Hello
,
I'm trying to create a small program to look at my isp and pull down the messages into individual text files. This is just a read only setup. I need to pull down the message and kill it on the server.

I'm stuck here. I have experimented with a for string but it always fails. I was trying to use date-time and the text file name and end with a .txt. I could read and delete them.

Any suggestions

#!/bin/bash
#
username="mlxxx@vabb.upn";
password="xyzpdq";
sleep 2
echo USER $username
sleep 1
echo PASS $password
sleep 2
echo STAT
sleep 1
echo QUIT
#
# cmdline string to count messages
#./getmail.sh | telnet mail.vabb.upn 110 | tail -n1 | cut -c5

Take a look at the fetchmail command ("man fetchmail")....it does what you're trying to do already...

And make sure you use Maildir format for your mails - they are individual files.

If I use fetchmail Then I have to use postfix or dovecot or sendmail correct ? I was trying to get arround that by just running a script that I can use on any of my machines at home or work to view my outstanding messages that I may have. one of the reasons for not deleting them from the server.
I just want to create individual emails txt files for each message. I can read and then delete them. All without having to load up software on a machine.

here is the older version of the same code. This has the for statement that doesn't work. I tried mixed versions but I only seem to get one file and its all the messages in one. The other bug is trying to run a loop based on the STAT number of messages.

sleep 2
echo USER $username
sleep 1
echo PASS $password
sleep 2
echo STAT
sleep 1
#echo RETR 1
#
for i in $(seq 1 10); do echo "RETR $i">mail.txt | sleep 2 | mv mail.txt /home/otg1017/Mail/`date '+%Y%m%d-%T'`.txt ; done
sleep 2
echo QUIT


This is the command line used
# $ ./getmail.sh | telnet mail.vabb.com 110
# I have also tried this method too.
# remove everything from >mail.txt on and use it on the outside. This only seems to give me 1 file.
# $ ./getmail.sh | telnet mail.vabb.com 110 >mail.txt | sleep 2 | mv mail.txt /home/otg1017/Mail/`date '+%Y%m%d-%T'`.txt

Wrong. Fetchmail is a client application which fetches e-mail from a pop3/imap account. It doesn't need any postfix or dovecot or sendmail because these are all server applications which are running on the server.

http://theos.in/news/howto-configure...-fetch-emails/

R.

alpine is a nice program also.

The idea wqas a simple program that I could put on a system and run it to collect what mail messages I have. not to respond to them. I have linux and uniz boxes both at work and at home. If I knew I was expecting an important message I could run it real quick and look thru the messages for hopefully the one that I was expecting.

I can't get away with installing packages on all these machines. I was trying to come up with a very simple solution.
Run a batch file that creates a series of text files for me to look at and then remove. but never removing them from the server until I get home.

These machines dont have wgui's they are all CLI so I can browse my mail

I'm sorry I don't understand what you mean here ?