Re: [Fetchmail-users] gmail socket error

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

Am 14.02.21 um 02:25 schrieb Matthias Andree:
> Am 13.02.21 um 21:28 schrieb Joe Acquisto-j4:
>> Trying to regain ability to download gmail to my local cllient.
>>
>> Getting the following:
>>
>> --------------------
>> fetchmail: 6.4.2-rc3 querying imap.gmail.com (protocol IMAP) at Sat Feb 13 15:17:11 2021: poll started
>> Sat Feb 13 15:17:11 EST 2021
>> fetchmail: Trying to connect to 172.253.63.108/993...connected.
>> fetchmail: socket error while fetching from my...@gm...@imap.gmail.com
>> fetchmail: 6.4.2-rc3 querying imap.gmail.com (protocol IMAP) at Sat Feb 13 15:17:21 2021: poll completed
>> fetchmail: Merged UID list from imap.gmail.com:
>>  <empty>
>> fetchmail: Query status=2 (SOCKET)
>> fetchmail: sleeping at Sat Feb 13 15:17:21 2021 for 120 seconds
>> ------------------
>>
>> Part of .fetchmalrc is below:
>> ------------------
>> # Configguration created Sat Feb  2 12:57:33 2008 by fetchmailconf 1.52 $Revision: 4740 $
>> set logfile "/var/log/fetchmail.log"
>> set postmaster "ad...@so..."
>> set no bouncemail
>> set no spambounce
>> set properties ""
>> set daemon 120
>> . . . .
>>
>> poll imap.gmail.com with proto IMAP port 993
>>
>>  user 'my...@gm...' there with password 'sumwerd' is 'x-...@lo...' here folder 'Inbox','Junk' fetchlimit 1 sslproto 'auto' sslcertck
>>    preconnect "/bin/date >> /var/log/fetchmail.log"
> You've confused fetchmail. You are *not* specifying the option "ssl" so
> the port would be 143 for proto IMAP - but then you are overriding the
> port to 993.
>
> That by itself won't work, fetchmail will try to query CAPABILITY then
> send STARTTLS via plaintext. Port 993 however is SSL-wrapped and talks
> SSL right away.
>
> So either you need to erase the "port 993", or you need to specify "ssl"
> in addition (in which case you could still omit the port 993 because it
> is the default value for proto imap combined with ssl).

Update: It appears Google, for imap.gmail.com, do not support STARTTLS,
so you need to add the ssl keyword, or --ssl on the command line, which
then renders the "port 993" unneeded as written above.

I also figured that (including recent versions) the timeout handling in
that situation skips to the next server and am not sure if that's the
right approach. A server might be multihomed and retrying another
address might then work, which fetchmail does not do, however on a
network blackhole, proceeding to the next server is the right approach
when fetchmail polls multiple servers.