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Re: [fetchmail]What's the expected behavior upon auth fail in daemon mode?

2002-03-28 02:34:30
"Rob MacGregor" <rob_macgregor(_at_)hotmail(_dot_)com> writes:

From: Bjorn Wiren <etxbwir(_at_)cbe(_dot_)ericsson(_dot_)se>

[ You might want to consider putting the entire question in the body,
it makes much more sense that way ]

]What's the expected behavior upon auth fail in daemon mode?

A warning mail, then the daemon quitting, from what I remember when I
first started using fetchmail.

Only now I've found it doesn't - it just silently keeps on
trying. Since I couldn't find anything about this in the documentation,
I begin to mistrust my memory (happens more and more ..).

Some time back the default was changed, so that you didn't get a DoS
on your email when one server died.

If you check the list archives and/or the changelog you should find
the details of exactly when.  It does now log the details to syslog,
IMHO a better solution.


Thanks Rob. I browsed the NEWS file (AKA for change log?), but didn't
find out when the DoS mail was dropped. It was *introduced* in
4.6.6. Syslogging came already in 4.6.3.

In 5.1.1, an interesting feature appeared: "Tolerate a tunable
constant number of authorization failures before complaining and
wedging". Found nothing on *how* to tune it though - maybe this has
been dropped?

Anyway, could somebody give me a hint on how to get a warning upon
authentication failure?  (Please not just "man syslog" - I tried
that.)

In our site, the warning is more or less a must-have, since we use
fetchmail for polling a less frequently used box that has its password
expired every 60 days.

Maybe it's worth spending a few words on this in the documentation too?

TIA
-- 
Björn Wirén


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