Global Options - Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 5 - DEPLOYMENT Deployment Manual

Chapter 24. Email
Global options appear at the top of the .fetchmailrc file, followed by one or more server options,
each of which designate a different email server that Fetchmail should check. User options follow
server options for each user account checking that email server. Like server options, multiple user
options may be specified for use with a particular server as well as to check multiple email accounts
on the same server.
Server options are called into service in the .fetchmailrc file by the use of a special option verb,
poll or skip, that precedes any of the server information. The poll action tells Fetchmail to use
this server option when it is run, which checks for email using the specified user options. Any server
options after a skip action, however, are not checked unless this server's hostname is specified
when Fetchmail is invoked. The skip option is useful when testing configurations in .fetchmailrc
because it only checks skipped servers when specifically invoked, and does not affect any currently
working configurations.
A sample .fetchmailrc file looks similar to the following example:
set postmaster "user1" set bouncemail poll pop.domain.com proto pop3 user 'user1' there
with password 'secret' is user1 here poll mail.domain2.com user 'user5' there with password
'secret2' is user1 here user 'user7' there with password 'secret3' is user1 here
In this example, the global options specify that the user is sent email as a last resort (postmaster
option) and all email errors are sent to the postmaster instead of the sender (bouncemail option).
The set action tells Fetchmail that this line contains a global option. Then, two email servers are
specified, one set to check using POP3, the other for trying various protocols to find one that works.
Two users are checked using the second server option, but all email found for any user is sent to
user1's mail spool. This allows multiple mailboxes to be checked on multiple servers, while appearing
in a single MUA inbox. Each user's specific information begins with the user action.
Note
Users are not required to place their password in the .fetchmailrc file. Omitting the
with password '<password>' section causes Fetchmail to ask for a password when
it is launched.
Fetchmail has numerous global, server, and local options. Many of these options are rarely used or
only apply to very specific situations. The fetchmail man page explains each option in detail, but the
most common ones are listed here.

24.3.3.2. Global Options

Each global option should be placed on a single line after a set action.
• daemon <seconds> — Specifies daemon-mode, where Fetchmail stays in the background.
Replace <seconds> with the number of seconds Fetchmail is to wait before polling the server.
• postmaster — Specifies a local user to send mail to in case of delivery problems.
• syslog — Specifies the log file for errors and status messages. By default, this is /var/log/
maillog.
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