Re: [Fetchmail-users] WG: Running multiple fetchmail processes at the same time

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

Am 19.05.2017 um 13:25 schrieb Carlos E. R.:
> See the documentation:
>        Only one daemon process is permitted per user; in daemon mode,
>        fetchmail sets up a per-user lockfile to  guar-
>        antee  this.   (You can however cheat and set the FETCHMAILHOME
>        environment variable to overcome this setting,
>        but in that case, it is your responsibility to make sure you
>        aren't polling the same server with two processes
>        at the same time.)
>
> I don't exactly know why not, as long as you don't poll the same
> account. It should be able to poll two different accounts from the same
> server, I think.

Seconded.

The documentation could be more precise and should read "polling the
same account ... at the same time" instead of "polling the same
server...", and FETCHMAILHOME is the way to go.

The GNU "parallel" utility might then also be an easy way to launch a
limited number of concurrent processes.

Answering "Why not" is simple, with the documentation refinement shown
above:
It's useless and doesn't work right. Fetchmail isn't designed for itself
running twice on the same mailbox and would not properly synchronize its
data between its processes, so both processes might end up corrupting
each other's state, or fetching mail in duplicate, or bump into server
locks and be refused, or thereabouts.

But that would not be Christopher's approach anyways, I presume.