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

[matt johnston]

Hi James,
Wow, this takes me back. My first proper job was supporting NTL's
doomed internet set top boxes when they launched ntlworld, Project1 as
it was known. Ah, the late 90s!!! Y2K panic, the heady days before
broadband, Netscape, Eurdora and clearing out large or corrupt mails
from customer's inboxes with telnet.
My favourite ever call, and customer, was from this job. A lovely lady
from Swansea, trying to get online for the first time, at her wits end.
"I'm typing in my password, see, and it's just coming up STARS." But I
digress...
Try vanilla telnet to the server, that still seems to work OK:
[matt at kraken ~]$ telnet pop3.ntlworld.com 110Trying
62.254.26.206...Connected to pop3.ntlworld.com.Escape character is
'^]'.+OK Virgin Media POP3 server ready [ e4c558782NTL ].user wypers+OK
Or skin the cat by other means and have a clear out via the webmail
interface... mail.ntlworld.com in your browser's address bar will
redirect you to the Virgin Media e-mail portal.
Best of luck!
Matt
On Mon, 2020-06-08 at 19:17 +0100, James Wyper via Sclug wrote:
> 
> 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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