Mailing List Archive: Re: .fetchmailrc syntax error

> With getmail having been deprecated, I can't pull it in on my fresh
> install, so I *HAVE TO* go with fetchmail. I tried following example at
> https://www.linode.com/docs/email/clients/using-fetchmail-to-retrieve-email/
> but it errors out at the first line...

> [i3][waltdnes][~] fetchmail
> fetchmail:/home/waltdnes/.fetchmailrc:1: syntax error at option

> Anybody have this working? The following was pulled by getmail as
> "SimpleSSLretriever" on port 995. Here's what I'm trying that's
> failing...

> poll mail.######.com protocol pop3 with option sslproto '':
> username "############" password "########" is "########" here
> mda "/usr/bin/procmail -m ~/.mailfilter/.procmailrc":

> Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>

I didn't know getmail was deprecated, but haven't used getmail in a long time.

Maybe deprecated because of using Python 2.x which is deprecated? Or did they/could they port to Python 3.x?

I use mpop and msmtp but am considering other possibilities including mutt.

I want to keep email in a format that does not limit use to one particular application.

I tried to use fetchmail long ago, the problem was that it would not allow downloading email direct to a file.

Tom

On Thu, Oct 15, 2020 at 12:54:13AM +0000, Thomas wrote in
<20201015005421.3AE0BE098A@pigeon.gentoo.org>:
>I didn't know getmail was deprecated, but haven't used getmail in a long time.
>
>Maybe deprecated because of using Python 2.x which is deprecated? Or did they/could they port to Python 3.x?

Hi Thomas,

Getmail has been removed from Gentoo because it was 2.x only indeed. See
https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/e6e2aad22bc828eb877ffa06219bb8c2

Upstream has not made support for Python 3.* a priority and as such getmail has
been forked into a version which does work with Python 3.*, see
http://www.getmail6.org/

>I use mpop and msmtp but am considering other possibilities including mutt.
>
>I want to keep email in a format that does not limit use to one particular application.

fetchmail and getmail are MDA's (Mail Delivery Agent), while mutt is a MUA (Mail
User Agent). While there is some overlap in functionality, they do serve
different roles. mutt can work fine with either fetchmail or getmail and is
happy to work with both mbox format mail files as well as maildir's.

BTW, you, or the MUA you currently use, somehow managed to make your message
respond to a different message than the one which you are quoting, which makes
your message show up on the incorrect thread for many clients.