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Fetchmail retrieves mail from remote mail servers and forwards it via SMTP, so it can then be be read by normal mail user agents such as mutt, elm(1) or BSD Mail. It allows all your system MTA's filtering, forwarding, and aliasing facilities to work just as they would on normal mail.
Fetchmail offers better security than any other Unix remote-mail client. It supports APOP, KPOP, OTP, Compuserve RPA, Microsoft NTLM, and IMAP RFC1731 encrypted authentication methods to avoid sending passwords en clair. It can be configured to support end-to-end encryption via tunneling with ssh, the Secure Shell
Fetchmail can be used as a POP/IMAP-to-SMTP gateway for an entire DNS domain, collecting mail from a single drop box on an ISP and SMTP-forwarding it based on header addresses. (We don't really recommend this, though, as it may lose important envelope-header information. ETRN or a UUCP connection is better.)
Fetchmail can be started automatically and silently as a system daemon at boot time. When running in this mode with a short poll interval, it is pretty hard for anyone to tell that the incoming mail link is not a full-time "push" connection.
Fetchmail is easy to configure. You can edit its dotfile directly, or use the interactive GUI configurator (fetchmailconf) supplied with the fetchmail distribution.
Fetchmail is fast and lightweight. It packs all its standard features (POP3, IMAP, and ETRN support) in 140K of core on a Pentium under Linux.
Fetchmail is open-source software. The openness of the sources is your strongest possible assurance of quality and reliability.
See the on-line manual page for basics. (Sorry about the flat presentation, but the man2html shipped with RH6.0 chokes and dies on the fetchmail man page.
See the HTML Fetchmail FAQ for troubleshooting help.
See the Fetchmail Design Notes for discussion of some of the design choices in fetchmail.
Or you can get the last `gold' version, 5.1.0:
(Note that the binary RPMs don't have the POP2, OTP, IPv6, Kerberos, GSSAPI, Compuserve RPA, Microsoft NTLM, or GNU gettext internationalization support compiled in. To get any of these you will have to build from sources.)
The latest version of fetchmail is also carried in the Metalab remote mail tools directory.
Both lists are SmartList reflectors; sign up in the usual way with a message containing the word "subscribe" in the subject line sent to or . (Similarly, "unsubscribe" in the Subject line unsubscribes you, and "help" returns general list help)
Note: before submitting a question to the list, please read the FAQ (especially item G3 on how to report bugs). We tend to get the same three newbie questions over and over again. The FAQ covers them like a blanket.
Fetchmail was written and is maintained by Eric S. Raymond. There are some designated backup maintainers (, , ). Other backup maintainers may be added in the future, in order to ensure continued support should Eric S. Raymond drop permanently off the net for any reason.
Over seven hundred people have participated on the fetchmail beta list (at time of current release there were from on the friends and announce lists). While it's hard to count the users of open-source software, we can estimate based on (a) population figures at the WELL and other known fetchmail sites, (b) the size of the Linux-using ISP customer base, and (c) the volume of fetchmail-related talk on USENET. These estimates suggest that daily fetchmail users number well into the tens of thousands, and possibly over a hundred thousand.
I wrote a paper, The Cathedral And The Bazaar, about these theories and the project. I developed the line of analysis it suggested in two later essays. These papers became quite popular and (to my continuing astonishment) may have actually helped change the world. Chase the title link, above, for links to all three papers.
I have done some analysus on the information in the project NEWS file. You can view a statistical history showing levels of participation and release frequency over time.
Major changes or additions therefore seem unlikely until there are significant changes in or additions to the related protocol RFCs. One development that would stimulate a new release almost instantly is the deployment of a standard lightweight encrypted authentication method for IMAP sessions.
Fetchmail is supported only for Unix by its official maintainers. However, it is reported to build and run correctly under AmigaOS, Rhapsody, and QNX as well.
Scott Bronson has written a fetchmnail plugin (actually, a specialist MDA) called trestlemail that helps redirect multidrop mail.
Hugo Rabson has written a script called `hotmole' that can retrieve Hotmail mail via the web using Lynx. The script is available on Hugo Rabson's Linux page.
Thanks to Steve Matuszek for the graphic design. The hand in the button (and the larger top-of-page graphic) was actually derived from a color scan of the fetchmail author's hand.
| Back to Software | Up to Site Map | 07 Nov 1999 |