School of Computing

Secure Services

Introduction

This document describes how to set up Fetchmail to use SSL encryption when receiving mail.

Setting up Fetchmail

To instruct fetchmail to use SSL encryption you simply need to specify the ssl option in your configuration file. This works with both imap and pop3, and can easily be added to your existing configuration.

Note: you will need to have fetchmail compiled with SSL support. How you do this depends entirely on how your system is set up.

This will, however, generate certificate warnings. What you need to do is install our CA certificate and tell fetchmail where to find it. These instructions show you how :- 

% mkdir ~/.certs
% wget -O ~/.certs/ukc-compsci-ssl.pem http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/systems/ukc-compsci-ssl.crt
% c_rehash ~/.certs
Then add something like the following to your fetchmail configuration :- 
ssl sslcertck sslcertpath "/home/tdb/.certs";

Here is an example configuration :- 

poll raptor.ukc.ac.uk with proto imap:
  user "tdb" with pass "password" is tdb here fetchall
  ssl sslcertck sslcertpath "/home/tdb/.certs";

More information is available on the fetchmail website :- 

http://catb.org/~esr/fetchmail/fetchmail-FAQ.html#K5
http://catb.org/~esr/fetchmail/fetchmail-man.html#6

School of Computing, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NF

Enquiries: +44 (0)1227 824180 or contact us.

Last Updated: 07/11/2011 12:46