[fetchmail]Does SPF break fetchmail?

[Neil Harkins]

On Sat, 9 Jul 2005, Rob MacGregor wrote:
> On 08/07/05, Neil Harkins <nharkins@well.com> wrote:
> > Hi. I used fetchmail for a few projects over the past 10 years,
> > and was curious how it deals with SPF (Sender Policy Framework,
> > http://spf.pobox.com).
> 
> Given that it pre-dates it, I'd say not at all :-)

sendmail predates SPF, yet it can support SPF.
fetchmail is a tool, with maintainers, that has added 
new features to be compatible with new standards. 

Ultimately, mail aggregation like fetchmail is the main 
problem with SPF. I started the thread to see if any thought 
has been given towards making it work, instead of ignoring 
what is an otherwise admirable anti-spam effort.

If --mda gets around it with most mailers, then 
it certainly seems like something worth mentioning 
in the documentation.

> > I see in the fetchmail 5.0 feature list that:
> > 
> >  * Fetchmail can be told to fall back to delivering
> >    via local sendmail if it can't open port 25.
> > 
> > Is there any way to make that the primary behavior
> > instead of just a "fall-back"?
> 
> Why not just configure your install of fetchmail to deliver that way? 
> Surely that's easier than breaking everybody elses install :-)

I'm asking if that precedence can be *configured* in the conf,
not asking the default behavior to change in the code,
and "break everyone else's install". 

> > Then again, if the MTA handled piped mail similarly to mail
> > received over port 25, by inserting the machine's default ip
> > address, it still wouldn't work. Not sure if the MTAs do
> > that or not...
> > 
> > Anyway, any thoughts on the matter would be greatly appreciated!
> 
> Adding to what others have said, you may want to configure your system
> such that connections on the loopback interface are exempt from SPF
> checks.  That should solve the problem.

Yes, in most cases that would work, however some may use fetchmail 
from a shell account where they don't have root. 

-neil