Fetchmail and StartupItems

[viKKing]

Well, I configured built-in (10.3.8) Fetchmail to retrieve our mails for months now and it does it well.
The only gripes I have is that I can’t have it running at boot with a StartupItems or WORST by hand. The only way to start it working is using Webmin and performing a server check (button in the Fetchmail tabs). I don’t see what Webmin does that I don’t.

When typing command /usr/bin/fetchmail the only respons I’m returned is that daemon is starting or awakened, but nothing happens at all.

The Fetchmail FAQ has been of no help.

I really need to fix that before leaving this company for a new one.

Thanks.

/viKKIng

[Anonymous]

I had it running at boot with a startupitems entry, but this seems to have broken under Tiger… Has anyone else seen this?

[Anonymous]

I have put the content below (specific for my situation, but you will get the picture, I guess) in a file named org.catb.fetchmail in
/Library/LaunchDaemons/
Now fetchmail starts automatically.

Label
org.catb.fetchmail
OnDemand

ProgramArguments

/usr/bin/fetchmail
-a
-d
1800
-f
/etc/fetchmailrc

[Anonymous]

ahum, xml code not shown…

Now in text mode:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"&gt;
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>org.catb.fetchmail</string>
<key>OnDemand</key>
<false/>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/bin/fetchmail</string>
<string>-a</string>
<string>-d</string>
<string>1800</string>
<string>-f</string>
<string>/etc/fetchmailrc</string>
</array>
</dict>
</plist>

The file name should end with .plist I think, so org.catb.fetchmail.plist works for sure.

[Anonymous]

I now also have a .plist file starting fetchamail. Oddly, it seems to have appeared automatically when I did a reinstall (not upgrade – one of the other options).

This didn’t really work that well, as I have my fetchamail running as a daemon that polls every 2 minutes. So, I have a tiny script that does a sleep 5 before it runs fetchmail. That gets past the launchd requirememnt that it not run as a daemon or exit, etc.

See http://adrinux.perlucida.com/ for lots of useful stuff on launchd and http://developer.apple.com/macosx/launchd.html and http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPSystemStartup/index.html

That should get you going!
G.

[Author]

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