[fetchmail]Fetchmail daemon mode

[Bill Greganti]

> "Bill Greganti" <t20030101@greganti.com> writes:
>=20
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I'm slightly confused on getting fetchmail to run in daemon=20
> mode.  Let me
> > start by saying I'm running a Debian 3.1 (Sarge) system=20
> with Fetchmail
> > 6.2.5. I have the following files setup...
> >
> > /etc/fetchmailrc
> > -rw-------    1 fetchmail root         65 Apr 14 23:33 fetchmailrc
> >
> >   set daemon 300
> >   set postmaster ""
> >   set no bouncemail
> >   set no spambounce
> >   set syslog
>=20
> Please do not run fetchmail as root. Copy your /etc/fetchmailrc
> settings into the user's ~/.fetchmailrc and remove /etc/fetchmailrc.

Actually, the daemon runs as the user fetchmail by default, not as root.

>=20
> > My question should be obvious now, but is there any way to=20
> do this with only
> > one fetchmail process and still leave the files in=20
> ~/.fetchmailrc so the
> > users can edit them?
>=20
> This is not a reasonable or acceptable approach to fetchmail
> configuration.
>=20
> If users need to run fetchmail, have them run fetchmail. This=20
> can happen
> from a crontab that run fetchmail once per hour (it will keep=20
> running in
> daemon mode and just wake up once an hour in addition to=20
> that, or start
> itself if it isn't run), or from a root script that scans user's
> directory for those files and uses "su" to start fetchmail under the
> user's accounts.

I did see a similar script in the archives, I'll go back and find it.  I
didn't like that approach simply because of the number of fetchmail
processes running.  The use of this server is still growing, but I'm
expecting at least a few thousand users in the long run.  Although I'm
beinginng to see another problem arising... with only one daemon running =
and
thousands of users, a relatively short poll time becomes useless as the
daemon would process mail constantly.  In this case multiple daemons =
might
be more efficient.

Not being real familiar with fetchmail yet, does anyone see a problem =
with
thousands of processes running?

Also, in the spirit of using a single fetchmail process against the =
advice
given, does anyone see problem with writing a script to conpile all of =
the
~/.fetchmailrc files into /etc/fetchmailrc?


Bill Greganti
Greganti Consulting
714-746-3356