On Wed, 17 Jan 2001, Oliver L. Plaine Jr. wrote:
> How embarrassing Mark heehe....not for you though, but for me..<grin>
>
> When running fetchmail (with a connection) I can see the mail
> being downloaded much as before with all the other mail programs......
>
> However now I get another nice error message that the other
> programs did not mention...this may explain the whole problem of not
> getting a mail file.....?
> --------------------------
> fetchmail 13 messages for ollyplaine at
> postoffice.worldnet.att.net (2429878 octets) . reading message 1 of
> 13 (662174 octets) ....fetchmail time out after 300 seconds.
It sounds like part of the problem may very well be on the server end and not
on your end. For what ever reason the connection is timing out and you're not
able to establish a real good connection to be able to download your mail.
I'm assuming that you have absolutely no problems at all getting your mail if
you're running windows, right?
Fetchmail is reporting in plain english, as some other programs could clearly
take a lesson from, what part of the problem is. Now, all you've got to do is
find out why? I'd be willing to bet that you haven't been downloading any
mail at all as long as this has been happening each and every time you
attempt to connect to the mail server from Linux.
Clearly fetchmail is seeing your mail on the server as evidenced from the
output just before the connection times out.
>
> fetchmail: client /server syncronization error while fetching from
> postoffice.worldnet.att.net,....
> fetchmail: query status =7 (error)........
> --------------------------------------
All that status = 7 means is that the connection from the server to your
computer, (the client) was timed out. Not very informative past what you
already know from fetchmail.
It may be that the mailserver at worldnet is unable to talk to your machine.
Which I'm beginning to suspect is the case. What is happening is that with
fetchmail at least, fetchmail contacts the mailserver, logs in as you, reads
the mail directory holding your messages, communicates back to it's machine
that there is mail, then contact the MDA on your machine, very likely Postfix
and then waits for a response to let fetchmail know that it is now safe and
possible for it to "fetch" the mail from the mailserver to your machine.
Since it has to hand off the mail to someone, beit Postfix, or Sendmail
usually, that is the next place I would look in this chain to see if it's
functioning correctly. The weird thing in this is that it's not just
fetchmail that is having this problem. It is all three of the programs that
you've tried. Which would then point back to your ISP as having the problem.
So, I think I would give their tech support a call, or write them an email
and breifly describe, in simple terms, that you're unable to connect to the
mailserver and download your email when you're connected to them with Linux.
--
Mark
"If you don't share your concepts and ideals, they end up being worthless,"
"Sharing is what makes them powerful."
Linus Torvalds
