Solved Fetchmail error

F

Fbsdnew

I'm trying to run Fetchmail with Postfix and Dovecot and have set up the configurations for all of these applications. Here are my .fetchmailrc and the commands I entered. Please will anyone point out where I messed up, or any other information I need to provide to receive help?
Code: 
# Configuration created Sun Jul 12 19:24:46 2020 by fetchmailconf 1.63.1
set idfile "/usr/home/brandon/.fetchids"
set postmaster "brandon"
set bouncemail
set no spambounce
set softbounce
set properties ""
set daemon 600
poll Hotmail.com protocol pop3 username "<myemail>@hotmail.com" password "**********"

$ fetchmail
fetchmail: background fetchmail at 59726 awakened.
$ fetchmail -d 600
fetchmail: can't accept options while a background fetchmail is running.
argc = 3, arg list:
arg 1 = "-d"
arg 2 = "600"
 
Elazar said:
This explains it, doesn't it?
Click to expand...
No I'm confused. Don't I need to have fetchmail service running to poll servers? If dovecot and postfix are set up and running shouldn't fetchmail poll my inbox into maildir because of pop3?
 
mail/fetchmail is started once and according to fetchmail.rc in deamon mode. Mail is fetched each 600s. May be the program is started by /etc/rc.conf or by the first fetchmail command. Then it polls for mail each 600s and there is no need to start it a second time. If you want to do so you have to stop the fetchmail deamon first.

mail/fetchmail does a different task than mail/postfix. They should not conflict. I have them running here as well. I am not sure about mail/dovecot because I do not use it. If I remember correctly it supplies clients via IMAP and should not conflict with mail/fetchmail, too.
 
If I switch to qpopper for the pop3 or change my .fetchmailrc contents to imap to work with the dovecot I have installed then there should be no error with fetchmail fetching my mailbox right?
 
Dovecot is to allow users access to your stored mail with IMAP or POP3. The same is true for Qpopper, it's to allow POP3 access to your stored mail. Neither are a mechanism to fetch mail from some other place. You appear to be somewhat confused on how mail flows from one place to another. Fetchmail is a client, it gathers email from some place (in your case hotmail) and stores this locally on your server. Dovecot and Qpopper are services to allow someone to remotely access that stored mail using IMAP or POP3. Postfix is used to transfer email from your server to a destination mail server (gmail for example, or somebody@mycompany.com) or receive mail sent to the MX addresses of your domain.
 
SirDice said:
Dovecot is to allow users access to your stored mail with IMAP or POP3. The same is true for Qpopper, it's to allow POP3 access to your stored mail. Neither are a mechanism to fetch mail from some other place. You appear to be somewhat confused on how mail flows from one place to another. Fetchmail is a client, it gathers email from some place (in your case hotmail) and stores this locally on your server. Dovecot and Qpopper are services to allow someone to remotely access that stored mail using IMAP or POP3. Postfix is used to transfer email from your server to a destination mail server (gmail for example, or somebody@mycompany.com) or receive mail sent to the MX addresses of your domain.
Click to expand...
One last one, what about this message at the end of the boot sequence?

Fetchmail: no mail servers have been specified.
 
Fbsdnew said:
One last one, what about this message at the end of the boot sequence?

Fetchmail: no mail servers have been specified.
Click to expand...
Can it be that you have a /usr/local/etc/fetchmailrc and fetchmail_enable=yes in /etc/rc.conf? Then mail/fetchmail is tried to be started after boot but the mail server is not specified as a poll ... block there.
You could copy the content of ~/.fetchmailrc to /usr/local/etc/fetchmailrc to run it from the startup automatically with the similar configuratioin as started manually.
 
Why would fetch mail not start at boot if it start with service? Is this a separate problem?

"/usr/local/etc/rc.d/fetchmail failed to start fetchmail
 
If you start mail/fetchmail with service fetchmail start /usr/local/etc/fetchmailrc is evaluated. This is the same when you have fetchmail_enable=yes in /etc/rc.conf. When you start mail/fetchmail as user ~/.fetchmailrc is evaluated if it exists. All methods work if the fetchmailrc are without any syntax error.
 
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