the mail server. This example uses POP3. Other legal options are IMAP,
Authenticated Post Office Protocol (APOP), and Kerberized Post Office
Protocol (KPOP). You can also use AUTO here, in which case Fetchmail
attempts to automatically determine the correct protocol to use with the mail
server.
The third line tells Fetchmail that it should not attempt to do a Doman Name
System (DNS) lookup. You probably want to include this option if you are
running over a dial-up connection.
Configuring User Accounts
The third and final section of .fetchmailrc contains information about
the user account on the server specified in the previous section. Here is an
example:
Click here to view code image
user foobar
pass secretword
fetchall
no flush
The first line, of course, simply specifies the username that is used to log in to
the email server, and the second line specifies the password for that user.
Many security-conscious people cringe at the thought of putting clear-text
passwords in a configuration file, and they should if it is group or world
readable. The only protection for this information is to make certain that the
file is readable only by the owner—that is, with file permissions of 600.
The third line tells Fetchmail that it should fetch all messages from the server,
even if they have already been read.
The fourth line tells Fetchmail that it should delete the messages from the
mail server after it has finished downloading them. This is the default, so you
would not really have to specify this option. If you want to delete the
messages from the server after downloading them, use the option flush.
The configuration options you just inserted configured the entire
.fetchmailrc file to look like this:
Click here to view code image
set daemon 600
set postmaster foobar
set logfile ./.fetchmail.log
poll mail.samplenet.org
proto pop3