strictly control fetch time due to expensive and variable phone
rates.
Combined with --limitflush, it can be used to delete oversized
messages waiting on a server. In daemon mode, oversize notifi-
cations are mailed to the calling user (see the --warnings op-
tion). This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
-w <interval> | --warnings <interval>
(Keyword: warnings)
Takes an interval in seconds. When you call fetchmail with a
'limit' option in daemon mode, this controls the interval at
which warnings about oversized messages are mailed to the call-
ing user (or the user specified by the 'postmaster' option).
One such notification is always mailed at the end of the first
poll that the oversized message is detected. Thereafter, re-no-
tification is suppressed until after the warning interval
elapses (it will take place at the end of the first following
poll).
-b <count> | --batchlimit <count>
(Keyword: batchlimit)
Specify the maximum number of messages that will be shipped to
an SMTP listener before the connection is deliberately torn down
and rebuilt (defaults to 0, meaning no limit). An explicit
--batchlimit of 0 overrides any limits set in your run control
file. While sendmail(8) normally initiates delivery of a mes-
sage immediately after receiving the message terminator, some
SMTP listeners are not so prompt. MTAs like smail(8) may wait
till the delivery socket is shut down to deliver. This may pro-
duce annoying delays when fetchmail is processing very large
batches. Setting the batch limit to some nonzero size will pre-
vent these delays. This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
-B <number> | --fetchlimit <number>
(Keyword: fetchlimit)
Limit the number of messages accepted from a given server in a
single poll. By default there is no limit. An explicit --fetch-
limit of 0 overrides any limits set in your run control file.
This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
--fetchsizelimit <number>
(Keyword: fetchsizelimit)
Limit the number of sizes of messages accepted from a given
server in a single transaction. This option is useful in reduc-
ing the delay in downloading the first mail when there are too
many mails in the mailbox. By default, the limit is 100. If
set to 0, sizes of all messages are downloaded at the start.
This option does not work with ETRN or ODMR. For POP3, the only
valid non-zero value is 1.
--fastuidl <number>
(Keyword: fastuidl)
Do a binary instead of linear search for the first unseen UID.
Binary search avoids downloading the UIDs of all mails. This
saves time (especially in daemon mode) where downloading the
same set of UIDs in each poll is a waste of bandwidth. The num-
ber 'n' indicates how rarely a linear search should be done. In
daemon mode, linear search is used once followed by binary
searches in 'n-1' polls if 'n' is greater than 1; binary search
is always used if 'n' is 1; linear search is always used if 'n'
is 0. In non-daemon mode, binary search is used if 'n' is 1;
otherwise linear search is used. The default value of 'n' is 4.
This option works with POP3 only.
-e <count> | --expunge <count>
(Keyword: expunge)
Arrange for deletions to be made final after a given number of
messages. Under POP2 or POP3, fetchmail cannot make deletions
final without sending QUIT and ending the session -- with this
option on, fetchmail will break a long mail retrieval session
into multiple sub-sessions, sending QUIT after each sub-session.
This is a good defense against line drops on POP3 servers. Un-
der IMAP, fetchmail normally issues an EXPUNGE command after
each deletion in order to force the deletion to be done immedi-
ately. This is safest when your connection to the server is
flaky and expensive, as it avoids re-sending duplicate mail af-
ter a line hit. However, on large mailboxes the overhead of re-
indexing after every message can slam the server pretty hard, so
if your connection is reliable it is good to do expunges less
frequently. Also note that some servers enforce a delay of a
few seconds after each quit, so fetchmail may not be able to get
back in immediately after an expunge -- you may see "lock busy"
errors if this happens. If you specify this option to an integer
N, it tells fetchmail to only issue expunges on every Nth
delete. An argument of zero suppresses expunges entirely (so no
expunges at all will be done until the end of run). This option
does not work with ETRN or ODMR.
Authentication Options
-u <name> | --user <name> | --username <name>
(Keyword: user[name])
Specifies the user identification to be used when logging in to
the mail server. The appropriate user identification is both
server and user-dependent. The default is your login name on
the client machine that is running fetchmail. See USER AUTHEN-
TICATION below for a complete description.
-I <specification> | --interface <specification>
(Keyword: interface)
Require that a specific interface device be up and have a spe-
cific local or remote IPv4 (IPv6 is not supported by this option
yet) address (or range) before polling. Frequently fetchmail is
used over a transient point-to-point TCP/IP link established di-
rectly to a mail server via SLIP or PPP. That is a relatively
secure channel. But when other TCP/IP routes to the mail server
exist (e.g., when the link is connected to an alternate ISP),
your username and password may be vulnerable to snooping (espe-
cially when daemon mode automatically polls for mail, shipping a
clear password over the net at predictable intervals). The
--interface option may be used to prevent this. When the speci-
fied link is not up or is not connected to a matching IP ad-
dress, polling will be skipped. The format is:
interface/iii.iii.iii.iii[/mmm.mmm.mmm.mmm]
The field before the first slash is the interface name (i.e.,
sl0, ppp0 etc.). The field before the second slash is the ac-
ceptable IP address. The field after the second slash is a mask
which specifies a range of IP addresses to accept. If no mask
is present 255.255.255.255 is assumed (i.e., an exact match).
This option is currently only supported under Linux and FreeBSD.
Please see the monitor section for below for FreeBSD specific
information.
Note that this option may be removed from a future fetchmail
version.
-M <interface> | --monitor <interface>
(Keyword: monitor)
Daemon mode can cause transient links which are automatically
taken down after a period of inactivity (e.g., PPP links) to re-
main up indefinitely. This option identifies a system TCP/IP
interface to be monitored for activity. After each poll inter-
val, if the link is up but no other activity has occurred on the
link, then the poll will be skipped. However, when fetchmail is
woken up by a signal, the monitor check is skipped and the poll
goes through unconditionally. This option is currently only
supported under Linux and FreeBSD. For the monitor and inter-
face options to work for non root users under FreeBSD, the
fetchmail binary must be installed setgid kmem. This would be a
security hole, but fetchmail runs with the effective GID set to
that of the kmem group only when interface data is being col-
lected.
Note that this option may be removed from a future fetchmail
version.
--auth <type>
(Keyword: auth[enticate])
This option permits you to specify an authentication type (see
USER AUTHENTICATION below for details). The possible values are
any, password, kerberos_v5, kerberos (or, for excruciating ex-
actness, kerberos_v4), gssapi, cram-md5, otp, ntlm, msn (only
for POP3), external (only IMAP) and ssh. When any (the default)
is specified, fetchmail tries first methods that do not require
a password (EXTERNAL, GSSAPI, KERBEROS IV, KERBEROS 5); then it
looks for methods that mask your password (CRAM-MD5, NTLM, X-OTP
- note that MSN is only supported for POP3, but not auto-
probed); and only if the server does not support any of those
will it ship your password unencrypted. Other values may be
used to force various authentication methods: ssh suppresses au-
thentication and is thus useful for IMAP PREAUTH (if you are us-
ing a secure --plugin, for instance, a properly configured ssh,
you may also need to set --sslproto '' or, in the rcfile, ssl-
proto '', in order to avoid fetchmail negotiating STARTTLS over
SSH). external suppresses authentication and is thus useful for
IMAP EXTERNAL. Any value other than password, cram-md5, ntlm,
msn or otp suppresses fetchmail's normal inquiry for a password.
Specify ssh when you are using an end-to-end secure connection
such as an ssh tunnel (in this case you may also want to specify
--sslproto '', which see); specify external when you use TLS
with client authentication and specify gssapi or kerberos_v4 if
you are using a protocol variant that employs GSSAPI or K4.
Choosing KPOP protocol automatically selects Kerberos authenti-
cation. This option does not work with ETRN. GSSAPI service
names are in line with RFC-2743 and IANA registrations, see
Generic Security Service Application Program Interface
(GSSAPI)/Kerberos/Simple Authentication and Security Layer
(SASL) Service Names ⟨https://www.iana.org/assignments/gssapi-
service-names/⟩.
Miscellaneous Options
-f <pathname> | --fetchmailrc <pathname>
Specify a non-default name for the ~/.fetchmailrc run control
file. The pathname argument must be either "-" (a single dash,
meaning to read the configuration from standard input) or a
filename. Unless the --version option is also on, a named file
argument must have permissions no more open than 0700
(u=rwx,g=,o=) or else be /dev/null.
-i <pathname> | --idfile <pathname>
(Keyword: idfile)
Specify an alternate name for the .fetchids file used to save
message UIDs. NOTE: since fetchmail 6.3.0, write access to the
directory containing the idfile is required, as fetchmail writes
a temporary file and renames it into the place of the real id-
file only if the temporary file has been written successfully.
This avoids the truncation of idfiles when running out of disk
space.
--pidfile <pathname>
(Keyword: pidfile; since fetchmail v6.3.4)
Override the default location of the PID file that is used as a
lock file. Default: see "ENVIRONMENT" below. Note that many
places in the code and documentation, the term "lock file" is
used. This file contains the process ID of the running fetch-
mail on the first line and potentially the daemon interval on a
second line.
-n | --norewrite
(Keyword: no rewrite)
Normally, fetchmail edits RFC-822 address headers (To, From, Cc,
Bcc, and Reply-To) in fetched mail so that any mail IDs local to
the server are expanded to full addresses (@ and the mail server
host name are appended). This enables replies on the client to
get addressed correctly (otherwise your mailer might think they
should be addressed to local users on the client machine!).
This option disables the rewrite. (This option is provided to
pacify people who are paranoid about having an MTA edit mail
headers and want to know they can prevent it, but it is gener-
ally not a good idea to actually turn off rewrite.) When using
ETRN or ODMR, the rewrite option is ineffective.
-E <line> | --envelope <line>
(Keyword: envelope; Multidrop only)
In the configuration file, an enhanced syntax is used:
envelope [<count>] <line>
This option changes the header fetchmail assumes will carry a
copy of the mail's envelope address. Normally this is 'X-Enve-
lope-To'. Other typically found headers to carry envelope in-
formation are 'X-Original-To' and 'Delivered-To'. Now, since
these headers are not standardized, practice varies. See the
discussion of multidrop address handling below. As a special
case, 'envelope "Received"' enables parsing of sendmail-style
Received lines. This is the default, but discouraged because it
is not fully reliable.
Note that fetchmail expects the Received-line to be in a spe-
cific format: It must contain "by host for address", where host
must match one of the mail server names that fetchmail recog-
nizes for the account in question.
The optional count argument (only available in the configuration
file) determines how many header lines of this kind are skipped.
A count of 1 means: skip the first, take the second. A count of
2 means: skip the first and second, take the third, and so on.
-Q <prefix> | --qvirtual <prefix>
(Keyword: qvirtual; Multidrop only)
The string prefix assigned to this option will be removed from
the user name found in the header specified with the envelope
option (before doing multidrop name mapping or localdomain
checking, if either is applicable). This option is useful if you
are using fetchmail to collect the mail for an entire domain and
your ISP (or your mail redirection provider) is using qmail.
One of the basic features of qmail is the Delivered-To: message
header. Whenever qmail delivers a message to a local mailbox it
puts the username and host name of the envelope recipient on
this line. The major reason for this is to prevent mail loops.
To set up qmail to batch mail for a disconnected site the ISP-
mailhost will have normally put that site in its 'Virtualhosts'
control file so it will add a prefix to all mail addresses for
this site. This results in mail sent to 'username@userhost.user-
dom.dom.com' having a Delivered-To: line of the form:
Delivered-To: mbox-userstr-username@userhost.example.com
The ISP can make the 'mbox-userstr-' prefix anything they choose
but a string matching the user host name is likely. By using
the option 'envelope Delivered-To:' you can make fetchmail reli-
ably identify the original envelope recipient, but you have to
strip the 'mbox-userstr-' prefix to deliver to the correct user.
This is what this option is for.
--configdump
Parse the ~/.fetchmailrc file, interpret any command-line op-
tions specified, and dump a configuration report to standard
output. The configuration report is a data structure assignment
in the language Python. This option is meant to be used with an
interactive ~/.fetchmailrc editor like fetchmailconf, written in
Python.
-y | --yydebug
Enables parser debugging, this option is meant to be used by de-
velopers only.
Removed Options
-T | --netsec
Removed before version 6.3.0, the required underlying inet6_apps
library had been discontinued and is no longer available.
USER AUTHENTICATION AND ENCRYPTION
All modes except ETRN require authentication of the client to the
server. Normal user authentication in fetchmail is very much like the
authentication mechanism of ftp(1). The correct user-id and password
depend upon the underlying security system at the mail server.
If the mail server is a Unix machine on which you have an ordinary user
account, your regular login name and password are used with fetchmail.
If you use the same login name on both the server and the client ma-
chines, you needn't worry about specifying a user-id with the -u option
-- the default behavior is to use your login name on the client machine
as the user-id on the server machine. If you use a different login
name on the server machine, specify that login name with the -u option.
E.g., if your login name is 'jsmith' on a machine named 'mailgrunt',
you would start fetchmail as follows:
fetchmail -u jsmith mailgrunt
The default behavior of fetchmail is to prompt you for your mail server
password before the connection is established. This is the safest way
to use fetchmail and ensures that your password will not be compro-
mised. You may also specify your password in your ~/.fetchmailrc file.
This is convenient when using fetchmail in daemon mode or with scripts.
Using netrc files
If you do not specify a password, and fetchmail cannot extract one from
your ~/.fetchmailrc file, it will look for a ~/.netrc file in your home
directory before requesting one interactively; if an entry matching the
mail server is found in that file, the password will be used. Fetch-
mail first looks for a match on poll name; if it finds none, it checks
for a match on via name. See the ftp(1) man page for details of the
syntax of the ~/.netrc file. To show a practical example, a .netrc
might look like this:
machine hermes.example.org
login joe
password topsecret
You can repeat this block with different user information if you need
to provide more than one password.
This feature may allow you to avoid duplicating password information in
more than one file.
On mail servers that do not provide ordinary user accounts, your user-
id and password are usually assigned by the server administrator when
you apply for a mailbox on the server. Contact your server administra-
tor if you do not know the correct user-id and password for your mail-
box account.
Secure Socket Layers (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS)
All retrieval protocols can use SSL or TLS wrapping for the transport.
Additionally, POP3 and IMAP retrieval can also negotiate SSL/TLS by
means of STARTTLS (or STLS).
You can access TLS-encrypted services by specifying the options start-
ing with --ssl, such as --ssl, --sslproto, --sslcertck, and others.
You can also do this using the corresponding user options in the
.fetchmailrc file. Some services, such as POP3 and IMAP, have differ-
ent well known ports defined for the SSL encrypted services. The en-
crypted ports will be selected automatically when SSL is enabled and no
explicit port is specified. Also, the --sslcertck command line or
sslcertck run control file option should be used to force strict cer-
tificate checking with older fetchmail versions - see below.
If TLS or SSL is not configured, fetchmail will usually still try to
use STARTTLS somewhat opportunistically. In practice, is it still
mandatory because --sslcertck is a default setting and implicitly re-
quires STARTTLS.
STARTTLS can be enforced by using --sslproto auto and defeated by using
--sslproto ''. STARTTLS connections use the same port as the unen-
crypted version of the protocol and negotiate TLS via special command.
The --sslcertck command line or sslcertck run control file option
should be used to force strict certificate checking - see below.
--sslcertck is recommended: When connecting to an SSL or TLS encrypted
server, the server presents a certificate to the client for validation.
The certificate is checked to verify that the common name in the cer-
tificate matches the name of the server being contacted and that the
effective and expiration dates in the certificate indicate that it is
currently valid. If any of these checks fail, a warning message is
printed, but the connection continues. The server certificate does not
need to be signed by any specific Certifying Authority and may be a
"self-signed" certificate. If the --sslcertck command line option or
sslcertck run control file option is used, fetchmail will instead abort
if any of these checks fail, because it must assume that there is a
man-in-the-middle attack in this scenario, hence fetchmail must not ex-
pose clear-text passwords. Use of the sslcertck or --sslcertck option
is therefore advised; it has become the default in fetchmail 6.4.0.
Some SSL encrypted servers may request a client side certificate. A
client side public SSL certificate and private SSL key may be speci-
fied. If requested by the server, the client certificate is sent to
the server for validation. Some servers may require a valid client
certificate and may refuse connections if a certificate is not provided
or if the certificate is not valid. Some servers may require client
side certificates be signed by a recognized Certifying Authority. The
format for the key files and the certificate files is that required by
the underlying SSL libraries (OpenSSL in the general case).
A word of care about the use of SSL: While above mentioned setup with
self-signed server certificates retrieved over the wires can protect
you from a passive eavesdropper, it does not help against an active at-
tacker. It is clearly an improvement over sending the passwords in
clear, but you should be aware that a man-in-the-middle attack is triv-
ially possible (in particular with tools such as dsniff
⟨https://monkey.org/~dugsong/dsniff/⟩). Use of strict certificate
checking with a certification authority recognized by server and
client, or perhaps of an SSH tunnel (see below for some examples) is
preferable if you care seriously about the security of your mailbox and
passwords.
POP3 VARIANTS
Early versions of POP3 (RFC1081, RFC1225) supported a crude form of in-
dependent authentication using the .rhosts file on the mail server
side. Under this RPOP variant, a fixed per-user ID equivalent to a
password was sent in clear over a link to a reserved port, with the
command RPOP rather than PASS to alert the server that it should do
special checking. RPOP is supported by fetchmail (you can specify
'protocol RPOP' to have the program send 'RPOP' rather than 'PASS') but
its use is strongly discouraged, and support will be removed from a fu-
ture fetchmail version. This facility was vulnerable to spoofing and
was withdrawn in RFC1460.
RFC1460 introduced APOP authentication. In this variant of POP3, you
register an APOP password on your server host (on some servers, the
program to do this is called popauth(8)). You put the same password in
your ~/.fetchmailrc file. Each time fetchmail logs in, it sends an MD5
hash of your password and the server greeting time to the server, which
can verify it by checking its authorization database.
Note that APOP is no longer considered resistant against man-in-the-
middle attacks.
RETR or TOP
fetchmail makes some efforts to make the server believe messages had
not been retrieved, by using the TOP command with a large number of
lines when possible. TOP is a command that retrieves the full header
and a fetchmail-specified amount of body lines. It is optional and
therefore not implemented by all servers, and some are known to imple-
ment it improperly. On many servers however, the RETR command which re-
trieves the full message with header and body, sets the "seen" flag
(for instance, in a web interface), whereas the TOP command does not do
that.
fetchmail will always use the RETR command if "fetchall" is set.
fetchmail will also use the RETR command if "keep" is set and "uidl" is
unset. Finally, fetchmail will use the RETR command on Maillennium
POP3/PROXY servers (used by Comcast) to avoid a deliberate TOP misin-
terpretation in this server that causes message corruption.
In all other cases, fetchmail will use the TOP command. This implies
that in "keep" setups, "uidl" must be set if "TOP" is desired.
Note that this description is true for the current version of fetch-
mail, but the behavior may change in future versions. In particular,
fetchmail may prefer the RETR command because the TOP command causes
much grief on some servers and is only optional.
ALTERNATE AUTHENTICATION FORMS/METHODS
If your fetchmail was built with Kerberos support and you specify Ker-
beros authentication (either with --auth or the .fetchmailrc option au-
thenticate kerberos_v4) it will try to get a Kerberos ticket from the
mail server at the start of each query. Note: if either the pollname
or via name is 'hesiod', fetchmail will try to use Hesiod to look up
the mail server.
If you use POP3 or IMAP with GSSAPI authentication, fetchmail will ex-
pect the server to have RFC1731- or RFC1734-conforming GSSAPI capabil-
ity, and will use it. Currently this has only been tested over Ker-
beros 5, so you are expected to already have a ticket-granting ticket.
You may pass a username different from your principal name using the
standard --user command or by the .fetchmailrc option user.
If your IMAP daemon returns the PREAUTH response in its greeting line,
fetchmail will notice this and skip the normal authentication step.
This can be useful, e.g., if you start imapd explicitly using ssh. In
this case you can declare the authentication value 'ssh' on that site
entry to stop .fetchmail from asking you for a password when it starts
up.
If you use client authentication with TLS1 and your IMAP daemon returns
the AUTH=EXTERNAL response, fetchmail will notice this and will use the
authentication shortcut and will not send the passphrase. In this case
you can declare the authentication value 'external'
on that site to stop fetchmail from asking you for a password when it
starts up.
If you are using POP3, and the server issues a one-time-password chal-
lenge conforming to RFC1938, fetchmail will use your password as a pass
phrase to generate the required response. This avoids sending secrets
over the net unencrypted.
Compuserve's RPA authentication is supported. If you compile in the
support, fetchmail will try to perform an RPA pass-phrase authentica-
tion instead of sending over the password unencrypted if it detects
"@compuserve.com" in the host name.
If you are using IMAP, Microsoft's NTLM authentication (used by Micro-
soft Exchange) is supported. If you compile in the support, fetchmail
will try to perform an NTLM authentication (instead of sending over the
password unencrypted) whenever the server returns AUTH=NTLM in its ca-
pability response. Specify a user option value that looks like
'user@domain': the part to the left of the @ will be passed as the
username and the part to the right as the NTLM domain.
ESMTP AUTH
fetchmail also supports authentication to the ESMTP server on the
client side according to RFC 2554. You can specify a name/password
pair to be used with the keywords 'esmtpname' and 'esmtppassword'; the
former defaults to the username of the calling user.
DAEMON MODE
Introducing the daemon mode
In daemon mode, fetchmail puts itself into the background and runs for-
ever, querying each specified host and then sleeping for a given
polling interval.
Starting the daemon mode
There are several ways to make fetchmail work in daemon mode. On the
command line, --daemon <interval> or -d <interval> option runs fetch-
mail in daemon mode. You must specify a numeric argument which is a
polling interval (time to wait after completing a whole poll cycle with
the last server and before starting the next poll cycle with the first
server) in seconds.
Example: simply invoking
fetchmail -d 900
will, therefore, poll all the hosts described in your ~/.fetchmailrc
file (except those explicitly excluded with the 'skip' verb) a bit less
often than once every 15 minutes (exactly: 15 minutes + time that the
poll takes).
It is also possible to set a polling interval in your ~/.fetchmailrc
file by saying 'set daemon <interval>', where <interval> is an integer
number of seconds. If you do this, fetchmail will always start in dae-
mon mode unless you override it with the command-line option --daemon 0
or -d0.
Only one daemon process is permitted per user; in daemon mode, fetch-
mail sets up a per-user lock file to guarantee this. (You can however
cheat and set the FETCHMAILHOME environment variable to overcome this
setting, but in that case, it is your responsibility to make sure you
are not polling the same server with two processes at the same time.)
Awakening the background daemon
Normally, calling fetchmail with a daemon in the background sends a
wake-up signal to the daemon and quits without output. The background
daemon then starts its next poll cycle immediately. The wake-up sig-
nal, SIGUSR1, can also be sent manually. The wake-up action also clears
any 'wedged' flags indicating that connections have wedged due to
failed authentication or multiple timeouts.
Terminating the background daemon
The option -q or --quit will kill a running daemon process instead of
waking it up (if there is no such process, fetchmail will notify you).
If the --quit option appears last on the command line, fetchmail will
kill the running daemon process and then quit. Otherwise, fetchmail
will first kill a running daemon process and then continue running with
the other options.
Useful options for daemon mode
The -L <filename> or --logfile <filename> option (keyword: set logfile)
is only effective when fetchmail is detached and in daemon mode. Note
that the logfile must exist before fetchmail is run, you can use the
touch(1) command with the filename as its sole argument to create it.
This option allows you to redirect status messages into a specified
logfile (follow the option with the logfile name). The logfile is
opened for append, so previous messages are not deleted. This is pri-
marily useful for debugging configurations. Note that fetchmail does
not detect if the logfile is rotated, the logfile is only opened once
when fetchmail starts. You need to restart fetchmail after rotating the
logfile and before compressing it (if applicable).
The --syslog option (keyword: set syslog) allows you to redirect status
and error messages emitted to the syslog(3) system daemon if available.
Messages are logged with an id of fetchmail, the facility LOG_MAIL, and
priorities LOG_ERR, LOG_ALERT or LOG_INFO. This option is intended for
logging status and error messages which indicate the status of the dae-
mon and the results while fetching mail from the server(s). Error mes-
sages for command line options and parsing the .fetchmailrc file are
still written to stderr, or to the specified log file. The --nosyslog
option turns off use of syslog(3), assuming it is turned on in the
~/.fetchmailrc file. This option is overridden, in certain situations,
by --logfile (which see).
The -N or --nodetach option suppresses backgrounding and detachment of
the daemon process from its control terminal. This is useful for de-
bugging or when fetchmail runs as the child of a supervisor process
such as init(8) or Gerrit Pape's runit(8). Note that this also causes
the logfile option to be ignored.
Note that while running in daemon mode polling a POP2 or IMAP2bis
server, transient errors (such as DNS failures or sendmail delivery re-
fusals) may force the fetchall option on for the duration of the next
polling cycle. This is a robustness feature. It means that if a mes-
sage is fetched (and thus marked seen by the mail server) but not de-
livered locally due to some transient error, it will be re-fetched dur-
ing the next poll cycle. (The IMAP logic does not delete messages un-
til they are delivered, so this problem does not arise.)
If you touch or change the ~/.fetchmailrc file while fetchmail is run-
ning in daemon mode, this will be detected at the beginning of the next
poll cycle. When a changed ~/.fetchmailrc is detected, fetchmail
rereads it and restarts from scratch (using exec(2); no state informa-
tion is retained in the new instance). Note that if fetchmail needs to
query for passwords, of that if you break the ~/.fetchmailrc file's
syntax, the new instance will softly and silently vanish away on
startup.
ADMINISTRATIVE OPTIONS
The --postmaster <name> option (keyword: set postmaster) specifies the
last-resort username to which multidrop mail is to be forwarded if no
matching local recipient can be found. It is also used as destination
of undeliverable mail if the 'bouncemail' global option is off and ad-
ditionally for spam-blocked mail if the 'bouncemail' global option is
off and the 'spambounce' global option is on. This option defaults to
the user who invoked fetchmail. If the invoking user is root, then the
default of this option is the user 'postmaster'. Setting postmaster to
the empty string causes such mail as described above to be discarded -
this however is usually a bad idea. See also the description of the
'FETCHMAILUSER' environment variable in the ENVIRONMENT section below.
The --nobounce behaves like the "set no bouncemail" global option,
which see.
The --invisible option (keyword: set invisible) tries to make fetchmail
invisible. Normally, fetchmail behaves like any other MTA would -- it
generates a Received header into each message describing its place in
the chain of transmission, and tells the MTA it forwards to that the
mail came from the machine fetchmail itself is running on. If the in-
visible option is on, the Received header is suppressed and fetchmail
tries to spoof the MTA it forwards to into thinking it came directly
from the mail server host.
The --showdots option (keyword: set showdots) forces fetchmail to show
progress dots even if the output goes to a file or fetchmail is not in
verbose mode. Fetchmail shows the dots by default when run in --ver-
bose mode and output goes to console. This option is ignored in
--silent mode.
By specifying the --tracepolls option, you can ask fetchmail to add in-
formation to the Received header on the form "polling {label} account
{user}", where {label} is the account label (from the specified rcfile,
normally ~/.fetchmailrc) and {user} is the username which is used to
log on to the mail server. This header can be used to make filtering
email where no useful header information is available and you want mail
from different accounts sorted into different mailboxes (this could,
for example, occur if you have an account on the same server running a
mailing list, and are subscribed to the list using that account). The
default is not adding any such header. In .fetchmailrc, this is called
'tracepolls'.
RETRIEVAL FAILURE MODES
The protocols fetchmail uses to talk to mail servers are next to bul-
letproof. In normal operation forwarding to port 25, no message is
ever deleted (or even marked for deletion) on the host until the SMTP
listener on the client side has acknowledged to fetchmail that the mes-
sage has been either accepted for delivery or rejected due to a spam
block.
When forwarding to an MDA, however, there is more possibility of error.
Some MDAs are 'safe' and reliably return a nonzero status on any deliv-
ery error, even one due to temporary resource limits. The maildrop(1)
program is like this; so are most programs designed as mail transport
agents, such as sendmail(1), including the sendmail wrapper of Postfix
and exim(1). These programs give back a reliable positive acknowledge-
ment and can be used with the mda option with no risk of mail loss.
Unsafe MDAs, though, may return 0 even on delivery failure. If this
happens, you will lose mail.
The normal mode of fetchmail is to try to download only 'new' messages,
leaving untouched (and undeleted) messages you have already read di-
rectly on the server (or fetched with a previous fetchmail --keep).
But you may find that messages you have already read on the server are
being fetched (and deleted) even when you do not specify --all. There
are several reasons this can happen.
One could be that you are using POP2. The POP2 protocol includes no
representation of 'new' or 'old' state in messages, so fetchmail must
treat all messages as new all the time. But POP2 is obsolete, so this
is unlikely.
A potential POP3 problem might be servers that insert messages in the
middle of mailboxes (some VMS implementations of mail are rumored to do
this). The fetchmail code assumes that new messages are appended to
the end of the mailbox; when this is not true it may treat some old
messages as new and vice versa. Using UIDL whilst setting fastuidl 0
might fix this, otherwise, consider switching to IMAP.
Yet another POP3 problem is that if they cannot make temporary files in
the user's home directory, some POP3 servers will hand back an undocu-
mented response that causes fetchmail to spuriously report "No mail".
The IMAP code uses the presence or absence of the server flag \Seen to
decide whether or not a message is new. This is not the right thing to
do, fetchmail should check the UIDVALIDITY and use UID, but it does not
do that yet. Under Unix, it counts on your IMAP server to notice the
BSD-style Status flags set by mail user agents and set the \Seen flag
from them when appropriate. All Unix IMAP servers we know of do this,
though it is not specified by the IMAP RFCs. If you ever trip over a
server that does not, the symptom will be that messages you have al-
ready read on your host will look new to the server. In this (un-
likely) case, only messages you fetched with fetchmail --keep will be
both undeleted and marked old.
In ETRN and ODMR modes, fetchmail does not actually retrieve messages;
instead, it asks the server's SMTP listener to start a queue flush to
the client via SMTP. Therefore it sends only undelivered messages.
SPAM FILTERING
Many SMTP listeners allow administrators to set up 'spam filters' that
block unsolicited email from specified domains. A MAIL FROM or DATA
line that triggers this feature will elicit an SMTP response which (un-
fortunately) varies according to the listener.
Newer versions of sendmail return an error code of 571.
According to RFC2821, the correct thing to return in this situation is
550 "Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable" (the draft adds
"[E.g., mailbox not found, no access, or command rejected for policy
reasons].").
Older versions of the exim MTA return 501 "Syntax error in parameters
or arguments".
The postfix MTA runs 554 as an antispam response.
Zmailer may reject code with a 500 response (followed by an enhanced
status code that contains more information).
Return codes which fetchmail treats as antispam responses and discards
the message can be set with the 'antispam' option. This is one of the
only three circumstance under which fetchmail ever discards mail (the
others are the 552 and 553 errors described below, and the suppression
of multi-dropped messages with a message-ID already seen).
If fetchmail is fetching from an IMAP server, the antispam response
will be detected and the message rejected immediately after the headers
have been fetched, without reading the message body. Thus, you will
not pay for downloading spam message bodies.
By default, the list of antispam responses is empty.
If the spambounce global option is on, mail that is spam-blocked trig-
gers an RFC1892/RFC1894 bounce message informing the originator that we
do not accept mail from it. See also BUGS.
SMTP/ESMTP ERROR HANDLING
Besides the spam-blocking described above, fetchmail takes special ac-
tions — that may be modified by the --softbounce option — on the fol-
lowing SMTP/ESMTP error response codes
452 (insufficient system storage)
Leave the message in the server mailbox for later retrieval.
552 (message exceeds fixed maximum message size)
Delete the message from the server. Send bounce-mail to the orig-
inator.
553 (invalid sending domain)
Delete the message from the server. Do not even try to send
bounce-mail to the originator.
Other errors greater or equal to 500 trigger bounce mail back to the
originator, unless suppressed by --softbounce. See also BUGS.
THE RUN CONTROL FILE
The preferred way to set up fetchmail is to write a .fetchmailrc file
in your home directory (you may do this directly, with a text editor,
or indirectly via fetchmailconf). When there is a conflict between the
command-line arguments and the arguments in this file, the command-line
arguments take precedence.
To protect the security of your passwords, your ~/.fetchmailrc may not
normally have more than 0700 (u=rwx,g=,o=) permissions; fetchmail will
complain and exit otherwise (this check is suppressed when --version is
on).
You may read the .fetchmailrc file as a list of commands to be executed
when fetchmail is called with no arguments.
Run Control Syntax
Comments begin with a '#' and extend through the end of the line. Oth-
erwise the file consists of a series of server entries or global option
statements in a free-format, token-oriented syntax.
There are four kinds of tokens: grammar keywords, numbers (i.e., deci-
mal digit sequences), unquoted strings, and quoted strings. A quoted
string is bounded by double quotes and may contain whitespace (and
quoted digits are treated as a string). Note that quoted strings will
also contain line feed characters if they run across two or more lines,
unless you use a backslash to join lines (see below). An unquoted
string is any whitespace-delimited token that is neither numeric,
string quoted nor contains the special characters ',', ';', ':', or
'='.
Any amount of whitespace separates tokens in server entries, but is
otherwise ignored. You may use backslash escape sequences (\n for LF,
\t for HT, \b for BS, \r for CR, \nnn for decimal (where nnn cannot
start with a 0), \0ooo for octal, and \xhh for hex) to embed non-print-
able characters or string delimiters in strings. In quoted strings, a
backslash at the very end of a line will cause the backslash itself and
the line feed (LF or NL, new line) character to be ignored, so that you
can wrap long strings. Without the backslash at the line end, the line
feed character would become part of the string.
Warning: while these resemble C-style escape sequences, they are not
the same. fetchmail only supports these eight styles. C supports more
escape sequences that consist of backslash (\) and a single character,
but does not support decimal codes and does not require the leading 0
in octal notation. Example: fetchmail interprets \233 the same as \xE9
(Latin small letter e with acute), where C would interpret \233 as oc-
tal 0233 = \x9B (CSI, control sequence introducer).
Each server entry consists of one of the keywords 'poll' or 'skip',
followed by a server name, followed by server options, followed by any
number of user (or username) descriptions, followed by user options.
Note: the most common cause of syntax errors is mixing up user and
server options or putting user options before the user descriptions.
For backward compatibility, the word 'server' is a synonym for 'poll'.
You can use the noise keywords 'and', 'with', 'has', 'wants', and 'op-
tions' anywhere in an entry to make it resemble English. They are ig-
nored, but can make entries much easier to read at a glance. The punc-
tuation characters ':', ';' and ',' are also ignored.
Poll versus Skip
The 'poll' verb tells fetchmail to query this host when it is run with
no arguments. The 'skip' verb tells fetchmail not to poll this host
unless it is explicitly named on the command line. (The 'skip' verb
allows you to experiment with test entries safely, or easily disable
entries for hosts that are temporarily down.)
KEYWORD/OPTION SUMMARY
Here are the legal options. Keyword suffixes enclosed in square brack-
ets are optional. Those corresponding to short command-line options
are followed by '-' and the appropriate option letter. If option is
only relevant to a single mode of operation, it is noted as 's' or 'm'
for singledrop- or multidrop-mode, respectively.
Here are the legal global options:
Keyword Opt Mode Function
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
set daemon -d Set a background poll interval in
seconds.
set postmaster Give the name of the last-resort
mail recipient (default: user run-
ning fetchmail, "postmaster" if
run by the root user)
set bouncemail Direct error mail to the sender
(default)
set no bouncemail Direct error mail to the local
postmaster (as per the 'postmas-
ter' global option above).
set no spambounce Do not bounce spam-blocked mail
(default).
set spambounce Bounce blocked spam-blocked mail
(as per the 'antispam' user op-
tion) back to the destination as
indicated by the 'bouncemail'
global option. Warning: Do not
use this to bounce spam back to
the sender - most spam is sent
with false sender address and thus
this option hurts innocent by-
standers.
set no softbounce Delete permanently undeliverable
mail. It is recommended to use
this option if the configuration
has been thoroughly tested.
set softbounce Keep permanently undeliverable
mail as though a temporary error
had occurred (default).
set logfile -L Name of a file to append error and
status messages to. Only effec-
tive in daemon mode and if fetch-
mail detaches. If effective,
overrides set syslog.
set pidfile -p Name of the PID file.
set idfile -i Name of the file to store UID
lists in.
set syslog Do error logging through sys-
log(3). May be overridden by set
logfile.
set no syslog Turn off error logging through
syslog(3). (default)
set properties String value that is ignored by
fetchmail (may be used by exten-
sion scripts).
Here are the legal server options:
Keyword Opt Mode Function
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
via Specify DNS name of mail server,
overriding poll name
proto[col] -p Specify protocol (case insensi-
tive): POP2, POP3, IMAP, APOP,
KPOP
local[domains] m Specify domain(s) to be regarded
as local
port Specify TCP/IP service port (obso-
lete, use 'service' instead).
service -P Specify service name (a numeric
value is also allowed and consid-
ered a TCP/IP port number).
auth[enticate] Set authentication type (default
'any')
timeout -t Server inactivity timeout in sec-
onds (default 300)
envelope -E m Specify envelope-address header
name
no envelope m Disable looking for envelope ad-
dress
qvirtual -Q m Qmail virtual domain prefix to re-
move from user name
aka m Specify alternate DNS names of
mail server
interface -I specify IP interface(s) that must
be up for server poll to take
place
monitor -M Specify IP address to monitor for
activity
plugin Specify command through which to
make server connections.
plugout Specify command through which to
make listener connections.
dns m Enable DNS lookup for multidrop
(default)
no dns m Disable DNS lookup for multidrop
checkalias m Do comparison by IP address for
multidrop
no checkalias m Do comparison by name for mul-
tidrop (default)
uidl -U Force POP3 to use client-side
UIDLs (recommended)
no uidl Turn off POP3 use of client-side
UIDLs (default)
interval Only check this site every N poll
cycles; N is a numeric argument.
tracepolls Add poll tracing information to
the Received header
principal Set Kerberos principal (only use-
ful with IMAP and kerberos)
esmtpname Set name for RFC2554 authentica-
tion to the ESMTP server.
esmtppassword Set password for RFC2554 authenti-
cation to the ESMTP server.
bad-header How to treat messages with a bad
header. Can be reject (default) or
accept.
Here are the legal user descriptions and options:
Keyword Opt Mode Function
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
user[name] -u This is the user description and
must come first after server de-
scription and after possible
server options, and before user
options.
It sets the remote user name if by
itself or followed by 'there', or
the local user name if followed by
'here'.
is Connect local and remote user
names
to Connect local and remote user
names
pass[word] Specify remote account password
ssl Connect to server over the speci-
fied base protocol using SSL en-
cryption
sslcert Specify file for client side pub-
lic SSL certificate
sslcertck Enable strict certificate checking
and abort connection on failure.
Default only since fetchmail
v6.4.0.
no sslcertck Disable strict certificate check-
ing and permit connections to con-
tinue on failed verification. Dis-
couraged. Should only be used to-
gether with sslfingerprint.
sslcertfile Specify file with trusted CA cer-
tificates
sslcertpath Specify c_rehash-ed directory with
trusted CA certificates.
sslfingerprint Specify the ex-
pected server
certificate fin-
ger print from
an MD5 hash.
Fetchmail will
disconnect and
log an error if
it does not
match.
sslkey Specify file for client side pri-
vate SSL key
sslproto Force ssl protocol for connection
folder -r Specify remote folder to query
smtphost -S Specify smtp host(s) to forward to
fetchdomains m Specify domains for which mail
should be fetched
smtpaddress -D Specify the domain to be put in
RCPT TO lines
smtpname Specify the user and domain to be
put in RCPT TO lines
antispam -Z Specify what SMTP returns are in-
terpreted as spam-policy blocks
mda -m Specify MDA for local delivery
bsmtp Specify BSMTP batch file to append
to
preconnect Command to be executed before each
connection
postconnect Command to be executed after each
connection
keep -k Do not delete seen messages from
server (for POP3, uidl is recom-
mended)
flush -F Flush all seen messages before
querying (DANGEROUS)
limitflush Flush all oversized messages be-
fore querying
fetchall -a Fetch all messages whether seen or
not
rewrite Rewrite destination addresses for
reply (default)
stripcr Strip carriage returns from ends
of lines
forcecr Force carriage returns at ends of
lines
pass8bits Force BODY=8BITMIME to ESMTP lis-
tener
dropstatus Strip Status and X-Mozilla-Status
lines out of incoming mail
dropdelivered Strip Delivered-To lines out of
incoming mail
mimedecode Convert quoted-printable to 8-bit
in MIME messages
idle Idle waiting for new messages af-
ter each poll (IMAP only)
no keep -K Delete seen messages from server
(default)
no flush Do not flush all seen messages be-
fore querying (default)
no fetchall Retrieve only new messages (de-
fault)
no rewrite Do not rewrite headers
no stripcr Do not strip carriage returns (de-
fault)
no forcecr Do not force carriage returns at
EOL (default)
no pass8bits Do not force BODY=8BITMIME to
ESMTP listener (default)
no dropstatus Do not drop Status headers (de-
fault)
no dropdelivered Do not drop Delivered-To headers
(default)
no mimedecode Do not convert quoted-printable to
8-bit in MIME messages (default)
no idle Do not idle waiting for new mes-
sages after each poll (IMAP only)
limit -l Set message size limit
warnings -w Set message size warning interval
batchlimit -b Max # messages to forward in sin-
gle connect
fetchlimit -B Max # messages to fetch in single
connect
fetchsizelimit Max # message sizes to fetch in
single transaction
fastuidl Use binary search for first unseen
message (POP3 only)
expunge -e Perform an expunge on every #th
message (IMAP and POP3 only)
properties String value is ignored by fetch-
mail (may be used by extension
scripts)
All user options must begin with a user description (user or username
option) and follow all server descriptions and options.
In the .fetchmailrc file, the 'envelope' string argument may be pre-
ceded by a whitespace-separated number. This number, if specified, is
the number of such headers to skip over (that is, an argument of 1 se-
lects the second header of the given type). This is sometimes useful
for ignoring bogus envelope headers created by an ISP's local delivery
agent or internal forwards (through mail inspection systems, for in-
stance).
Keywords Not Corresponding To Option Switches
The 'folder' and 'smtphost' options (unlike their command-line equiva-
lents) can take a space- or comma-separated list of names following
them.
All options correspond to the obvious command-line arguments, except
the following: 'via', 'interval', 'aka', 'is', 'to', 'dns'/'no dns',
'checkalias'/'no checkalias', 'password', 'preconnect', 'postconnect',
'localdomains', 'stripcr'/'no stripcr', 'forcecr'/'no forcecr',
'pass8bits'/'no pass8bits' 'dropstatus/no dropstatus', 'dropdeliv-
ered/no dropdelivered', 'mimedecode/no mimedecode', 'no idle', and 'no
envelope'.
The 'via' option is for if you want to have more than one configuration
pointing at the same site. If it is present, the string argument will
be taken as the actual DNS name of the mail server host to query. This
will override the argument of poll, which can then simply be a distinct
label for the configuration (e.g., what you would give on the command
line to explicitly query this host).
The 'interval' option (which takes a numeric argument) allows you to
poll a server less frequently than the basic poll interval. If you say
'interval N' the server this option is attached to will only be queried
every N poll intervals.
Singledrop versus Multidrop options
Please ensure you read the section titled THE USE AND ABUSE OF MUL-
TIDROP MAILBOXES if you intend to use multidrop mode.
The 'is' or 'to' keywords associate the following local (client)
name(s) (or server-name to client-name mappings separated by =) with
the mail server user name in the entry. If an is/to list has '*' as
its last name, unrecognized names are simply passed through. Note that
until fetchmail version 6.3.4 inclusively, these lists could only con-
tain local parts of user names (fetchmail would only look at the part
before the @ sign). fetchmail versions 6.3.5 and newer support full ad-
dresses on the left hand side of these mappings, and they take prece-
dence over any 'localdomains', 'aka', 'via' or similar mappings.
A single local name can be used to support redirecting your mail when
your username on the client machine is different from your name on the
mail server. When there is only a single local name, mail is forwarded
to that local username regardless of the message's Received, To, Cc,
and Bcc headers. In this case, fetchmail never does DNS lookups.
When there is more than one local name (or name mapping), fetchmail
looks at the envelope header, if configured, and otherwise at the Re-
ceived, To, Cc, and Bcc headers of retrieved mail (this is 'multidrop
mode'). It looks for addresses with host name parts that match your
poll name or your 'via', 'aka' or 'localdomains' options, and usually
also for host name parts which DNS tells it are aliases of the mail
server. See the discussion of 'dns', 'checkalias', 'localdomains', and
'aka' for details on how matching addresses are handled.
If fetchmail cannot match any mail server usernames or localdomain ad-
dresses, the mail will be bounced. Normally it will be bounced to the
sender, but if the 'bouncemail' global option is off, the mail will go
to the local postmaster instead. (see the 'postmaster' global option).
See also BUGS.
The 'dns' option (normally on) controls the way addresses from mul-
tidrop mailboxes are checked. On, it enables logic to check each host
address that does not match an 'aka' or 'localdomains' declaration by
looking it up with DNS. When a mail server username is recognized at-
tached to a matching host name part, its local mapping is added to the
list of local recipients.
The 'checkalias' option (normally off) extends the lookups performed by
the 'dns' keyword in multidrop mode, providing a way to cope with re-
mote MTAs that identify themselves using their canonical name, while
they are polled using an alias. When such a server is polled, checks
to extract the envelope address fail, and fetchmail reverts to delivery
using the To/Cc/Bcc headers (See below 'Header versus Envelope ad-
dresses'). Specifying this option instructs fetchmail to retrieve all
the IP addresses associated with both the poll name and the name used
by the remote MTA and to do a comparison of the IP addresses. This
comes in handy in situations where the remote server undergoes frequent
canonical name changes, that would otherwise require modifications to
the rcfile. 'checkalias' has no effect if 'no dns' is specified in the
rcfile.
The 'aka' option is for use with multidrop mailboxes. It allows you to
pre-declare a list of DNS aliases for a server. This is an optimiza-
tion hack that allows you to trade space for speed. When fetchmail,
while processing a multidrop mailbox, grovels through message headers
looking for names of the mail server, pre-declaring common ones can
save it from having to do DNS lookups. Note: the names you give as ar-
guments to 'aka' are matched as suffixes -- if you specify (say) 'aka
netaxs.com', this will match not just a host name netaxs.com, but any
host name that ends with '.netaxs.com'; such as (say) pop3.netaxs.com
and mail.netaxs.com.
The 'localdomains' option allows you to declare a list of domains which
fetchmail should consider local. When fetchmail is parsing address
lines in multidrop modes, and a trailing segment of a host name matches
a declared local domain, that address is passed through to the listener
or MDA unaltered (local-name mappings are not applied).
If you are using 'localdomains', you may also need to specify 'no enve-
lope', which disables fetchmail's normal attempt to deduce an envelope
address from the Received line or X-Envelope-To header or whatever
header has been previously set by 'envelope'. If you set 'no envelope'
in the defaults entry it is possible to undo that in individual entries
by using 'envelope <string>'. As a special case, 'envelope "Received"'
restores the default parsing of Received lines.
The password option requires a string argument, which is the password
to be used with the entry's server.
The 'preconnect' keyword allows you to specify a shell command to be
executed just before each time fetchmail establishes a mail server con-
nection. This may be useful if you are attempting to set up secure POP
connections with the aid of ssh(1). If the command returns a nonzero
status, the poll of that mail server will be aborted.
Similarly, the 'postconnect' keyword similarly allows you to specify a
shell command to be executed just after each time a mail server connec-
tion is taken down.
The 'forcecr' option controls whether lines terminated by LF only are
given CRLF termination before forwarding. Strictly speaking RFC821 re-
quires this, but few MTAs enforce the requirement so this option is
normally off (only one such MTA, qmail, is in significant use at time
of writing).
The 'stripcr' option controls whether carriage returns are stripped out
of retrieved mail before it is forwarded. It is normally not necessary
to set this, because it defaults to 'on' (CR stripping enabled) when
there is an MDA declared but 'off' (CR stripping disabled) when for-
warding is via SMTP. If 'stripcr' and 'forcecr' are both on, 'stripcr'
will override.
The 'pass8bits' option exists to cope with Microsoft mail programs that
stupidly slap a "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit" on everything. With
this option off (the default) and such a header present, fetchmail de-
clares BODY=7BIT to an ESMTP-capable listener; this causes problems for
messages actually using 8-bit ISO or KOI-8 character sets, which will
be garbled by having the high bits of all characters stripped. If
'pass8bits' is on, fetchmail is forced to declare BODY=8BITMIME to any
ESMTP-capable listener. If the listener is 8-bit-clean (as all the ma-
jor ones now are) the right thing will probably result.
The 'dropstatus' option controls whether nonempty Status and X-Mozilla-
Status lines are retained in fetched mail (the default) or discarded.
Retaining them allows your MUA to see what messages (if any) were
marked seen on the server. On the other hand, it can confuse some new-
mail notifiers, which assume that anything with a Status line in it has
been seen. (Note: the empty Status lines inserted by some buggy POP
servers are unconditionally discarded.)
The 'dropdelivered' option controls whether Delivered-To headers will
be kept in fetched mail (the default) or discarded. These headers are
added by qmail and Postfix mail servers in order to avoid mail loops
but may get in your way if you try to "mirror" a mail server within the
same domain. Use with caution.
The 'mimedecode' option controls whether MIME messages using the
quoted-printable encoding are automatically converted into pure 8-bit
data. If you are delivering mail to an ESMTP-capable, 8-bit-clean lis-
tener (that includes all of the major MTAs like sendmail), then this
will automatically convert quoted-printable message headers and data
into 8-bit data, making it easier to understand when reading mail. If
your e-mail programs know how to deal with MIME messages, then this op-
tion is not needed. The mimedecode option is off by default, because
doing RFC2047 conversion on headers throws away character-set informa-
tion and can lead to bad results if the encoding of the headers differs
from the body encoding.
The 'idle' option is intended to be used with IMAP servers supporting
the RFC2177 IDLE command extension, but does not strictly require it.
If it is enabled, and fetchmail detects that IDLE is supported, an IDLE
will be issued at the end of each poll. This will tell the IMAP server
to hold the connection open and notify the client when new mail is
available. If IDLE is not supported, fetchmail will simulate it by pe-
riodically issuing NOOP. If you need to poll a link frequently, IDLE
can save bandwidth by eliminating TCP/IP connects and LOGIN/LOGOUT se-
quences. On the other hand, an IDLE connection will eat almost all of
your fetchmail's time, because it will never drop the connection and
allow other polls to occur unless the server times out the IDLE. It
also does not work with multiple folders; only the first folder will
ever be polled.
The 'properties' option is an extension mechanism. It takes a string
argument, which is ignored by fetchmail itself. The string argument
may be used to store configuration information for scripts which re-
quire it. In particular, the output of '--configdump' option will make
properties associated with a user entry readily available to a Python
script.
Miscellaneous Run Control Options
The words 'here' and 'there' have useful English-like significance.
Normally 'user eric is esr' would mean that mail for the remote user
'eric' is to be delivered to 'esr', but you can make this clearer by
saying 'user eric there is esr here', or reverse it by saying 'user esr
here is eric there'
Legal protocol identifiers for use with the 'protocol' keyword are:
auto (or AUTO) (legacy, to be removed from future release)
pop2 (or POP2) (legacy, to be removed from future release)
pop3 (or POP3)
sdps (or SDPS)
imap (or IMAP)
apop (or APOP)
kpop (or KPOP)
Legal authentication types are 'any', 'password', 'kerberos', 'ker-
beros_v4', 'kerberos_v5' and 'gssapi', 'cram-md5', 'otp', 'msn' (only
for POP3), 'ntlm', 'ssh', 'external' (only IMAP). The 'password' type
specifies authentication by normal transmission of a password (the
password may be plain text or subject to protocol-specific encryption
as in CRAM-MD5); 'kerberos' tells fetchmail to try to get a Kerberos
ticket at the start of each query instead, and send an arbitrary string
as the password; and 'gssapi' tells fetchmail to use GSSAPI authentica-
tion. See the description of the 'auth' keyword for more.
Specifying 'kpop' sets POP3 protocol over port 1109 with Kerberos V4
authentication. These defaults may be overridden by later options.
There are some global option statements: 'set logfile' followed by a
string sets the same global specified by --logfile. A command-line
--logfile option will override this. Note that --logfile is only effec-
tive if fetchmail detaches itself from the terminal and the logfile al-
ready exists before fetchmail is run, and it overrides --syslog in this
case. Also, 'set daemon' sets the poll interval as --daemon does.
This can be overridden by a command-line --daemon option; in particular
--daemon 0 can be used to force foreground operation. The 'set postmas-
ter' statement sets the address to which multidrop mail defaults if
there are no local matches. Finally, 'set syslog' sends log messages
to syslogd(8).
DEBUGGING FETCHMAIL
Fetchmail crashing
There are various ways in that fetchmail may "crash", i. e. stop opera-
tion suddenly and unexpectedly. A "crash" usually refers to an error
condition that the software did not handle by itself. A well-known
failure mode is the "segmentation fault" or "signal 11" or "SIGSEGV" or
just "segfault" for short. These can be caused by hardware or by soft-
ware problems. Software-induced segfaults can usually be reproduced
easily and in the same place, whereas hardware-induced segfaults can go
away if the computer is rebooted, or powered off for a few hours, and
can happen in random locations even if you use the software the same
way.
For solving hardware-induced segfaults, find the faulty component and
repair or replace it. The Sig11 FAQ ⟨https://www.bitwizard.nl/sig11/⟩
may help you with details.
For solving software-induced segfaults, the developers may need a
"stack backtrace".
Enabling fetchmail core dumps
By default, fetchmail suppresses core dumps as these might contain
passwords and other sensitive information. For debugging fetchmail
crashes, obtaining a "stack backtrace" from a core dump is often the
quickest way to solve the problem, and when posting your problem on a
mailing list, the developers may ask you for a "backtrace".
1. To get useful backtraces, fetchmail needs to be installed without
getting stripped of its compilation symbols. Unfortunately, most bi-
nary packages that are installed are stripped, and core files from sym-
bol-stripped programs are worthless. So you may need to recompile
fetchmail. On many systems, you can type
file `which fetchmail`
to find out if fetchmail was symbol-stripped or not. If yours was un-
stripped, fine, proceed, if it was stripped, you need to recompile the
source code first. You do not usually need to install fetchmail in or-
der to debug it.
2. The shell environment that starts fetchmail needs to enable core
dumps. The key is the "maximum core (file) size" that can usually be
configured with a tool named "limit" or "ulimit". See the documentation
for your shell for details. In the popular bash shell, "ulimit -Sc un-
limited" will allow the core dump.
3. You need to tell fetchmail, too, to allow core dumps. To do this,
run fetchmail with the -d0 -v options. It is often easier to also add
--nosyslog -N as well.
Finally, you need to reproduce the crash. You can just start fetchmail
from the directory where you compiled it by typing ./fetchmail, so the
complete command line will start with ./fetchmail -Nvd0 --nosyslog and
perhaps list your other options.
After the crash, run your debugger to obtain the core dump. The debug-
ger will often be GNU GDB, you can then type (adjust paths as neces-
sary) gdb ./fetchmail fetchmail.core and then, after GDB has started up
and read all its files, type backtrace full, save the output (copy &
paste will do, the backtrace will be read by a human) and then type
quit to leave gdb. Note: on some systems, the core files have differ-
ent names, they might contain a number instead of the program name, or
number and name, but it will usually have "core" as part of their name.
INTERACTION WITH RFC 822
When trying to determine the originating address of a message, fetch-
mail looks through headers in the following order:
Return-Path:
Resent-Sender: (ignored if it does not contain an @ or !)
Sender: (ignored if it does not contain an @ or !)
Resent-From:
From:
Reply-To:
Apparently-From:
The originating address is used for logging, and to set the MAIL FROM
address when forwarding to SMTP. This order is intended to cope grace-
fully with receiving mailing list messages in multidrop mode. The in-
tent is that if a local address does not exist, the bounce message will
not be returned blindly to the author or to the list itself, but rather
to the list manager (which is less annoying).
In multidrop mode, destination headers are processed as follows: First,
fetchmail looks for the header specified by the 'envelope' option in
order to determine the local recipient address. If the mail is ad-
dressed to more than one recipient, the Received line will not contain
any information regarding recipient addresses.
Then fetchmail looks for the Resent-To:, Resent-Cc:, and Resent-Bcc:
lines. If they exist, they should contain the final recipients and
have precedence over their To:/Cc:/Bcc: counterparts. If the Resent-*
lines do not exist, the To:, Cc:, Bcc: and Apparently-To: lines are
looked for. (The presence of a Resent-To: is taken to imply that the
person referred by the To: address has already received the original
copy of the mail.)
CONFIGURATION EXAMPLES
Note that although there are password declarations in a good many of
the examples below, this is mainly for illustrative purposes. We rec-
ommend stashing account/password pairs in your $HOME/.netrc file, where
they can be used not just by fetchmail but by ftp(1) and other pro-
grams.
The basic format is:
poll SERVERNAME protocol PROTOCOL username NAME password PASS-
WORD
Example:
poll pop.provider.net protocol pop3 username "jsmith" password "secret1"
Or, using some abbreviations:
poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" password "secret1"
Multiple servers may be listed:
poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 user "jsmith" pass "secret1"
poll other.provider.net proto pop2 user "John.Smith" pass "My^Hat"
Here is the same version with more whitespace and some noise words:
poll pop.provider.net proto pop3
user "jsmith", with password secret1, is "jsmith" here;
poll other.provider.net proto pop2:
user "John.Smith", with password "My^Hat", is "John.Smith" here;
If you need to include whitespace in a parameter string or start the
latter with a number, enclose the string in double quotes. Thus:
poll mail.provider.net with proto pop3:
user "jsmith" there has password "4u but u cannot krak this"
is jws here and wants mda "/bin/mail"
You may have an initial server description headed by the keyword 'de-
faults' instead of 'poll' followed by a name. Such a record is inter-
preted as defaults for all queries to use. It may be overwritten by in-
dividual server descriptions. So, you could write:
defaults proto pop3
user "jsmith"
poll pop.provider.net
pass "secret1"
poll mail.provider.net
user "jjsmith" there has password "secret2"
It is possible to specify more than one user per server. The 'user'
keyword leads off a user description, and every user specification in a
multi-user entry must include it. Here is an example:
poll pop.provider.net proto pop3 port 3111
user "jsmith" with pass "secret1" is "smith" here
user jones with pass "secret2" is "jjones" here keep
This associates the local username 'smith' with the pop.provider.net
username 'jsmith' and the local username 'jjones' with the
pop.provider.net username 'jones'. Mail for 'jones' is kept on the
server after download.
Here is what a simple retrieval configuration for a multidrop mailbox
looks like:
poll pop.provider.net:
user maildrop with pass secret1 to golux 'hurkle'='happy' snark here
This says that the mailbox of account 'maildrop' on the server is a
multidrop box, and that messages in it should be parsed for the server
user names 'golux', 'hurkle', and 'snark'. It further specifies that
'golux' and 'snark' have the same name on the client as on the server,
but mail for server user 'hurkle' should be delivered to client user
'happy'.
Note that fetchmail, until version 6.3.4, did NOT allow full user@do-
main specifications here, these would never match. Fetchmail 6.3.5 and
newer support user@domain specifications on the left-hand side of a
user mapping.
Here is an example of another kind of multidrop connection:
poll pop.provider.net localdomains loonytoons.org toons.org
envelope X-Envelope-To
user maildrop with pass secret1 to * here
This also says that the mailbox of account 'maildrop' on the server is
a multidrop box. It tells fetchmail that any address in the loony-
toons.org or toons.org domains (including sub-domain addresses like
'joe@daffy.loonytoons.org') should be passed through to the local SMTP
listener without modification. Be careful of mail loops if you do
this!
Here is an example configuration using ssh and the plugin option. The
queries are made directly on the stdin and stdout of imapd via ssh.
Note that in this setup, IMAP authentication can be skipped.
poll mailhost.net with proto imap:
plugin "ssh %h /usr/sbin/imapd" auth ssh;
user esr is esr here
THE USE AND ABUSE OF MULTIDROP MAILBOXES
Use the multiple-local-recipients feature with caution -- it can bite.
All multidrop features are ineffective in ETRN and ODMR modes.
Also, note that in multidrop mode duplicate mails may be suppressed. A
piece of mail is considered duplicate if it does not have a discernible
envelope recipient address, has the same header as the message immedi-
ately preceding and more than one addressee. Such runs of messages may
be generated when copies of a message addressed to multiple users are
delivered to a multidrop box. (To be precise, fetchmail 6.2.5 through
6.4.X use an MD5 hash of the raw message header, and only fetchmail
6.4.16+ document this properly. Fetchmail 5.0.8 (1999-09-14) through
6.2.4 used only the Message-ID header. 5.0.7 and older did not sup-
press duplicates.)
Note that this duplication killer code checking the entire header is
very restrictive and may not suppress many duplicates in practice - for
instance, if some X-Original-To or Delivered-To header differs. This
is intentional and correct in such situations: wherever envelope infor-
mation is available, it should be used for reliable delivery of mailing
list and blind carbon copy (Bcc) messages. See the subsection Duplicate
suppression below for suggestions.
Header versus Envelope addresses
The fundamental problem is that by having your mail server toss several
peoples' mail in a single maildrop box, you may have thrown away poten-
tially vital information about who each piece of mail was actually ad-
dressed to (the 'envelope address', as opposed to the header addresses
in the RFC822 To/Cc headers - the Bcc is not available at the receiving
end). This 'envelope address' is the address you need in order to
reroute mail properly.
Sometimes fetchmail can deduce the envelope address. If the mail
server MTA is sendmail and the item of mail had just one recipient, the
MTA will have written a 'by/for' clause that gives the envelope ad-
dressee into its Received header. But this does not work reliably for
other MTAs, nor if there is more than one recipient. By default,
fetchmail looks for envelope addresses in these lines; you can restore
this default with -E "Received" or 'envelope Received'.
As a better alternative, some SMTP listeners and/or mail servers insert
a header in each message containing a copy of the envelope addresses.
This header (when it exists) is often 'X-Original-To', 'Delivered-To'
or 'X-Envelope-To'. Fetchmail's assumption about this can be changed
with the -E or 'envelope' option. Note that writing an envelope header
of this kind exposes the names of recipients (including blind-copy re-
cipients) to all receivers of the messages, so the upstream must store
one copy of the message per recipient to avoid becoming a privacy prob-
lem.
Postfix, since version 2.0, writes an X-Original-To: header which con-
tains a copy of the envelope as it was received.
Qmail and Postfix generally write a 'Delivered-To' header upon deliver-
ing the message to the mail spool and use it to avoid mail loops.
Qmail virtual domains however will prefix the user name with a string
that normally matches the user's domain. To remove this prefix you can
use the -Q or 'qvirtual' option.
Sometimes, unfortunately, neither of these methods works. That is the
point when you should contact your ISP and ask them to provide such an
envelope header, and you should not use multidrop in this situation.
When they all fail, fetchmail must fall back on the contents of To/Cc
headers (Bcc headers are not available - see below) to try to determine
recipient addressees -- and these are unreliable. In particular, mail-
ing-list software often ships mail with only the list broadcast address
in the To: header.
Note that a future version of fetchmail may remove To/Cc parsing!
When fetchmail cannot deduce a recipient address that is local, and the
intended recipient address was anyone other than fetchmail's invoking
user, mail will get lost. This is what makes the multidrop feature
risky without proper envelope information.
A related problem is that when you blind-copy a mail message, the Bcc
information is carried only as envelope address (it is removed from the
headers by the sending mail server, so fetchmail can see it only if
there is an X-Envelope-To header). Thus, blind-copying to someone who
gets mail over a fetchmail multidrop link will fail unless the mail
server host routinely writes X-Envelope-To or an equivalent header into
messages in your maildrop.
In conclusion, mailing lists and Bcc'd mail can only work if the server
you are fetching from
(1) stores one copy of the message per recipient in your domain and
(2) records the envelope information in a special header (X-Origi-
nal-To, Delivered-To, X-Envelope-To).
Good Ways To Use Multidrop Mailboxes
Multiple local names can be used to administer a mailing list from the
client side of a fetchmail collection. Suppose your name is 'esr', and
you want to both pick up your own mail and maintain a mailing list
called (say) "fetchmail-friends", and you want to keep the alias list
on your client machine.
On your server, you can alias 'fetchmail-friends' to 'esr'; then, in
your .fetchmailrc, declare 'to esr fetchmail-friends here'. Then, when
mail including 'fetchmail-friends' as a local address gets fetched, the
list name will be appended to the list of recipients your SMTP listener
sees. Therefore it will undergo alias expansion locally. Be sure to
include 'esr' in the local alias expansion of fetchmail-friends, or you
will never see mail sent only to the list. Also be sure that your lis-
tener has the "me-too" option set (sendmail's -oXm command-line option
or OXm declaration) so your name is not removed from alias expansions
in messages you send.
This trick is not without its problems, however. You will begin to see
this when a message comes in that is addressed only to a mailing list
you do not have declared as a local name. Each such message will fea-
ture an 'X-Fetchmail-Warning' header which is generated because fetch-
mail cannot find a valid local name in the recipient addresses. Such
messages default (as was described above) to being sent to the local
user running fetchmail, but the program has no way to know that this is
actually the right thing.
Bad Ways To Abuse Multidrop Mailboxes
Multidrop mailboxes and fetchmail serving multiple users in daemon mode
do not mix. The problem, again, is mail from mailing lists, which typ-
ically does not have an individual recipient address on it. Unless
fetchmail can deduce an envelope address, such mail will only go to the
account running fetchmail (probably root). Also, blind-copied users
are very likely never to see their mail at all.
If you are tempted to use fetchmail to retrieve mail for multiple users
from a single mail drop via POP or IMAP, think again (and reread the
section on header and envelope addresses above). It would be smarter
to just let the mail sit in the mail server's queue and use fetchmail's
ETRN or ODMR modes to trigger SMTP sends periodically (of course, this
means you have to poll more frequently than the mail server's expiry
period). If you cannot arrange this, try setting up a UUCP feed.
If you absolutely must use multidrop for this purpose, make sure your
mail server writes an envelope-address header that fetchmail can see.
Otherwise you will lose mail and it will come back to haunt you.
Speeding Up Multidrop Checking
Normally, when multiple users are declared fetchmail extracts recipient
addresses as described above and checks each host part with DNS to see
if it is an alias of the mail server. If so, the name mappings de-
scribed in the "to ... here" declaration are done and the mail locally
delivered.
This is a convenient but also slow method. To speed it up, pre-declare
mail server aliases with 'aka'; these are checked before DNS lookups
are done. If you are certain your aka list contains all DNS aliases of
the mail server (and all MX names pointing at it - note this may change
in a future version) you can declare 'no dns' to suppress DNS lookups
entirely and only match against the aka list.
Duplicate suppression on multidrop
If fetchmail's duplicate suppression code does not kick in for your
multidrop mail account, other options is using sieve, or for instance
Courier's maildrop package (and in particular, its reformail program
with the -D option) as the delivery agent (either from fetchmail, or
from your local mail server that fetchmail injects into).
SOCKS
Support for socks4/5 is a compile time configuration option. Once com-
piled in, fetchmail will always use the socks libraries and configura-
tion on your system, there are no run-time switches in fetchmail - but
you can still configure SOCKS: you can specify which SOCKS configura-
tion file is used in the SOCKS_CONF environment variable.
For instance, if you wanted to bypass the SOCKS proxy altogether and
have fetchmail connect directly, you could just pass
SOCKS_CONF=/dev/null in the environment, for example (add your usual
command line options - if any - to the end of this line):
env SOCKS_CONF=/dev/null fetchmail
EXIT CODES
To facilitate the use of fetchmail in shell scripts, an exit status
code is returned to give an indication of what occurred during a given
connection.
The exit codes returned by fetchmail are as follows:
0 One or more messages were successfully retrieved (or, if the -c
option was selected, were found waiting but not retrieved).
1 There was no mail awaiting retrieval. (There may have been old
mail still on the server but not selected for retrieval.) If you
do not want "no mail" to be an error condition (for instance,
for cron jobs), use a POSIX-compliant shell and add
|| [ $? -eq 1 ]
to the end of the fetchmail command line, note that this leaves
0 untouched, maps 1 to 0, and maps all other codes to 1. See
also item #C8 in the FAQ.
2 An error was encountered when attempting to open a socket to re-
trieve mail. If you do not know what a socket is, do not worry
about it -- just treat this as an 'unrecoverable error'. This
error can also be because a protocol fetchmail wants to use is
not listed in /etc/services.
3 The user authentication step failed. This usually means that a
bad user-id, password, or APOP id was specified. Or it may mean
that you tried to run fetchmail under circumstances where it did
not have standard input attached to a terminal and could not
prompt for a missing password.
4 Some sort of fatal protocol error was detected.
5 There was a syntax error in the arguments to fetchmail, or a
pre- or post-connect command failed.
6 The run control file had bad permissions.
7 There was an error condition reported by the server. Can also
fire if fetchmail timed out while waiting for the server.
8 Client-side exclusion error. This means fetchmail either found
another copy of itself already running, or failed in such a way
that it is not sure whether another copy is running.
9 The user authentication step failed because the server responded
"lock busy". Try again after a brief pause! This error is not
implemented for all protocols, nor for all servers. If not im-
plemented for your server, "3" will be returned instead, see
above. May be returned when talking to qpopper or other servers
that can respond with "lock busy" or some similar text contain-
ing the word "lock".
10 The fetchmail run failed while trying to do an SMTP port open or
transaction.
11 Fatal DNS error. Fetchmail encountered an error while perform-
ing a DNS lookup at startup and could not proceed.
12 BSMTP batch file could not be opened.
13 Poll terminated by a fetch limit (see the --fetchlimit option).
14 Server busy indication.
23 Internal error. You should see a message on standard error with
details.
24 - 26, 28, 29
These are internal codes and should not appear externally.
When fetchmail queries more than one host, return status is 0 if any
query successfully retrieved mail. Otherwise the returned error status
is that of the last host queried.
FILES
~/.fetchmailrc, $HOME/.fetchmailrc, $HOME_ETC/.fetchmailrc, $FETCHMAIL-
HOME/fetchmailrc
default run control file (location can be overridden with environ-
ment variables)
~/.fetchids, $HOME/.fetchids, $HOME_ETC/.fetchids, $FETCHMAIL-
HOME/.fetchids
default location of file recording last message UIDs seen per
host. (location can be overridden with environment variables)
~/.fetchmail.pid, $HOME/.fetchmail.pid, $HOME_ETC/.fetchmail.pid,
$FETCHMAILHOME/fetchmail.pid
default location of lock file (sometimes called pidfile or PID
file, see option pidfile) to help prevent concurrent runs (non-
root mode). (location can be overridden with environment vari-
ables)
~/.netrc, $HOME/.netrc, $HOME_ETC/.netrc
your FTP run control file, which (if present) will be searched for
passwords as a last resort before prompting for one interactively.
(location can be overridden with environment variables)
/var/run/fetchmail.pid
lock file (pidfile) to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode,
Linux systems).
/etc/fetchmail.pid
lock file (pidfile) to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode,
systems without /var/run).
ENVIRONMENT
Fetchmail's behavior can be altered by providing it with environment
variables. Some may alter the operation of libraries that fetchmail
links against, for instance, OpenSSL. Note that in daemon mode, you
will need to quit the background daemon process and start a new fetch-
mail daemon for environment changes to take effect.
FETCHMAILHOME
If this environment variable is set to a valid and existing di-
rectory name, fetchmail will read $FETCHMAILHOME/fetchmailrc
(the dot is missing in this case), $FETCHMAILHOME/.fetchids
(keeping its dot) and $FETCHMAILHOME/fetchmail.pid (without dot)
rather than from the user's home directory. The .netrc file is
always looked for in the invoking user's home directory (or
$HOME_ETC) regardless of FETCHMAILHOME's setting.
FETCHMAILUSER
If this environment variable is set, it is used as the name of
the calling user (default local name) for purposes such as mail-
ing error notifications. Otherwise, if either the LOGNAME or
USER variable is correctly set (e.g., the corresponding UID
matches the session user ID) then that name is used as the de-
fault local name. Otherwise getpwuid(3) must be able to re-
trieve a password entry for the session ID (this elaborate logic
is designed to handle the case of multiple names per user ID
gracefully).
FETCHMAIL_DISABLE_CBC_IV_COUNTERMEASURE
(since v6.3.22): If this environment variable is set and not
empty, fetchmail will disable a countermeasure against an SSL
CBC IV attack (by setting SSL_OP_DONT_INSERT_EMPTY_FRAGMENTS).
This is a security risk, but may be necessary for connecting to
certain non-standards-conforming servers. See fetchmail's NEWS
file and fetchmail-SA-2012-01.txt for details. Earlier fetch-
mail versions (v6.3.21 and older) used to disable this counter-
measure, but v6.3.22 no longer does that as a safety precaution.
FETCHMAIL_POP3_FORCE_RETR
(since v6.3.9): If this environment variable is defined at all
(even if empty), fetchmail will forgo the POP3 TOP command and
always use RETR. This can be used as a workaround when TOP does
not work properly.
FETCHMAIL_INCLUDE_DEFAULT_X509_CA_CERTS
(since v6.3.17): If this environment variable is set and not
empty, fetchmail will always load the default X.509 trusted cer-
tificate locations for SSL/TLS CA certificates, even if
--sslcertfile and --sslcertpath are given. The latter locations
take precedence over the system default locations. This is use-
ful in case there are broken certificates in the system directo-
ries and the user has no administrator privileges to remedy the
problem.
FETCHMAIL_WOLFSSL_DEBUG
(since v6.4.25): If fetchmail is compiled and linked with wolf-
SSL, if wolfSSL was built with --enable-debug, and if this envi-
ronment variable is set and not empty, then enable wolfSSL's de-
bug mode. This will emit huge amounts of debug output to stderr.
HOME (documented since 6.4.1): This variable is normally set to the
user's home directory. If it is set to a different directory
than what is in the password database, HOME takes precedence.
HOME_ETC
(documentation corrected to match behaviour of code since
6.4.1): If the HOME_ETC variable is set, it will override fetch-
mail's idea of $HOME, i. e. fetchmail will read .fetchmailrc,
.fetchids, .fetchmail.pid and .netrc from $HOME_ETC instead of
$HOME (or if HOME is also unset, from the passwd file's home di-
rectory location).
If HOME_ETC and FETCHMAILHOME are both set, FETCHMAILHOME takes
precedence and HOME_ETC will be ignored.
SOCKS_CONF
(only if SOCKS support is compiled in) this variable is used by
the socks library to find out which configuration file it should
read. Set this to /dev/null to bypass the SOCKS proxy.
SSL_CERT_DIR
(with truly OpenSSL 1.1.1 compatible library): overrides
OpenSSL's idea of the default trust directory or path (which
contains individual certificate files and hashed symlinks), see
the SSL_CTX_set_default_verify_paths(3) manual page for details,
it may be in the openssl development package. If using another
library's OpenSSL compatibility interface, this may not work.
Since this variable only specifies a default value, the option
--sslcertpath takes precedence if given.
SSL_CERT_FILE
(with truly OpenSSL 1.1.1 compatible library): overrides
OpenSSL's idea of the default trust certificate bundle file
(which contains a concatenation of base64-encoded certificates
in PEM format), see the SSL_CTX_set_default_verify_paths(3) man-
ual page for details, it may be in the openssl development pack-
age. If using another library's OpenSSL compatibility inter-
face, this may not work. Since this variable only specifies a
default value, the option --sslcertfile takes precedence if
given.
SIGNALS
If a fetchmail daemon is running as root, SIGUSR1 wakes it up from its
sleep phase and forces a poll of all non-skipped servers. For compati-
bility reasons, SIGHUP can also be used in 6.3.X but may not be avail-
able in future fetchmail versions.
If fetchmail is running in daemon mode as non-root, use SIGUSR1 to wake
it (this is so SIGHUP due to logout can retain the default action of
killing it).
Running fetchmail in foreground while a background fetchmail is running
will do whichever of these is appropriate to wake it up.
BUGS, LIMITATIONS, AND KNOWN PROBLEMS
Please check the NEWS file that shipped with fetchmail for more known
bugs than those listed here.
Fetchmail cannot handle user names that contain blanks after a "@"
character, for instance "demonstr@ti on". These are rather uncommon and
only hurt when using UID-based --keep setups, so the 6.X.Y versions of
fetchmail will not be fixed.
Fetchmail cannot handle configurations where you have multiple accounts
that use the same server name and the same login. Any user@server com-
bination must be unique.
The assumptions that the DNS and in particular the checkalias options
make are not often sustainable. For instance, it has become uncommon
for an MX server to be a POP3 or IMAP server at the same time. There-
fore the MX lookups may go away in a future release.
The mda and plugin options interact badly. In order to collect error
status from the MDA, fetchmail has to change its normal signal handling
so that dead plugin processes do not get reaped until the end of the
poll cycle. This can cause resource starvation if too many zombies ac-
cumulate. So either do not deliver to a MDA using plugins or risk be-
ing overrun by an army of undead.
The --interface option does not support IPv6 and it is doubtful if it
ever will, since there is no portable way to query interface IPv6 ad-
dresses.
The RFC822 address parser used in multidrop mode chokes on some @-ad-
dresses that are technically legal but bizarre. Strange uses of quot-
ing and embedded comments are likely to confuse it.
In a message with multiple envelope headers, only the last one pro-
cessed will be visible to fetchmail.
Use of some of these protocols requires that the program send unen-
crypted passwords over the TCP/IP connection to the mail server. This
creates a risk that name/password pairs might be snaffled with a packet
sniffer or more sophisticated monitoring software. Under Linux and
FreeBSD, the --interface option can be used to restrict polling to
availability of a specific interface device with a specific local or
remote IP address, but snooping is still possible if (a) either host
has a network device that can be opened in promiscuous mode, or (b) the
intervening network link can be tapped. We recommend the use of ssh(1)
tunnelling to not only shroud your passwords but encrypt the entire
conversation.
Use of the %F or %T escapes in an mda option could open a security
hole, because they pass text manipulable by an attacker to a shell com-
mand. Potential shell characters are replaced by '_' before execution.
The hole is further reduced by the fact that fetchmail temporarily dis-
cards any set-uid privileges it may have while running the MDA. For
maximum safety, however, do not use an mda command containing %F or %T
when fetchmail is run from the root account itself.
Fetchmail's method of sending bounces due to errors or spam-blocking
and spam bounces requires that port 25 of localhost be available for
sending mail via SMTP.
If you modify ~/.fetchmailrc while a background instance is running and
break the syntax, the background instance will die silently. Unfortu-
nately, it cannot die noisily because we do not yet know whether syslog
should be enabled. On some systems, fetchmail dies quietly even if
there is no syntax error; this seems to have something to do with buggy
terminal ioctl code in the kernel.
The -f - option (reading a configuration from stdin) is incompatible
with the plugin option.
The 'principal' option only handles Kerberos IV, not V.
Interactively entered passwords are truncated after 63 characters. If
you really need to use a longer password, you will have to use a con-
figuration file.
A backslash as the last character of a configuration file will be
flagged as a syntax error rather than ignored.
The BSMTP error handling is virtually nonexistent and may leave broken
messages behind.
Send comments, bug reports, gripes, and the like to the fetchmail-devel
list ⟨mailto:fetchmail-devel@lists.sourceforge.net⟩
An fetchmail FAQ (in HTML form)
⟨https://fetchmail.sourceforge.io/fetchmail-FAQ.html⟩ is available at
the fetchmail home page, it should also accompany your installation.
AUTHOR
Fetchmail is currently maintained by Matthias Andree and Rob Funk with
major assistance from Sunil Shetye (for code) and Rob MacGregor (for
the mailing lists).
Most of the code is from Eric S. Raymond
⟨mailto:esr@snark.thyrsus.com⟩. Too many other people to name here
have contributed code and patches.
This program is descended from and replaces popclient, by Carl Harris
⟨mailto:ceharris@mal.com⟩; the internals have become quite different,
but some of its interface design is directly traceable to that ances-
tral program.
This manual page has been improved by Matthias Andree, R. Hannes Bein-
ert, and Héctor García.
SEE ALSO
README, README.SSL, README.SSL-SERVER, The Fetchmail FAQ
⟨https://www.fetchmail.info/fetchmail-FAQ.html⟩, mutt(1), elm(1),
mail(1), sendmail(8), popd(8), imapd(8), netrc(5), the fetchmail home
page ⟨https://www.fetchmail.info/⟩, (alternative URI)
⟨https://fetchmail.sourceforge.io/⟩; the maildrop home page.
⟨https://www.courier-mta.org/maildrop/⟩
APPLICABLE STANDARDS
Note that this list is just a collection of references and not a state-
ment as to the actual protocol conformance or requirements in fetch-
mail.
SMTP/ESMTP:
RFC 821, RFC 2821, RFC 1869, RFC 1652, RFC 1870, RFC 1983, RFC
1985, RFC 2554.
mail:
RFC 822, RFC 2822, RFC 1123, RFC 1892, RFC 1894.
POP2:
RFC 937
POP3:
RFC 1081, RFC 1225, RFC 1460, RFC 1725, RFC 1734, RFC 1939, RFC
1957, RFC 2195, RFC 2449.
APOP:
RFC 1939.
RPOP:
RFC 1081, RFC 1225.
IMAP2/IMAP2BIS:
RFC 1176, RFC 1732.
IMAP4/IMAP4rev1:
RFC 1730, RFC 1731, RFC 1732, RFC 2060, RFC 2061, RFC 2195, RFC
2177, RFC 2683.
ETRN:
RFC 1985.
ODMR/ATRN:
RFC 2645.
OTP: RFC 1938.
LMTP:
RFC 2033.
GSSAPI:
RFC 1508, RFC 1734, Generic Security Service Application Program
Interface (GSSAPI)/Kerberos/Simple Authentication and Security
Layer (SASL) Service Names
⟨https://www.iana.org/assignments/gssapi-service-names/⟩.
TLS: RFC 2595.
fetchmail 6.4.37 2022-07-16 FETCHMAIL(1)
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