The fetchmail program is a classic UNIX and Unix-like utility used to retrieve email from remote servers and deliver it to local users on a server. There are a number of different scenarios where fetchmail is used. Fetchmail is a popular tool for manually downloading email from a POP or IMAP server for personal use on a local machine. Another common application uses fetchmail to create an “email gateway,” where email is collected from a number of different accounts or from a large centralized server and provided to the user in a manageable situation. If you’re new to Linode we always recommend completing our before beginning a tutorial. If you’re new to Linux we also recommend considering the and the many documents in the section. If you need a more full featured email stack, consider one of our other.

Installing Fetchmail Fetchmail must be installed on whatever computer you need to download mail to. Betsy Goes To Preschool there. This document is applicable for users of desktop Linux who need to download email from their Linodes and users who need to download email to their Linodes from external sources. Fetchmail runs on nearly every UNIX like operating system and is even installed by default on Apple’s Macintosh OS X system. To install fetchmail on Debian and Ubuntu systems, issue the following command: apt-get update apt-get upgrade --show-upgraded apt-get install fetchmail To install fetchmail on CentOS and Fedora systems, issue the following command: yum install fetchmail To install fetchmail on Arch Linux systems, issue the following command: pacman -S fetchmail To install fetchmail on Gentoo Linux systems, issue the following command: emerge fetchmail Once installed you can begin to configure fetchmail. Introduction to.fetchmailrc Syntax Fetchmail processes configuration options specified on the command line by default.