Fetchmail problem..

[A. Buza]

I tried to set up fetchmail, but it isn't quite working. It tells me how many messages I have on the server, but it can't fetch them. It reports "SMTP connect to localhost failed". I'm guessing I need to have a port open/service running, but I'm not sure what that would be (sendmail?)

bleh... anyway, help with this would be appreciated. I didn't see anything regarding this in the man pages.

[Craig McPherson]

You must have an SMTP server running on your computer in order to use fetchmail.

Read ESR's The Cathedral and the Bazaar for a history of fetchmail and why all the old delivery modes were disabled in favor of SMTP-only. The book is also a good summary of the history and philosophy of Free Software and Open Source.

Anyway, you could use Sendmail. I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy, though. I like Exim. Some people like Postfix. Some people like Qmail. They really all work about the same, so take your pick. How you'll want to install it depends on your distribution. In Debian, you can just install one with apt, and it'll be configured and start working immediately after installation. With any other distro, read the documentation.

[milanuk]

Originally posted by Craig McPherson:
[QB]You must have an SMTP server running on your computer in order to use fetchmail.

Read ESR's The Cathedral and the Bazaar for a history of fetchmail and why all the old delivery modes were disabled in favor of SMTP-only. QB]

Actually, Craig, if I may be so bold, but I think you're wrong.

There is an option in fetchmail to have it hand off straight to the MDA (usually procmail), and it is still quite functional AFAIK.

This is from the online manual at the fetchmail home page:

-m <command>, --mda <command>
(Keyword: mda) You can force mail to be passed to an MDA directly (rather than forwarded to port 25) with the -mda or -m option. To avoid losing mail, use this option only with MDAs like procmail


Monte

[Craig McPherson]

Yes, I forgot about that mode, but ORIGINALLY fetchmail simply dumped mail to standard output in standard UNIX mailbox format, and users generally downloaded thier mail by fetchmail >>'ing it into their mail spools in /var/spool/mail. It had several other local delivery modes also.

The point is, either of the modes available now require a functional mailserver to be installed on the machine. There are no longer any local delivery modes independent of an MTA, and Cathedral explains why. ESR is the author and maintainer of Fetchmail, so he knows what he's talking about.