Fetchmail can be obtained from http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail/.
Once fetchmail is compiled and installed, it needs a configuration file. Fetchmail will be run from cron by user root, so the configuration file should be placed in /root. It is called /root/.fetchmailrc. A complete sample file is included in the fetchmail distribution, but this must be trimmed down so that only the items relevant to your own setup are left.
This is what my own .fetchmailrc file says:
server mail.enterprise.net protocol pop3 username user password passwordThe file is fully explained by the fetchmail man page; this particular version says to get mail from mail.enterprise.net using protocol POP3 (which is what Enterprise uses). My username and password are supplied to enable the program to be authorised to collect the mail.
Because it contains a password, which must be kept secret, the configuration file must only be readable and writable by root; if it has any other permissions, fetchmail will refuse to use it.
In order to set up .fetchmailrc correctly, run these commands as superuser:
# vi /root/.fetchmailrc (Edit in the appropriate entries for your setup.) # chmod 600 /root/.fetchmailrc # chown root /root/.fetchmailrc