Michael Abbott wrote:
Unfortunately, it lead me down another dark alleyway where I got mugged
by sendmail.
Thus my "sufficiently painful" remark. :-)
So, hacking my sendmail configuration seems a nasty idea.
I sympathise.
I have two thoughts about this:
1. It seems that integrating fetchmail with sendmail and a mildly
unhelpful POP server (on a major ISP) is an unsolved problem! I've
been playing this particular game on and off for about a year now.
I would have though that integration into common environments was part
of the development of fetchmail.
Actually if you search the archives of this list going back a few years,
I'm sure you'll find some sendmail configuration help.
2. A simple integration tool to fix the "impedance mismatch" problem
occurs to me, and should be easy enough to implement.
A separate application which acted as a buffer between fetchmail and
sendmail would be incredibly useful and, presumably, very easy to write.
Before I dust off my rusty Unix, let me ask: does such a tool already
exist?
Hmm, take a look at fetchspool in the contrib directory of the fetchmail
source distribution.
It would take as input a sequence of mail messages, store them somewhere
(as a list of persistent files, presumably) and hand them off to
sendmail as quickly as it can. Any messages that sendmail balks on can
be redispatched anywhere and anyhow (the bin will suit me just fine, or
they can be repackaged and forwarded to the postmaster).
Sounds awfully like what fetchmail does, but with buffering added in.
Except that fetchmail works hard to handle errors from the smtp server.
This buffering removes that. Better to fix things on the SMTP server
side.
Or, of course, I could move away from sendmail. Hmm. Or I could just
stop running fetchmail. Hmph.
My vote is to switch from sendmail to exim. Exim is much less likely to
mug you in a dark alleyway.
--
==============================| "A slice of life isn't the whole cake
Rob Funk <rfunk(_at_)funknet(_dot_)net> | One tooth will never make a full
grin"
http://www.funknet.net/rfunk | -- Chris Mars, "Stuck in Rewind"