Red Hat LINUX 7.2 Reference Manual page 271

Section 16.4:Fetchmail
• postmaster — Gives Fetchmail a local user to send mail to in case of delivery problems.
• syslog — Tells Fetchmail to start logging error and status messages in the system's log file. By
default, this is /var/log/maillog.
Server Options
Place server options on their own line in .fetchmailrc after a poll or skip action.
• auth <auth-type> — Specifies the type of authentication to be used. By default, pass-
word authentication is utilized, but some protocols support other types of authentication, includ-
ing kerberos_v5, kerberos_v4, and ssh. If the any authentication type is used, Fetchmail
will first try methods that do not require a password, then methods that mask your password, and
finally attempt to send your password in the clear to authenticate to the server.
• interval <number> — Tells Fetchmail to only poll this server every <number> of times
that it checks for email on all configured servers. This option might be used with email servers
where you rarely receive messages.
• port <port-number> — Overrides the default port number for a specified protocol.
• proto <protocol> — Tells Fetchmail to use a specific protocol, such as pop3 or imap, to
check for messages on this server.
• timeout <seconds> — Configures Fetchmail to give up after a certain interval of server
inactivity. If this value is not set, a default of 300 seconds is assumed.
User Options
User options may be placed on their own lines beneath a server option or on the same line as the server
option. In either case, the user options follow the user option (defined below).
• fetchall — Orders Fetchmail to download all messages in the queue, including messages that
have already been viewed. By default, Fetchmail only pulls down new messages.
• fetchlimit <number> — Only allows a certain number of messages to be pulled off before
stopping.
• flush — Tells Fetchmail to delete all previously viewed messages in the queue before pulling
down the new messages.
• limit <max-number-bytes> — Allows you to specify that only messages below a partic-
ular size may be retrieved. This option is useful with slow network links, when a large message
will take too long to download.
• password ' <password> ' — Specifies the password to be used for this user.
• preconnect " <command> " — Tells Fetchmail to execute the specified command before
retrieving messages for this user.
271