> > But I am not sure it is the right thing to do, why wouldnt you want to
> > receive
> > mail directly?
>
> Because I am going to want to use procmail soon, and it's easier
> to configure it to only work through fetchmail, and because if I
> try to fetch mail with POP3 and SMTP a collision sometimes occurs.
>From my experiences with procmail, fetchmail and exim:
I use fetchmail to retrieve mail from pop3 servers, then fetchmail passes
the message to exim (or that's what I believe).
Here follows my fetchmailrc, procmailrc, ip-up and ip-down scripts for
anyone who wishes to configure procmail and fetchmail:
~/.fetchmailrc:
------------------------
defaults
interface "ppp0/196.2.0.0/255.255.0.0" #very nice for a ppp link.
poll pop3.mweb.co.za
protocol POP3
user username_here
password password_here
fetchall
------------------------
The user can then run fetchmail to retrieve mail.
A system wide /etc/fetchmailrc is also useful, so that mail is retrieved
periodically by the system, for all users:
------------------------
set daemon 300 #check mail every 5 minutes (300 seconds)
defaults
interface "ppp0/196.2.0.0/255.255.0.0"
poll pop3.mweb.co.za
protocol POP3
#download mail from hugovdm account to user hugo
user hugovdm is hugo
password password_here
fetchall
poll mail.fnmail.com
protocol POP3
user anneke is anneke
password password_here
fetchall
poll mail.fnmail.com
protocol POP3
user mayvdm is mayvdm
password password_here
fetchall
------------------------
/etc/ppp/ip-up.d/fetchmail-up
------------------------
#!/bin/sh
test -r /etc/fetchmailrc && \
fetchmail --syslog --invisible --fetchmailrc /etc/fetchmailrc
------------------------
/etc/ppp/ip-down.d/fetchmail-down
------------------------
#!/bin/sh
test -x /usr/bin/fetchmail && \
fetchmail -q
------------------------
I then created a .forward file for myself. I believe exim looks at the
.forward file to see what to do with mail, so whether using exim or
fetchmail makes no difference to the working of procmail. (Someone correct
me if I'm wrong.)
~/.forward:
------------------------
| /usr/bin/procmail
------------------------
This just pipes all mail to procmail.
~/.procmailrc:
------------------------
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
MAILDIR=$HOME/mail
LOGFILE=$MAILDIR/procmail-logfile
:0:
* [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Debian-Changes
:0:
* [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Debian-User
------------------------
This worked for me. I haven't used it lately though (I renamed
.forward to disable it).
Notes:
:0 - marks beginning of recipe,
:0: - tells procmail to use a lock file with same name as folder.
* - pass expression to internal egrep
^ - start of a line
. - any character
* - any number >= 1 of . (.* represents any number of any characters).
Debian-Changes - file matching mail in this folder.
If a mail message matches no recipies, it is filed in $DEFAULT, which is,
by default, $ORGMAIL, which is, by default, /var/spool/mail/$LOGNAME.
See man procmailrc for more info. (And man fetchmail (not man
fetchmailrc).)
HTH someone,
Hugo van der Merwe
