getmail is a simple

mail retrieval agent A mail retrieval agent (MRA) is a computer application that retrieves or fetches e-mail from a remote mail server and works with a mail delivery agent to deliver mail to a local or remote email mailbox. MRA is an automated agent that works on beh ...

intended as a replacement for

fetchmail Fetchmail is an open-source software utility for POSIX-compliant operating systems which is used to retrieve e-mail from a remote POP3, IMAP, or ODMR mail server to the user's local system. It was developed from thpopclientprogram, written by Ca ...

, implemented in

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (prog ...

. It can retrieve mail from

POP3 In computing, the Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. Today, POP version 3 (POP3) is the most commonly used version. Together with IMAP, i ...

IMAP4 In computing, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection. IMAP is defined by . IMAP was designed with the goal of pe ...

, and ''Standard Dial-up POP3 Service'' servers, with or without SSL. It supports simple and domain (multidrop) mailboxes,

mail filter Email filtering is the processing of email to organize it according to specified criteria. The term can apply to the intervention of human intelligence, but most often refers to the automatic processing of messages at an SMTP server, possibly ap ...

ing via any arbitrary program, and supports a wide variety of mail destination types, including mboxrd,

maildir The Maildir e-mail format is a common way of storing email messages on a file system, rather than in a database. Each message is assigned a Computer file, file with a unique name, and each mail folder is a file system directory containing these fil ...

, and external arbitrary

mail delivery agent A message delivery agent (MDA), or mail delivery agent, is a computer software component that is responsible for the delivery of e-mail messages to a local recipient's mailbox. It is also called a local delivery agent (LDA). Within the Internet ...

s. Unlike

, getmail's Python foundation makes it nearly immune to buffer overflow security holes. It also has a simpler configuration syntax than fetchmail, but supports fewer authentication protocols. The software can also function as a basic

. Getmail is

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

and is licensed under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

version 2. It is written and maintained by Charles Cazabon. The original getmail software requires Python 2, which is no longer supported. A fork named getmail6, which is not from getmail's original author, provides Python 3 support.

References

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External links

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getmail6 fork
Free email software Free software programmed in Python Email clients {{network-software-stub

See also

References

Bibliography

External links