brownh(_at_)hartford-hwp(_dot_)com <brownh(_at_)hartford-hwp(_dot_)com>:
Have you tried the combination of --limit and --flush?
I didn't try it because the manual makes it sound like it wouldn't
work. That is, my understanding is that --flush only gets rid of mail
messages that have already been read. If I use --limit to download
only mail messages under a certain size, I assume the large mail
messages that remain on the server are not marked as read and
therefore won't be flushed next time I visit the server using -flush.
Sigh. You're right.
Raymond,
Oddly, it seems that I was actually wrong! I was desperate (still got
about 8 big worms last night), and since I was tracking mail on the
server pretty well with poppy, could afford to experiment and tried it
out. For some reason, the combo of limit and flush works just
fine. For example, used fetchmail to download about a hundred messages
this morning, and each one over my 150 Kb limit was flushed off my
ISP's POP mail server. Go figure!
Here's the innards of my working ~/.fetchmailrc:
set postmaster "postmaster"
poll pop.connix.com
proto POP3
user "brownh"
password "password"
limit 150000
flush
When the worm stops attacking me, I'll up the limit to, say, 400 Kb.
But what would be really nice would be some anti-spam features. I
suspect there's been discussion on the list (which I joined not long
ago). Apparently it is possible to look for strings in From, Subject,
or first message line and flush any matches while still on the POP
server. My impression is that the popspam mail transfer agent acts on
mail while still on the server and not after it has already been
downloaded like other anti-spam utilities. What's the
possibility/status of this kind of selective flush for fetchmail?
--
Haines Brown
brownh(_at_)connix(_dot_)com
kb1grm(_at_)arrl(_dot_)net
www.hartford-hwp.com