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. MRAs may be external applications by them ...

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 (pro ...

. 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. POP version 3 (POP3) is the version in common use, and along with IMAP the most common ...

, IMAP4, 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 appl ...

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 in which each message is stored in a separate file with a unique name, and each mail folder is a file system directory. The local file system handles file locking as messages are ...

, 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., ''Internet Mail Architecture'', D. Crocker (July 2009) It is also call ...

s. Unlike

, getmail's Python foundation makes it nearly immune to

buffer overflow In information security and programming, a buffer overflow, or buffer overrun, is an anomaly whereby a program, while writing data to a buffer, overruns the buffer's boundary and overwrites adjacent memory locations. Buffers are areas of memo ...

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 and is licensed under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...

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

Bibliography

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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