As outlined before while it might be the case that it is failing silently for you this renders all help in vain as everybody is down to guessing out of the blue now.
I quickly checked a sample fetchmail in comparison: 1. I have created a fake /etc/fetchmailrc as: set daemon 300 # Pool every 5 minutes set syslog # log through syslog facility set postmaster root set no bouncemail ########################################################################## # Hosts to pool ########################################################################## # Defaults =============================================================== # Set antispam to -1, since it is far safer to use that together with # no bouncemail defaults: timeout 300 antispam -1 batchlimit 100 poll pop.ubuntu.com protocol POP3 user "f...@ubuntu.com" there with password "secret" is foobar here 2. with that minimum I restarted the service and get it working (correctly matching the silly config I gave it) systemctl restart fetchmail root@xenial-test:~# systemctl status fetchmail.service ● fetchmail.service - LSB: init-Script for system wide fetchmail daemon Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/fetchmail; bad; vendor preset: enabled) Active: active (running) since Mon 2017-04-24 11:44:30 UTC; 2s ago Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8) Process: 25065 ExecStop=/etc/init.d/fetchmail stop (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) Process: 25074 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/fetchmail start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) Tasks: 1 Memory: 600.0K CPU: 15ms CGroup: /system.slice/fetchmail.service └─25083 /usr/bin/fetchmail -f /etc/fetchmailrc --pidfile /var/run/fetchmail/fetchmail.pid --syslog Apr 24 11:44:30 xenial-test systemd[1]: Starting LSB: init-Script for system wide fetchmail daemon... Apr 24 11:44:30 xenial-test fetchmail[25074]: * Starting mail retriever agent: Apr 24 11:44:30 xenial-test fetchmail[25074]: ...done. Apr 24 11:44:30 xenial-test systemd[1]: Started LSB: init-Script for system wide fetchmail daemon. Apr 24 11:44:30 xenial-test fetchmail[25083]: starting fetchmail 6.3.26 daemon Apr 24 11:44:30 xenial-test fetchmail[25083]: couldn't find canonical DNS name of pop.ubuntu.com (pop.ubuntu.com): Name or ser Apr 24 11:44:30 xenial-test fetchmail[25083]: Query status=11 (DNS) Now could you share your config file (sans passwords please). Then if you restart fetchmail what does a "systemctl status fetchmail.service" give you afterwards (Full output please). -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1683142 Title: Fetchmail server does not work with systemd To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fetchmail/+bug/1683142/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs