Fetchmail Setup

Fetchmail

fetchmail is a utility that collects mail from a POP address. I use it to collect email from my ISP, then I set the other machines on the network to collect mail from this server.Here is an example of the ~/.fetchmailrc file:

set postmaster "roqet"
set bouncemail
set properties ""
poll mail.someserver.com with proto POP3
user 'username@someserver.com' there with password 'mypassword' is roqetman here
options stripcr warnings 3600
mda '/usr/bin/procmail -d %T'
antispam 571 550 501 554
    

The permissions of the .fetchmailrc file must be changed as follows: chmod 710 .fetchmailrc

Test it by typing: fetchmail

Gmail and Fetchmail

Google has an online webmail service called Gmail that allows POP access. Here's an example of the method I use to collect my email from Gmail:

1st I create a file called .fetchmailrc.gmail containing...

set postmaster "roqetman"
set bouncemail
set properties ""
poll pop.gmail.com with proto POP3 and options no dns
user 'dontsendmespam@gmail.com' there is roqetman here
options ssl stripcr warnings 3600
mda '/usr/bin/procmail -d %T'
antispam 571 550 501 554
    

Then I create a script called checkgmail containing the following:

cp .fetchmailrc .fetchmailrc.myservername
cp .fetchmailrc.gmail .fetchmailrc
fetchmail -v --keep
cp .fetchmailrc.myservername .fetchmailrc
    

Give it executable permissions: chmod +x checkgmail, and then run it: checkgmail