| Fetchmail from Google's Gmail | ||
|---|---|---|
 | Part I. Miscellaneous subjects (and those still to be sorted) |  |
| Fetchmail from Google's Gmail | ||
|---|---|---|
| | Part I. Miscellaneous subjects (and those still to be sorted) | |
Last modified: "2016-12-22 14:34:26 jurjen"
How to use fetchmail to retrieve mail from a Gmail account and inject it into the local mail stream, with a mere seconds lag.
Fetchmail can be used to retrieve mail via POP or IMAP, and insert it into the local MTA's incoming stream. Doing this with Google's mail is a bit harder than usual because of Google's default adherence to OAuth2.0, which was originally not intended for use with mail.
I found that it worked best to have Google generate a so-called app password.
![[Note]](include/images/admon/note.png) | Note |
|---|---|
|
This app password can only be generated if you leave 2-factor authentication enabled. With 2-factor authentication disabled and thus no app password, I couldn't seem to make fetchmail connect to the gmail server. |
You can see that 'app password' in the contents of ~/.fetchmailrc:
poll imap.gmail.com protocol IMAP auth password
user "apprentice@gmail.com" is apprentice here
password 'klwpcmaqeycndist'
ssl, sslcertck, idle
So we can fetch mail:
apprentice@host:~$ fetchmail -v
fetchmail: 6.3.26 querying imap.gmail.com (protocol IMAP) at Wed 21 Dec 2016 09:00:02 AM CET: poll started
Trying to connect to 173.194.69.108/993...connected.
fetchmail: Server certificate:
fetchmail: Issuer Organization: Google Inc
fetchmail: Issuer CommonName: Google Internet Authority G2
fetchmail: Subject CommonName: imap.gmail.com
fetchmail: Subject Alternative Name: imap.gmail.com
fetchmail: imap.gmail.com key fingerprint: 97:D0:32:78:2B:BA:AB:3A:EC:03:99:28:F2:1E:82:CC
fetchmail: SSL/TLS: using protocol TLSv1.2, cipher ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305, 256/256 secret/processed bits
fetchmail: IMAP< * OK Gimap ready for requests from 129.125.36.97 d3mb140991022edc
fetchmail: IMAP> A0001 CAPABILITY
fetchmail: IMAP< * CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 UNSELECT IDLE NAMESPACE QUOTA ID XLIST CHILDREN X-GM-EXT-1 XYZZY SASL-IR AUTH=XOAUTH2 AUTH=PLAIN AUTH=PLAIN-CLIENTTOKEN AUTH=OAUTHBEARER AUTH=XOAUTH
fetchmail: IMAP< A0001 OK Thats all she wrote! d3mb140991022edc
fetchmail: will idle after poll
fetchmail: IMAP> A0002 LOGIN "apprentice@gmail.com" *
fetchmail: IMAP< * CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 UNSELECT IDLE NAMESPACE QUOTA ID XLIST CHILDREN X-GM-EXT-1 UIDPLUS COMPRESS=DEFLATE ENABLE MOVE CONDSTORE ESEARCH UTF8=ACCEPT LIST-EXTENDED LIST-STATUS LITERAL- APPENDLIMIT=35651584
fetchmail: IMAP< A0002 OK apprentice@gmail.com authenticated (Success)
fetchmail: IMAP> A0003 SELECT "INBOX"
fetchmail: IMAP< * FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Draft \Deleted \Seen $NotPhishing $Phishing)
fetchmail: IMAP< * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Draft \Deleted \Seen $NotPhishing $Phishing \*)] Flags permitted.
fetchmail: IMAP< * OK [UIDVALIDITY 1] UIDs valid.
fetchmail: IMAP< * 2 EXISTS
fetchmail: IMAP< * 0 RECENT
fetchmail: IMAP< * OK [UIDNEXT 13] Predicted next UID.
fetchmail: IMAP< * OK [HIGHESTMODSEQ 2624]
fetchmail: IMAP< A0003 OK [READ-WRITE] INBOX selected. (Success)
fetchmail: IMAP> A0004 EXPUNGE
fetchmail: IMAP< A0004 OK Success
fetchmail: IMAP> A0005 SEARCH UNSEEN
fetchmail: IMAP< * SEARCH
fetchmail: IMAP< A0005 OK SEARCH completed (Success)
2 messages (2 seen) for apprentice@gmail.com at imap.gmail.com.
fetchmail: IMAP> A0006 IDLE
fetchmail: IMAP< + idling