[ale] Q. on debugging 'fetchmail'

[hirsch at zapmedia.com]

jmmills at avana.net writes:
 > 
 > I still have one [RIBBIT!]* problem: 'fetchmail' seems 
 > to be finding the (two) pop servers OK, spooling down 
 > the mail, but sending it into space, or at any rate not 
 > into my local mail spool! I have a set of unread 
 > messages from my last working round of 'fetchmail', but 
 > no new ones. Meanwhile checking the ISPs' web-based mail 
 > servers shows that the messages have been deleted at 
 > their end, presumably after 'fetchmail' thought it had 
 > delivered them to my local mail server. All messages 
 > waiting in my spools were apparently blown into space! 
 > #8-(

There are two files to examine.  First, what does fetchmail think it
is doing?  It logs to a log file set in your .fetchmailrc

Second, what does sendmail do with the messages?  It logs to
/var/log/maillog.  (If you use another mail server it should have a
log file somewhere.)

I've had problems when sendmail was not configured to deliver locally
(I had set the "mail server" filed in linuxconf) and it would
immediately deliver the downloaded mail to the external server, which
would send it back to my POP accounts, which fetchmail would
download...

Another problem I've had was fetchmail clients running on multiple
machines.  The mail wasn't lost, but it ended up on other linux boxes
and I didn't find it for months.

Good luck,

-- 
------------------------
Michael D. Hirsch, Ph.D.
Software Developer
zapmedia.com

Phone: 678-420-2722                FAX: 678-420-5839
email: michael.hirsch at zapmedia.com Web: http://www.zapmedia.com
--
To unsubscribe: mail majordomo at ale.org with "unsubscribe ale" in message body.