Re: [Solved] Unable to configure .fetchmailrc

* Roger Price <[email protected]> wrote:
>On Mon, 17 Aug 2026, Michel Verdier wrote:
>
>> What is your version ? Here I have fetchmail 6.4.39-1
>
>  rprice@titan ~ apt show fetchmail
>  Package: fetchmail
>  Version: 6.4.39-1
>
>> And man fetchmail or fetchmailrc shows :
>> GENERAL OPERATION
>>        Command-line  options  override ~/.fetchmailrc declarations.
>
>When I started to write the message, I had not yet understood that
>« Command-line options override ~/.fetchmailrc declarations » means that Debian
>13 replaces ~/.fetchmailrc with /etc/fetchmailrc .

Debian 13 doesn't replace ~/.fetchmailrc with /etc/fetchmailrc. Debian
uses both files as described in /usr/share/doc/fetchmail/README.Debian.gz for
ages
It has also a paragraph called "Running the system-wide fetchmail as
root", which is not recommended since fetchmail 5,8, changelog from year 2001!
   * Running fetchmail as root is dangerous. The safest way is to run it as a
     very unpriviledged user (you could even chroot it, I suppose) and
     deliver over smtp. Stress this on the documentation