Re: [fetchmail-users] fetchmail and socks5

[Jochen H. <Joc...@Ha...>]

>>>>> "RMG2" == Rob MacGregor writes:

    >> [2007-03-15 14:11:49] johayek@HayekJ $ fetchmail --version
    >> This is fetchmail release 6.3.2+POP2+IMAP-GSS+RPA+NTLM+SDPS+SSL+OPIE+SOCKS+NLS.

    RMG2> Yeah that looks like it was configured with socks support.  Having
    RMG2> myself dug through the documentation and FAQ it appears that there is
    RMG2> socks support after all (it's not documented anywhere except the FAQ):

    RMG2> http://www.fetchmail.info/fetchmail-FAQ.html#K1

    RMG2> Rebuild fetchmail without the socks support.  

    RMG2> It looks like fetchmail will automatically use socks
    RMG2> if you build it with socks support

... resp. e.g. if your ready-made Linux distribution provides you with a fetchmail configured like that.

    RMG2> - there's no runtime switch.
    RMG2> (At least that's what a read of the source tells me)

    RMG2> So, in short, while you didn't intend to configure fetchmail
    RMG2> to use your socks server, 
    RMG2> you did by configuring socks support into fetchmail

I don't want to appear picky (although I probably am),
but if a usual DAU (and I myself have grown out of that state during some 25 years in IT),
who certainly has the right to use a Linux, BSD or whatever distro instead of compiling everything himself from scratch
and who esp. has the right to use a fetchmail, that comes with that distro,
and such a distro may provide him with a socks enabled fetchmail,
and if he experiments in one corner (socks),
then he does not necessarily need to expect impact in a slightly different corner (fetchmail).

Although addmittedly both corners are "a little" associated "through" TCP/IP resp. a substitute aka socks library.

So ... it would be nice to have a socks enabled fetchmail 
defaulting to "do *not* use socks until I tell you via command line or via RC option".

And that's where I started "a while ago":

    JH> I would actually prefer a command line option and an entry in the RC file.

    JH> Is there already a feature of fetchmail, that this could be made similar to?

Having a look at the sources myself, too,
I hoped, that the call to SOCKSinit would be an appropriate location to include such a switch,
but that hope sadly did not fulfill.



Alright, I think, I just admit,
that my idea of a fetchmail has not yet been implemented and is also not so easy to implement.



I asked the dante people for the help (-> news.gmane.org:gmane.network.socks.dante.general : "how to tell socks enabled application to not go via the socks server"),
and I will come back to you, if there will be a viable solution..

    RMG2> (and I'm guessing defining some
    RMG2> environment variables or putting entries in socks.conf).

I "just" made my socks.conf to point to a real socks5 server.
Before that, that socks.conf just waited to be taken care of ...




Cheers,
Jochen