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3. Downloading your E-Mail

In order to read E-Mail, it is usually best to download it using a program called "fetchmail". The following instructions are known to work perfectly for version 2.2 of fetchmail - although they should be applicable to any version.

(Note: Fetchmail is almost certainly already installed on your system, as it is included in all Linux distributions that I know of - if anyone knows this to be untrue, please let me know!).

Perform the following steps:

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echo "server pop.com protocol pop3 username dave password foo" > ~/.fetchmailrc

(Make sure to replace "pop.com" with the hostname to your ISP's pop server.  Replace
"dave" with your username, and replace "foo" with your username's password.)

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Now, whenever you want to check your E-Mail, just type "fetchmail" at the prompt. Fetchmail will go off and download all your mail and store it in your local mail folder.

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