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Re: [fetchmail] how to start fetchmail for all users

2002-12-05 07:46:19
From: "senthil" <senthilg(_at_)jadooworks(_dot_)com>

I have been using fetchmail for receiving mails from my pop provider. I have around 30+ users for whom i recive the mails and distribute them locally. Now the problem that i am facing is i have a single file with all the users pop details written in it and i use the file in the command line like " fetchmail -v -f filename" . The problem with this is when one mail box is recieving a big attachment the other priority users are kept in waiting. ( which of course is politics :-D)

Now i would to try the other way of running multiple demons of fetchmail for all users at a time. Here I have a confusion about how to start this multiple instances of fetchmail for all users at a time when I start the server. ( I know the each instance of fetchmail has to be started in the same users login). Can anyone advise me on this please ?

Off the top of my head, how about the following little script:

#!/bin/bash
cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd | while read USERNAME
   do
   if [ -f ~${USERNAME}/.fetchmailrc ]; then
       su - ${USERNAME} -c "fetchmail --daemon 300 -f ~/.fetchmailrc"
   fi
   done

Replacing the first line (#!/bin/bash) with the correct path to either ksh or bash (though it should also work fine under sh).

Of course, this means that your 30 users could all be hammering the same POP/IMAP server every 5 minutes. That's not going to make you popular with the provider. So instead you could do:

#!/bin/bash
cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd | while read USERNAME
   do
   if [ -f /etc/fetchmailrc.${USERNAME} ]; then
su - ${USERNAME} -c "fetchmail --daemon 300 -f /etc/fetchmailrc.${USERNAME}"
   fi
   done

Allowing you to keep control over the timings. You could probably give some form of distribution to the timing by using the UID to calculate the poll interval.


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