fetchmail without an mda

Question

I would like to retrieve mail from a server using fetchmail and have it deposit it directly into an mailbox/repository and not hand it off to a mda. Is this possible? How?

In the alternate, is there an mda which simply recieves things from er fetchamil and stores them in some sort of repository without doing any processing?

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 22 '10 at 23:57

4

Use the mda option in your .fetchmailrc to specify maildrop or procmail as your MDA.

mda "/usr/bin/maildrop"

This will deposit the mail in the system mailbox (typically /var/spool/mail/handygandy or /var/mail/handygandy). If you want it elsewhere, or if you want to dispatch the mails based on their content, write a ~/.mailfilter file.

to mail/fetched

answered Dec 22 '10 at 23:57

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'

829,060

1

haha yeah I agree this probably does what the OP wants, but it's not "fetchmail without an mda" lol – phunehehe Dec 23 '10 at 07:52

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

3

Since mda is just a program read the whole email from stdin and write it to somewhere, you can write the simplest mda in bash:

mda "/bin/sh -c 'cat > INBOX/new/$(date +%''s_%N)'"

The tricky single quote is a work-around to avoid "%s", because fetchmail will replace "%s" with the current user name: Encode literal percent in fetchmail's mda option

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

Community

1

answered Apr 09 '15 at 06:04

heiz

1,803

I just tried it with only cat and it worked as well: cat >> somefile. I guess that means /bin/sh is optional. – EdwardTeach Dec 29 '21 at 20:00

fetchmail without an mda

2 Answers2