Fetchmail over ssh

[mcmanus at ducksong.com (Patrick R. McManus)]

John is spot on with all of his advice below.

Alternatively, sometimes you don't want to automate the passphrase
parts of ssh the way he describes. Perhaps this is simply because you
use password auth instead of dsa keys or because of any number of
other reasons.

In this scenario you can just use the port forwarding aspects of
ssh.. in one window:

ssh mailhost.example.com -L 2110:127.0.0.1:110

That would forward any connections made to localhost port 2110 onto
port 110 of the localhost on mailhost for as long as that ssh session
was active.

next, just run fetchmail against your desktop's port 2110.

(.fetchmailrc)
poll localhost port 2110 with proto POP3

this obviously works with imap too.

-P


[John Abreau: Tue, Mar 26, 2002 at 12:27:19PM -0500]
> roger at day.za.net writes:
> 
> > Over the last while I am sure I have seen postings here that refer to 
> > the fact that some people here are running their fetchmail over ssh.  
> > I need to install a system that does this at _very_ short notice and 
> > would apreciate if someone could please reduce my RTFM (reading the 
> > fantastic materials) time and give me some pointers.
> 
> You can tell fetchmail to accept external authentication, and use ssh
> to do the authentication. To run fetchmail in the background, you'd
> first create a DSA key, then use ssh-agent to cche the passphrase, 
> then start fetchmail.
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