[sclug] POP / Fetchmail - how to get rid of a stuck message

[James Wyper]

Hi

I’ve got an old-fashioned email set-up that pre-dates my ISP offering IMAP access – in fact I set this up after asking this group for advice ~16 years ago (thanks again!).  I use fetchmail to pull messages from my ISP’s POP3 server and then (via postfix) dump them onto a server which in turn runs IMAP and makes the email available to multiple devices.  This works well for me and I’m in no hurry to change it.

Except.. I keep getting a message like this in /var/log/mail.log – it’s nothing more than an annoyance but I’d appreciate advice on how I might get rid of it.  

Jun  8 18:00:24 karelia dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<james>, method=PLAIN, rip=86.17.172.114, lip=192.168.0.99, mpid=13979, session=<tB7/i5WnovtWEaxy>
Jun  8 18:00:24 karelia dovecot: imap(james): Logged out in=120 out=1139
Jun  8 18:00:53 karelia dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<james>, method=PLAIN, rip=86.17.172.114, lip=192.168.0.99, mpid=13984, TLS, session=<p/m2jZWnXsJWEaxy>
Jun  8 18:02:26 karelia dovecot: imap(james): Logged out in=135593 out=75268385
Jun  8 18:02:48 karelia fetchmail[2214]: 1 message for wypers@<redacted> at pop3.ntlworld.com (1942 octets).
Jun  8 18:02:48 karelia postfix/smtpd[13996]: connect from localhost[127.0.0.1]
Jun  8 18:02:48 karelia postfix/smtpd[13996]: warning: Illegal address syntax from localhost[127.0.0.1] in MAIL command: <zydnsacabyinv@>
Jun  8 18:02:48 karelia fetchmail[2214]: reading message wypers@<redacted>@pop3.ntlworld.com:1 of 1 (1942 octets) not flushed
Jun  8 18:02:48 karelia postfix/smtpd[13996]: disconnect from localhost[127.0.0.1] ehlo=1 mail=0/1 rset=1 quit=1 commands=3/4
Jun  8 18:02:48 karelia dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<james>, method=PLAIN, rip=86.17.172.114, lip=192.168.0.99, mpid=14002, TLS, session=<M82dlJWnuppWEaxy>
Jun  8 18:02:50 karelia dovecot: imap(james): Connection closed (STATUS finished 1.316 secs ago) in=348 out=976

I’m assuming that the problem is a malformed email on the POP3 server that fetchmail can’t fetch and delete because my local postfix rejects it.

To verify this I’ve tried to log on to VirginMedia’s POP3 server manually with

openssl s_client -connect pop3.ntlworld.com:995 

and get as far as

+OK Virgin Media POP3 server ready [ e4c558782NTL ].

When I then enter

USER <same email address as in /etc/fetchmailrc>

it hangs for a minute and then dumps me out with

read:errno=0

Does anyone know the correct incantation to get command-line access to Virgin’s POP3 server, or other client methods I could try to find and delete this message?  Or am I looking in the wrong place?

Thanks
James
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