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RE: [fetchmail]Where's my From line gone?

2004-04-27 07:16:07
You obviously missed my comment.  The "From " line is *NOT* part of an
SMTP email.  It is added by *some* LDAs for the use of *some* IMAP/POP
servers that store the emails as a *single file* (traditional unix
format).  It's only purpose is as a message separator for those IMAP/POP
servers.

This problem is *NOTHING* to do with fetchmail.  It is a problem with
your local IMAP/POP server and LDA.  Using procmail if you use "-f -" as
arguments it'll generate the "From " line for you - details are in the
procmail man page.

Let me first thank you for your help.  With luck this may provide the last
piece of the puzzle for me to get my fetchmail working reliably.  I hadn't
spotted that option in procmail(1).


Now let me try to politely suggest that your reply is part of the problem
with fetchmail.

Fetchmail needs to interoperate with lots of other applications, and
getting it correctly configured seems to be a very delicate process.
Fetchmail interacts intimately with both the e-mail source (POP/IMAP
server or whatever) and the local mail delivery agent (the LDA, I guess,
which seems to come in many flavours).

Unfortunately, there seems to be a tendency, both in the help on the list
*and* in the implementation of fetchmail to say "that's not my problem"
whenever any issue arises.

Now, I appreciate that fetchmail is not a commercial product, so the rules
of engagement differ somewhat, but think of fetchmail as providing a
service.  Any problems that arise while using fetchmail are by definition,
I would suggest, problems with fetchmail.  There seems to be a lot of
emphasis on trying to pass the buck and lay the blame on other
applications, which when I'm trying to fit fetchmail into a system that
otherwise works perfectly is singularly frustrating.

For example, the documentation in `man fetchmail` makes no reference to
the need to regenerate the From header when using procmail.  As this is a
standard integration task, I would like to suggest that this is a
(documentation) problem with fetchmail.

I say all this because I have been using fetchmail for over a year and I
have corresponded on this mailing list for all that time, and I *still* do
not have a fully reliable configuration (that I can leave permanently
unattended).

Complaints on this list about fetchmail failing to retrieve messages are a
constant recurring theme without a canned solution.  To say that this is a
problem with the POP/IMAP server or LDA configuration is, frankly,
avoiding the point.

Of course, there is a general theme at the moment regarding the quality of
documentation of Open Source software.  I would say that the man pages of
both fetchmail and procmail are actually very good, so it's not so obvious
what the problems are.  This is why I suggest that the attitude "it's not
fetchmail's problem" is not particulary constructive.


Anyhow, I hope this little rant is constructive.