I've been playing recently with fetchmail. What I want to achieve is that the connection with external POP servers will be done in the background, and the Mozilla mailer will fetch them from the local computer. Why? Because the Mozilla gets stuck every now and then when the connection is poor. And it's generally annoying in this respect.
So I configured fetchmail (fetchmailconf was handy) and got it to work. All was nice and bright, until I suddenly discovered that it flushes my mails down the toilet all to easily.
The problem is like this: Fetchmail says hello to my POP server, gets the mails, and then attempts to hand them over to my SMTP daemon. If the SMTP is up, all is good. But if I kill the daemon, it attempts to connect, fails, then resorts to procmail, fails, gives up and... DELETES the messages from the POP server (as the transcript below shows).
This is a terribly silly thing to do. Does anyone have an idea of how to regain the trust of this tool? Have I done something stupid?
Using procmail instead of SMTP *might* be a solution, but what if procmail fails for some reason? Will mails be deleted too?
Any other, better tool to suggest?
Thanks, Eli
[1] Herschale is a figure in classic jewish tales. He's not considered very clever. For example, once he lit every match in a matchbox to make sure they're all working. And so on...
Here's my .fetchmailrc (username and passwd altered):
# Configuration created Thu Feb 5 00:40:12 2004 by fetchmailconf
set postmaster "fetcher"
set bouncemail
set no spambounce
set properties ""
poll mail.netvision.net.il with proto POP3
user 'my_user_name' there with password '****' options no rewriteAnd here's what happens if the SMTP daemon is dead. The "DELE 1" is the problem, since it deletes the unprocessed mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] fetcher]$ fetchmail -v
fetchmail: 5.9.0 querying mail.netvision.net.il (protocol POP3) at Thu 05 Feb 2004 09:55:33 PM IST
fetchmail: POP3< +OK POP3 service
fetchmail: POP3> USER my_user_name
fetchmail: POP3< +OK password required for user my_user_name
fetchmail: POP3> PASS *
fetchmail: POP3< +OK Maildrop ready
fetchmail: POP3> STAT
fetchmail: POP3< +OK 1 1387
fetchmail: POP3> LAST
fetchmail: POP3< +OK 0
1 message for my_user_name at mail.netvision.net.il (1387 octets).
fetchmail: POP3> LIST
fetchmail: POP3< +OK scan listing follows
fetchmail: POP3< 1 1387
fetchmail: POP3< .
fetchmail: POP3> TOP 1 99999999
fetchmail: POP3< +OK
reading message 1 of 1 (1387 octets)
fetchmail: SMTP connect to localhost failed
fetchmail: can't raise the listener; falling back to /usr/bin/procmail -d %T#*****procmail: Couldn't chdir to "/home/fetcher/Mail"
flushed
fetchmail: POP3> DELE 1
fetchmail: POP3< +OK message deleted
fetchmail: POP3> QUIT
fetchmail: POP3< +OK
fetchmail: normal termination, status 0
-- Web: http://www.billauer.co.il
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