enable fetchmail system-wide mode

[Simon Barner]

Hello Bob,

> I want to run fetchmail enabled for system wide mode.
> The command line cmd fetchmail -q issued from user root gets meaningless
> error msg.

The error message may be meaningless to you, but without it cannot help
you here.

> Reviewing /usr/local/etc/rc.d/fetchmail has comments talking about system
> wide mode running under user fetchmail.
> How does the system admin control fetchmail when user fetchmail needs
> password to logon and no where is password given during install.

In daemon mode, the password is supposed to be stored in the config file.
Fetchmail also supports more advanced authentication mechanisms like
Kerberos, but I do not have any experience with it, and without support from
the mail server it seems useless.
> 
> Also /usr/local/etc/fetchmailrc which is suppose to be the config file is
> empty. Even fetchmailrc.sample is empty.

Fetchmail supports literally dozends of configurations. IMO the port must
try and duplicate fetchmail's documentation.

You can use the "fetchmailconf" program to create and manage fetchmail
configurations (must not build WITHOUT_X11 then).

> 
> The port pkg-message file is absent so there is no information describing
> how to configure fetchmail in system-wide mode or individual user mode.
> These are unique run modes to freebsd and are not covered in the fetchmail
> manual. The port pkg-message file should be created with instructions about
> how to configure it.

Users are supposed to read the 'fetchmail' rc script (this convention is
also used by other ports). You are right in that a short pkg-message that
contains a pointer to that file is usefull for novice fetchmail users on
FreeBSD. 

Did you have a look at the /usr/local/etc/fetchmailrc file? Do you have
suggestions how to improve the documentation provided at the beginning of
that file?

Please update your ports tree and rebuild the port -- I will commit
some small improvements now.

> 
> Before in 4.11 through 5.4 I started fetchmail using
> /usr/local/etc/rc.d/fetchmail.sh and /root/,fetchmailrc and had root admin
> control of fetchmail. How do I achieve admin control now that fetchmail has
> been converted to use rc.conf fetchmail_enable="YES" to start at boot time?

Simply copy your previous fetchmail config file (presumably /root/.fetchmailrc)
to /usr/local/etc/fetchmailrc), put fetchmail_enable="YES" into /etc/rc.conf
and issue "/usr/local/etc/rc.d/fetchmail start".

Btw.: Are you sure that you really need one system wide daemon? In my experience,
a per-user daemon makes things a lot easier for the administrator since users
can update their email configuration on their own.

If you still have problems, please give me as much detail as you can.

-- 
Best regards / Viele Grüße,                             barner at FreeBSD.org
 Simon Barner                                                barner at gmx.de
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