fetchmail

fetchmail is a mail-retrieval and forwarding utility; it fetches mail from remote mail servers and forwards it to your local (client) machine's delivery system. You can then handle the retrieved mail using normal mail user agents such as mutt, elm or mail. The fetchmail utility can be run in a daemon mode to repeatedly poll one or more systems at a specified interval.

• Project Homepage [EN]
  • Repository

• fetchmail [EN] @ Fedora Package
• fetchmail [EN] @ Homebrew Formula

• fetchmail [EN] @ Wikipedia
• fetchmail [DE] @ Wikipedia

Documentation

• FAQ [EN]

• man 1 'fetchmail' [EN]

Syntax

fetchmail [PARAMETER ...] [MAILSERVER ...]

Parameter

-a, --all, --fetchall (since v6.3.3)

Retrieve both old (seen) and new messages from the mailserver. The default is to fetch only messages the server has not marked seen.

-c, --check

Return a status code to indicate whether there is mail waiting, without actually fetching or deleting mail. This option turns off daemon mode.

-F, --flush

This is a dangerous option and can cause mail loss when used improperly. It deletes old (seen) messages from the mailserver before retrieving new messages.

-k; --keep

Keep retrieved messages on the remote mailserver. Normally, messages are deleted from the folder on the mailserver after they have been retrieved.

-K, --nokeep

Delete retrieved messages from the remote mailserver. This option forces retrieved mail to be deleted. It may be useful if you have specified a default of keep in your '.fetchmailrc'.

-s, --silent

Silent mode. Suppresses all progress/status messages that are normally echoed to standard output during a fetch (but does not suppress actual error messages). The --verbose option overrides this.

-u USER, --user USER, --username USER

Specifies the user identification to be used when logging in to the mailserver. The appropriate user identification is both server and user-dependent. The default is your login name on the client machine that is running fetchmail.

-v, --verbose

Verbose mode. All control messages passed between fetchmail and the mailserver are echoed to stdout. Overrides --silent. Doubling this option (-v -v) causes extra diagnostic information to be printed.