Hi, Don’t get me wrong, but, although the current fetchmail init-script is working, I am of the opinion that it should be improved. My understanding is, that the current fetchmail init-script has the following disadvantages: a) 2 different configuration files are existing in /etc (/etc/fetchmailrc and /etc/conf.d/fetchmail) b) The configuration file /etc/fetchmailrc includes the information and identification of the users to receive their mails from the external user mailboxes. Each user should therefore be able to modify this file, but currently only root can do it. – In addition, the program fetchmailconf creates, modifies and supports only the ~/.fetchmailrc file and not /etc/fetchmailrc. Consequently, the information from all user ~ / fetchmailrc needs to be transferred by root into the /etc/fetchmailrc. This is acceptable for a single user system, but not for a multi user system. c) In the fetchmail documentation (e.g. man fetchmail) is always shown that fetchmail expects its configuration for each user in the user home directory in the file ~/.fetchmailrc d) The file /etc/conf.d/fetchmail controls (currently) only the time interval for the daemon mode. I suggest to use only one configuration file in /etc (/etc/conf.d/fetchmail) to control the administrative options/tasks (postmaster, mda, logging, etc.) and to use the ~/.fetchmailrc under the control of each single user as described in the fetchmail documentation. Tgis can be achieved with the attached init-script, below an extract from the script. The advantage is the strict deviation between administration options/tasks and user definitions. All parameters defined in /etc/conf.d/fetchmail supersede the parameter set by users (~/.fetchmailrc). The proposed script allows the administrator also, to define for which user fetchmail shall be started (default is for all users). OUOTE … start() { ebegin "Starting fetchmail" if [ -z $USERS ]; then # No user is defined in /etc/conf.d/fetchmail ==> get all users USERS=`cat /etc/passwd | grep home | cut -d ':' -f1` fi # simple function to get all options defined in /etc/conf.d/fetchmail OPTIONS=`cat /etc/conf.d/fetchmail | grep \"--\" | grep -v \"#\" | tr '\n' ' ' ` for user in $USERS do if [ -f /home/$user/.fetchmailrc ]; then # only, if user has a ~./fetchmailrc file su $user -c "/usr/bin/fetchmail --pidfile $piddir/$user.pid $OPTIPNS" fi done eend ${?} } … UNQOUTE The script is starting a separate fetchmail instance for each single user with the user-defined permissions. The advantage is that each user can setup his parameters independently and differently. I have tested the script and found it successfully working. Of course, the script is basic and asks for improvement. But therefore, I would like to open the discussion. Regards, Uwe
Created attachment 262801 [details] proposed init-script for fetchmail
Created attachment 262807 [details] proposal for /etc/conf.d/fetchmail
This is way too fragile. It might work in your case but won't work in general. Closing as WONTFIX. I don't think running fetchmail as a system wide daemon is such a good choice anyway.
