Re: [Fetchmail-users] Downloading 'seen' email?

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

Am 11.07.2017 um 10:45 schrieb Hylton Conacher (ZR1HPC):
> I have been noticing that some email, although possibly read on Gmail
> and marked as unread, is not downloading to a local mailserver.
>
> Looking at the log for the last retrieval I see the line of:
>
> ***Start***
> fetchmail: 155 messages (67 seen) for 72h...@gm... at
> pop.gmail.com (15312088 octets).
> ***End***
>
> Looking through the log I see that the number of messages seen changes
> yet never hits 0.
>
> My fetchmailrc is:
> ***Start***
>
> #set daemon 300
> #set syslog
> #set postmaster "hylton"
> set logfile /var/log/fetchmail.log
> poll pop.gmail.com
> protocol POP3
>
> user "mygmailaddress" there with password "mypassword": is "hylton"
> here keep ssl
> #7mda "/usr/bin/procmail -d %T"
> ***End***
>
> Whilst there may be other errors in the above file, my main concern is
> how to retrieve the 67 'seen' messages as they are not on the local
> mailserver but are listed as unread on Gmail, and are sitting in the
> Inbox?
>
> Comments? 

Hylton,

0. POP3 doesn't really have a notion of "Seen" messages, it's rather
supporting a concept of "downloaded" messages. fetchmail tries to "peek"
at messages though so as not to mark messages Seen on the server's end.

1. Gmail is quirky. See
<http://www.fetchmail.info/fetchmail-FAQ.html#I9> unfortunately Google
changed the location of its help texts, currently
<https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7104828#downloadmultipleclients>
might do, look for "recent:" (add it to the mygmailaddress part in your
rcfile, i. e. as prefix to the user part:

user "recent:mygmailaddress" ...

2. check the logs if fetchmail is using "LAST" or "UIDL" to figure how
many messages are seen. You can force it to use UIDL by adding "uidl"
after the "pop3".

3. you may want to do ONE SINGLE run with the "--all" option. This
downloads "seen" mail. It does not mix with "keep" and "daemon" enabled
at the same time (obviously - it does not make sense, you would
re-download all copies of kept messages over and over).

HTH
Matthias