Re: [fetchmail-users] Can fetchmail leave email on the POP3 srever for (say) 10 days?

[Rob M. <rob...@gm...>]

On 3/18/07, Richard <rch...@aa...> wrote:

> I have Centos 4.4 all up to date. Being a recently reformed Windows Sys
> Admin - I tend to manage centos mostly with Webmin - though I also use the
> Gnome interface through nx. I try to avoid the command line stuff where
> possible.

"All up to date" is meaningless - the actual version number of
fetchmail is required.  I would also strongly advise you to learn the
command line.  The GUI interfaces are often more limited than the
underlying tools (particularly with the likes of webmin which doesn't
evolve as rapidly as the tools it supports).

It also help you when the GUI breaks and you're trying to get it
running again :)

> The Webmin interface for configuring fetchmial allows me to specify whether
> or not to leave the email items on the POP3 server after downloading them.
> As far as I can see there is no way to specify to leave them there for (say)
> 10 days then delete them. Most POP clients support this behaviour. (Outlook
> & Outlook express certainly do)
>
> Can anyone tell me whether this can be done - and if so - is it a limitation
> of the webmin interface which prevents me from specifying this? I think
> Webmin allows me to run a command before and/or after downloading emails.
> Perhaps I can achieve what I want this way? If I revert to editing a conf
> file - will that interfere with webmin's control of the conf file?

No, it can't.  The purpose if fetchmail is purely to fetch email from
remote servers, it isn't designed to behave like a POP client :)

There are (though you'll have to trawl the list archive) various tools
out there to expire messages that way.

As for webmin, I've never used it so couldn't say.

> I would like to do this so that there is a copy of new emails somewhere if
> the Centos machine hard disk dies.

Ah, you want a backup :)  Well, you've got a number of options.

For only protection against disk failure there's always another disk
and running RAID1 (hardware or software).  For proper backups grab an
external hard disk (USB works fine :>) and use the likes of rsnapshot
to take backups onto it.

-- 
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Rob MacGregor
      Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he
        doesn't become a monster.                  Friedrich Nietzsche