On Thu Dec 12 1996, "Alan K. Stebbens" wrote:
When you fetch mail from your ISP with "popclient", procmail doesn't get
involved at all. It can't. Your ISP's mailer system is receiving the
mail, via SMTP, and probably with Sendmail, but even that isn't a sure
thing.
Procmail is designed to be primarily used as part of the mail delivery
process on a Unix system. Since most Unix systems support Sendmail,
procmail has features which support its integration into Sendmail's
delivery mechanism: either using the .forward file, or as a replacement
for the local mail delivery program (by redefining Mlocal in sendmail.cf).
When you use popclient to "fetch" mail from your ISP, "popclient"
becomes the mail delivery process on your local system. So, instead of
integrating procmail into Sendmail's delivery process, you must
integrate procmail into popclient's mail delivery process.
I don't know anything about popclient itself, but, in order to integrate
procmail into popclient's mail delivery process, there must be a "hook"
(a flag, switch, variable, etc.) for you or your local system's manager
to set for overriding or redefining the local mail delivery process.
I'm also told that popclient is buggy (including complaints about the
latest version).
The solution is to use `fetchmail', which *can* be configured to
deliver pop'ed email locally via smtp (or even deliver it to another
host with smtp).
[Disclaimer: I've never used either program... I'm just going by what
I've seen in other mailing lists and usenet.]
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From: esr(_at_)snark(_dot_)thyrsus(_dot_)com (Eric S. Raymond)
Subject: fetchmail 2.2 - a full-featured POP2/POP3/APOP/IMAP client
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 02:19:10 GMT
fetchmail is a full-featured, robust, well-documented POP2, POP3,
APOP, and IMAP batch mail retrieval/forwarding utility intended to be
used over on-demand TCP/IP links (such as SLIP or PPP connections).
It retrieves mail from remote mail servers and forwards it to your
local (client) machine's delivery system, so it can then be be read by
normal mail user agents such as elm(1) or Mail(1).
Since the first beta release of fetchmail (1.4, 2 October 1996) this
program has become remarkably popular. This 2.2 distribution is the
third full-production release, fixing some minor bugs reported in 2.1
and adding the ability to work with sendmail's spam-filter feature
(SMTP error code 571). The fetchmail code has been extensively tested
(the beta contact list includes 156 people, and they're very active).
Here are fetchmail's main features. Those unique to fetchmail are marked
with **.
* **POP2, POP3, **APOP, **IMAP support.
** Support for Kerberos user authentication.
** Host is auto-probed for a working server if no protocol is
specified for the connection. Thus you don't need to know
what servers are running on your mail host in advance; the
verbose option will tell you which one succeeds.
** Delivery via via SMTP to the client machine's port 25. This
means the retrieved mail automatically goes to the system
default MDA as if it were normal sender-initiated SMTP mail.
** Timeout if server connection is dropped.
** Support for retrieving and forwarding from multi-drop mailboxes
that is guaranteed not to cause mail loops.
* Easy control via command line or free-format run control file.
* Daemon mode -- fetchmail can be run in background to poll
one or more hosts at a specified interval.
* From:, To:, Cc:, and Reply-To: headers are rewritten so that
usernames relative to the fetchmail host become fully-qualified
Internet addresses. This enables replies to work correctly.
(Would be unique to fetchmail if I hadn't added it to fetchpop.)
* Strict conformance to relevant RFCs and good debugging options.
You could use fetchmail to test and debug server implementatations.
* Carefully written, comprehensive and up-to-date man page describing
not only modes of operation but also (**) how to diagnose the most
common kinds of problems and what to do about deficient servers
* Rugged, simple, and well-tested code -- the author relies on it
every day and it has never lost mail, not even in experimental
versions.
* Large user community -- fetchmail has a large user base (the
author's beta list includes over a hundred people). This means
feedback is rapid, bugs get found and fixed rapidly.
You can easily fetch the latest version of fetchmail via FTP from:
ftp://ftp.ccil.org/pub/esr/fetchmail-2.2.tar.gz
Or you can get it from Eric's home page:
http://www.ccil.org/~esr
Just chase the link to Eric's Freeware Collection. Besides fetchmail, it
includes a tasty selection of Web authoring tools, programmer's aids,
graphics libraries, compilers for bizarre languages, games, and
miscellaneous interesting hacks. Enjoy!
--
<a href="http://www.ccil.org/~esr/home.html";>Eric S. Raymond</a>
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Cheers
Tony