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Fetchmail 4.3.7, OS/2 release 1
Introduction
What is fetchmail?
Fetchmail is a utility for fetching mail from a variety of servers,
including POP2, POP3, and IMAP, and passing it to a local SMTP daemon
for local delivery. This means, among other things, that all the
sorting, filtering, and processing that you can set up with sendmail
can be used with POP or IMAP servers. Or, in the simplest case, you
can just use it to retrieve your mail. Fetchmail was written by
[1]Eric S. Raymond.
[2]The author's [3]homepage for Fetchmail has much more information,
some of which is also included in this distribution. [4]The Fetchmail
FAQ is here, as is a [5]list of features.
Why I ported fetchmail to OS/2.
I use Gnus for email. I used to use VM and I sometimes use Elm. All of
these programs do email in the traditional way, which is to read it
from a local file, to which mail is delivered by some other program.
This is in contrast to most OS/2 mail programs, which have built-in
POP retrieval functions. These have a serious downside, which is that
you can't switch mail retrieval methods without switching mail
readers, and it's hard to migrate mail from one mailer to another.
Emacs for OS/2 includes a POP retrieval program called poppoll, which
fetches mail from a POP3 server and deposits it in a local file that
Emacs can then access with movemail. Poppoll works okay, but it has
some drawbacks. The biggest drawback for me was that poppoll uses a PM
popup program to read and cache the user's password on the POP server.
This means that it doesn't work under XFree86, among other things.
So I switched from poppoll to popclient, a POP fetching program ported
from Unix. It works fine, but I heard that popclient had been upgraded
and tranformed into something completely different, called fetchmail.
One of fetchmail's big advantages is that it unifies the normal SMTP
mail delivery path with retreiving mail from POP. With OS/2 now
including a more or less complete BSD-oid TCP/IP, it seemed worth it
to try to switch to SMTP mail using fetchmail to go between it and
POP.
Installation
First, you have to get local mail delivery working. For that, you need
a mail delivery agent (MDA). In their wisdom, IBM have chosen not to
include one in Warp 4; I don't know about Warp Connect. I've included
deliver, the MDA included with EM's Emacs port. Follow the
instructions in deliver/deliver.doc, and try sending some mail to
yourself at localhost.
Then, you need to make a working .fetchmailrc for your setup. It goes
in %HOME%. There's a sample in [6]sample.rcfile; the file format is
described in [7]fetchmail.doc (generated from the manual page). When
you think you have it working, type fetchmail --version to see what it
will do. Be sure to read the [8]bugs section below.
Description of the Port
This is a very basic, straightforward port from the Unix sources. So
that means nothing in particular has been done to adapt this to use on
OS/2. You need to have %HOME% and %ETC% set, %HOME% needs to be on an
HPFS, EXT2FS, NTFS, etc, drive so that the filename .fetchmailrc is
legal, etc. Eventually I suppose I'll have to fix it to also look for
fetchmailrc (no dot) in %HOME% and %ETC%.
I have tested this port on a POP3 server only, so if anyone's using
IMAP, I'd be happy to hear from you. I also haven't tested any
advanced features including multidrop boxes. I may have broken things
I don't know about. I'm using it for all of my mail now, but my needs
are not great. The original fetchmail is very stable, safe, and
reliable; this port may or may not be.
The interface features (like activity monitoring) are Linux specific,
and I haven't made any particular efforts to try to port them. If
anyone can get them working, [9]I'd love to hear about it. The monitor
feature would work great with In-Joy's dial-on-demand mode if anyone
can figure out how to implement them on OS/2.
Changes from the beta version
* Server nonresponse timeout fixed; a second thread is used to
simulate BSD itimers.
* Upgraded from fetchmail 4.3.4 to 4.3.7.
Nomenclature
Please, do not refer to this piece of software as fetchmail/2! It is
an unfortunate habit of the OS/2 community to refer to ports of
existing pieces of software by appending a "/2". In the case of the
OS/2 port of Lynx 2-7-1, this caused a great deal of confusion,
because there was already a Lynx/2 by someone else, based on a much
older (and non-GPL) codebase. As far as I know, there's no
pre-existing fetchmail/2, but I'm irked enough for this to be a pet
peeve of mine. So don't do it! This is "fetchmail 4.3.7, OS/2 release
1", or loosely, "fetchmail for OS/2" or "OS/2 fetchmail".
Bugs
Two known:
* "fetchmail -q" does not kill a running (daemon-mode) fetchmail. I
think I have overlooked a hard-coded pathname that it tries to
write its PID file to. If anyone has any serious problems with
this, I'll hunt it down and fix it.
* If there is something wrong with the .fetchmailrc, fetchmail may
abort and dump core rather than report the error. Fortunately, you
can catch this before letting fetchmail near your mail by running
"fetchmail --version". It's probably best to start with the
included sample.rcfile and modify it to suit your needs, as I got
crashes trying to build one from scratch. I haven't observed this
problem in the current version, but I haven't used that particular
fetchmailrc, either.
I think I have fixed the problem the beta version of OS/2 Fetchmail
had with server timeout. I have used a second thread to emulate
itimers; interested parties can refer to [10]patches.os2 for more
information.
License and NO WARRANTY
This program is distributed under the GNU Public License. Be sure to
read the file [11]COPYING, which details your rights and
responsibilities under this license. This software has NO WARRANTY:
please read sections 11 and 12 of [12]the GPL for full information.
You use this software at your own risk: you could well use mail, so
test before you use it. Neither I, nor the original author, nor any
contributors will be responsible for any damages caused by the use of
this software even if your computer turns into a toadstool and monkeys
fly out of your bodily orifices.
Contact Information
For comments, especially bug-reports or enhancements, specific to this
port, write to [13]Jason F. McBrayer. For more general questions about
fetchmail, please read [14]the fetchmail FAQ and follow the contact
information there.
_________________________________________________________________
Jason.McBrayer@Tulane.EDU
Last modified: Sat Feb 21 15:49:01 -0600 1998
References
1. mailto:esr@snark.thyrsus.com
2. mailto:esr@snark.thyrsus.com
3. http://www.ccil.org/~esr/fetchmail/
4. file://localhost/D:/Projects/fetchmail/distrib_4.3.7/fetchmail-4.3.7/fetchmail-FAQ.html
5. file://localhost/D:/Projects/fetchmail/distrib_4.3.7/fetchmail-4.3.7/fetchmail-features.html
6. file://localhost/D:/Projects/fetchmail/distrib_4.3.7/sample.rcfile
7. file://localhost/D:/Projects/fetchmail/distrib_4.3.7/os2/fetchmail.doc
8. file://localhost/D:/Projects/fetchmail/distrib_4.3.7/readme_os2.html#bugs
9. mailto:Jason.McBrayer@Tulane.EDU
10. file://localhost/D:/Projects/fetchmail/distrib_4.3.7/os2/patches.os2
11. file://localhost/D:/Projects/fetchmail/distrib_4.3.7/COPYING
12. file://localhost/D:/Projects/fetchmail/distrib_4.3.7/COPYING
13. mailto:Jason.McBrayer@Tulane.EDU
14. file://localhost/D:/Projects/fetchmail/distrib_4.3.7/fetchmail-4.3.7/fetchmail-FAQ.html