On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 05:35:21PM -0700, Ric Otte wrote:
  > 
  > I think running fetchmail by cron  would work, but the problem arises
  > when I am out of town for a couple of days and my home machine is not
  > running.  I could, of course, leave it running while I'm gone, but I
  > prefer to shut it down.  Next time I return from a trip I may try
  > downloading only 100 messages at a time and see what happens (but
  > there must be an easier way).  Thanks for the suggestion,
  > 
Sometime back I too had a similar problem. Fetchmail would exit after
downloading about 30 or 40 messages. Worse, when I reconnected, it would
start downloading the whole thing again. I know it is a problem with my
pop provider, but I could not help it.
Later found that running (as suggested) fetchmail -e 20 (or some number)
would download so many messages, disconnect and reconnect. That can even
be put in your fetchmailrc.