hi glyn... fetchmail seems to work...i added that line, looked at the log file and there it clearly logged the retrieval of my emails. as a result (i am using telnet at the moment) your email also disappeared from the inbox i was working on...the email however was not sent to /var/spool/mail/amael (my user name) or at least it is not there. so i guess i need to change something about how exim handles mail...? thanks, vester