[fetchmail-users] fetchmail 6.3.0 contained incompatible idfile change

[Matthias A. <mat...@gm...>]

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Greetings,

in the original 6.3.0 announcement, I mentioned that we're more careful
about writing the .fetchids file. While this is true, the change
introduced a minor incompatibility.

This announcement attempts to avoid astonishment throught that change.

Beginning with release 6.3.0, fetchmail needs not only need write access
to the idfile ($HOME/.fetchids), but also to the directory holding this
file. fetchmail 6.2.X and older versions got away if just the idfile had
write permission.

The reason is that fetchmail 6.3.0 and newer now writes the ids to a
temporary file, to avoid truncation of the idfile if running short of
diskspace; a truncated idfile might lead to many duplicate messages,
which might, in turn, aggravate the "low space" situation.

For end users running fetchmail with default idfile on their own
account, nothing changes: they have write access to their home
directory.

For system-wide execution of the script as used by some distributions
(for instance Debian), it is now important that the idfile is in a
directory writable by fetchmail, else creation of the temporary file and
renaming into place will fail. Debian for instance places the idfile
under /var/mail, this will no longer work with 6.3.0.

I still think the new behavior is a step ahead,
towards a more reliable fetchmail.

Please accept my apologies for missing this in the 6.3.0/6.3.1 materials
I provided to Rob Funk and that we shipped with fetchmail 6.3.0.

Happy fetchmailing,

- -- 
Matthias Andree
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