Re: Programs to Receive and filter mail
slakmagik <jsunx1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 2007-05-11 (Fri) 19:51:38 [-0300], Cleverson wrote:
> >
> > I'd like opinions on which of these fetch-mails programs is better and/or
> > have less bugs: Fetchmail or Getmail?
I say getmail, but I'm biased, as I'm its author.
> FWIW, here's what Patrick Volkerding (Slackware maintainer) thought
> (from the ChangeLog) as of a couple of days ago:
>
> n/fetchmail-6.3.8-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to fetchmail-6.3.8.
> Added "fetchmail is probably not secure" to slack-desc. When we've seldom
> had a Slackware release that didn't need a fetchmail security advisory
> before the next Slackware was out, I think that's fair to say.
> (* Security fix *)
> n/getmail-4.7.4-noarch-1.tgz: A secure python-based fetchmail alternative.
Very interesting. getmail is included in most of the major distributions
these days as an optional package, but that's the most recent version I've
seen any of them ship -- that's the current version.
In my experience, most people find configuring and using getmail easier. I
think fetchmail's abominable security record will likely improve under its new
maintainers (they actually have some technical credentials), but they're still
saddled with the design decisions and some code from its ... ahem ... wild
years.
> I have no experience with maildrop, but like procmail just fine.
I don't use either, personally, but find the maildrop syntax trivially easy to
read. Many people have difficulty understanding procmail recipes, and as you
say, procmail has some bugs that allow it to silently drop mail.
Charles
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Charles Cazabon <mutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
GPL'ed software available at: http://pyropus.ca/software/
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