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

[James Wyper]

Thank you – it didn’t occur to me that they would still allow an insecure 
connection (smtp has been locked down to TLS-only for ages).  I’ve now 
deleted the aberrant message despite its kind offer of the chance to share 
in several million USD deposited by a government official in some corrupt 
part of Africa.

Even though I pull my emails with the “no keep” option in fetchmail (and the 
pop3 session only showed that single message) VM’s webmail keeps every 
single message that we’ve ever been sent – so it’s now almost unusable 
because it frequently times out trying even the simplest inbox operations. 
I’m guessing they duplicate each incoming mail and push one copy to the pop 
server and the other to the webmail / imap one.

Thanks again
James

From: matt johnston
Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2020 7:44 AM
To: James Wyper ; Sclug at Sclug. Uk
Subject: Re: [sclug] POP / Fetchmail - how to get rid of a stuck message

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 110
Trying 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