33.18 movemail program
Rmail uses the movemail program to move mail from your inbox to
your Rmail file (see Rmail Files and Inboxes). When loaded for the first time,
Rmail attempts to locate the movemail program and determine its
version. There are two versions of the movemail program: the
GNU Mailutils version (see movemail in GNU mailutils),
and an Emacs-specific version that is built and installed unless Emacs
was configured --with-mailutils in effect.
The two movemail versions support the same
command line syntax and the same basic subset of options. However, the
Mailutils version offers additional features and is more secure.
The Emacs version of movemail can retrieve mail from the
usual Unix mailbox formats. Warning: Although it can also use the POP3
protocol, this is not recommended because it does not support POP3 via
encrypted TLS channels.
The Mailutils version is able to handle a wide set of mailbox
formats, such as plain Unix mailboxes, maildir and MH
mailboxes, etc. It is able to access remote mailboxes using the POP3
or IMAP4 protocol, and can retrieve mail from them using a TLS
encrypted channel. It also accepts mailbox arguments in URL
form. The detailed description of mailbox URLs can be found
in URL in Mailbox URL Formats. In short, a
URL is:
proto://[user[:password]@]host-or-file-name[:port]
where square brackets denote optional elements.
proto
Specifies the mailbox protocol, or format to use. The exact semantics of the rest of URL elements depends on the actual value of proto (see below).
user
User name to access the remote mailbox.
password
User password to access the remote mailbox.
host-or-file-name
Hostname of the remote server for remote mailboxes or file name of a local mailbox.
port
Optional port number, if not the default for that protocol.
proto can be one of:
mbox
Usual Unix mailbox format. In this case, user, pass and
port are not used, and host-or-file-name denotes the file
name of the mailbox file, e.g., mbox:///var/spool/mail/smith.
mh
A local mailbox in the MH format. user, pass
and port are not used. host-or-file-name denotes the name
of MH folder, e.g., mh:///Mail/inbox.
maildir
A local mailbox in the maildir format. user,
pass and port are not used, and host-or-file-name
denotes the name of maildir mailbox, e.g.,
maildir:///mail/inbox.
file
Any local file in mailbox format. Its actual format is detected
automatically by movemail.
pop``pops
A remote mailbox to be accessed via POP3 protocol. user
specifies the remote user name to use, pass may be used to
specify the user password, host-or-file-name is the name or IP
address of the remote mail server to connect to, and port is the
port number; e.g., pop://smith:[email protected]:995.
If the server supports it, movemail tries to use an
encrypted connection—use the ‘ pops’ form to require one.
imap``imaps
A remote mailbox to be accessed via IMAP4 protocol. user
specifies the remote user name to use, pass may be used to
specify the user password, host-or-file-name is the name or IP
address of the remote mail server to connect to, and port is the
port number; e.g., imap://smith:[email protected]:993.
If the server supports it, movemail tries to use an
encrypted connection—use the ‘ imaps’ form to require one.
Alternatively, you can specify the file name of the mailbox to use.
This is equivalent to specifying the ‘ file’ protocol:
/var/spool/mail/user ≡ file:///var/spool/mail/user
The variable rmail-movemail-program controls which version of
movemail to use. If that is a string, it specifies the
absolute file name of the movemail executable. If it is
nil, Rmail searches for movemail in the directories
listed in rmail-movemail-search-path, then in exec-path
(see Running Shell Commands from Emacs), then in exec-directory.