fetchmail-6.2.0: description + notes

Fetchmail is a one-stop solution to the remote mail retrieval problem for Unix machines, quite useful to anyone with an intermittent PPP or SLIP connection to a remote mailserver.

Fetchmail supports all standard mail-retrieval protocols in use on the Internet: POP3, RPOP, APOP, KPOP, IMAP2bis, IMAP4, IMAP4rev1, ESMTP ETRN, and ODMR. Fetchmail also fully supports authentication via Compuserve's POP3 with RPA, Microsoft's NTLM, Demon Internet's SDPS, or CRAM-MD5 authentication a la RFC2195. Fetchmail also supports end-to-end encryption with OpenSSL.

Fetchmail forwards collected mail via port 25 to the local SMTP listener enabling all the normal forwarding, filtering, and aliasing mechanisms that would apply to local mail or mail arriving via a full-time TCP/IP connection. Fetchmail can also forward collected mail to a local mail delivery agent (MDA), like procmail, if the local SMTP listener is not available.

The Fetchmail package contains also a version of Fetchmail which supports connections through a SOCKS5 gateway server. The SOCKSified version of Fetchmail is not selected by default for installation.

Fetchmail was originally written and is being maintained by Eric S. Raymond of The Hacker's Dictionary and freeware evangelism fame.


Special thanks to Andrea Suatoni (a.suatoni@telefonica.net) for helping port this package to IRIX.
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