Script to copy from pop3 to IMAP?

October 31, 2006 10:49 AM

Is there a perl/shellscripted way to automatically check a pop3 account and copy new messages directly into a specified IMAP folder? I've already set up a "forwarding rule" that sort of does this, but if there's a more direct way to accomplish it, that would be cool...
posted by idontlikewords to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Best answer: fetchmail is what you are looking for.
posted by chrisroberts at 11:10 AM on October 31, 2006

Best answer: getmail is worth a look too - it does much the same job as fetchmail but it works very hard to make sure that you can't lose mail and that you can't accidently spam other people by mistake.

The developer is very responsive as well (if a little acerbic on the mailing list).
posted by koshmar at 12:37 PM on October 31, 2006

Best answer: FWIW, I prefer getmail over fetchmail since I am one of the (very) rare few who have lost mail in a fetchmail crash.
posted by Loto at 1:03 PM on October 31, 2006

Response by poster: Follow-up... I got getmail working pretty sweet on my dreamhost account, but the mailbox config at DH provided some unique challenges. If anybody else is trying this there, remember that it won't work unless you:

A) Install getmail in a non-standard directory (unless you know some way to get access to /usr/bin that I don't)

B) If you are delivering *to* a DH account, it has to be one that has shell privileges i.e. not a m123456-type of username.
posted by idontlikewords at 11:47 PM on November 9, 2006