Re: fetchmail and mailfilter

[Ross Boylan <RossBoylan@stanfordalumni.org>]

Some answers, but still some questions.
On Thu, Sep 25, 2003 at 12:34:03AM -0700, Ross Boylan wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 24, 2003 at 02:24:04PM -0400, Wayne Topa wrote:
> > Jan Ulrich Hasecke(janulrich.hasecke@t-online.de) is reported to have said:
> > > Wayne Topa <brittman@capital.net> writes:
> > > 
> > > > preconnect "mailfilter"
> > > 
> > > Mh, my fetchmail hangs when I set this option:
> > > 
> > > preconnect '/usr/bin/mailfilter -M /home/juh/.mailfilterrc'
> >  man mailfilter
> > 
> > default  Mailfilter tries to read $HOME/.mailfilterrc
> 
> I also don't seem to be getting any response from mailfilter.
> 
> Who does the preconnect command run as?
> 
> My first assumption is that it runs as fetchmail, in which case $HOME
> is /var/run/fetchmail on my default Debian setup, if I read my passwd
> file right.  Trying to read and write to my personal account would
> likely only cause trouble.
> 
> My second thought was that it runs as the local user you have
> indicated in your fetchmail config file.  .fetchmailrc man page says
> nothing explicit, but since all the examples just say mailfilter, I
> figured maybe this would work.
> 
> Anyway, I have .mailfilterrc in my home directory, the one of the user
> indicated in fetchmailrc.  I did /etc/init.d/fetchmail restart, but I
> see no sign of mailfilter; there is no mention of it in any log I've
> checked, and no sign of the output mailfilterlog file either.
> 
> I've done two things that might matter:
> 
> fetchmailrc says 
>         preconnect fetchmail
> not
> 	preconnect "fetchmail"
> as in most examples.

For starters, I need to say mailfilter, not fetchmail.  Once I do so,
in debug mode I see

fetchmail: awakened at Thu Sep 25 00:59:57 2003
fetchmail: 6.2.4 querying earthlink.net (protocol POP3) at Thu Sep 25 00:59:57 2003: poll started
mailfilter: Error: The rcfile for preferences (usually $HOME/.mailfilterrc) could not be read.
fetchmail: pre-connection command failed with status 65280
fetchmail: 6.2.4 querying earthlink.net (protocol POP3) at Thu Sep 25 00:59:57 2003: poll completed
fetchmail: Query status=5 (SYNTAX)

This suggests that fetchmail preconnect is running as user fetchmail;
it certainly doesn't seem to be running as me!  Note that this error
prevents any downloading of mail.

> 
> And .mailfilterrc uses ~/ notation
> LOGFILE=~/Mail/mailfilterlog

By running mailfilter from the command line of my user account, I
discovered that ~/ notation doesn't work for it.

Also, I said
TESTING
initially, but proper syntax is 
TESTING=yes

I filed a couple of bugs against fetchmail about this.