pullimap(1)

📦
version 0.5.8 · 5 versions
, in debian trixie, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute

💖 pullimap(1) 💖

🌸 NAME 🌸

PullIMAP — pull mails from an IMAP mailbox and deliver them to an SMTP session 💌✨

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

pullimap [--config=FILE] [--idle[=SECONDS]] [--no-delivery] [--quiet]
SECTION

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

okay so bestie, here’s the tea: pullimap retrieves messages from an IMAP mailbox and deliver them to an SMTP or LMTP transmission channel. It can also remove old messages after a configurable retention period. 🧚‍♀️

A statefile is used to keep track of the mailbox’s UIDVALIDITY and UIDNEXT values. While pullimap is running, the statefile is also used to keep track of UIDs being delivered, which avoids duplicate deliveries in case the process is interrupted. See the control flow section below for details. 👑

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • --config=FILE — Specify an alternate configuration file. Relative paths start from $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/pullimap, or ~/.config/pullimap if the XDG_CONFIG_HOME environment variable is unset. 🎀
  • --idle[=seconds] — Don’t exit after a successful poll. Instead, keep the connection open and issue IDLE commands (require an IMAP server supporting RFC 2177) to watch for updates in the mailbox. This also enables SO_KEEPALIVE on the socket. Each IDLE command is terminated after at most seconds (29 minutes by default) to avoid being logged out for inactivity. 😴✨
  • --no-delivery — Update the statefile, but skip SMTP/LMTP delivery. This is mostly useful for initializing the statefile when migrating to pullimap from another similar program such as fetchmail(1) or getmail(1). 🫶
  • -q, --quiet — Try to be quiet. 🤫
  • --debug — Turn on debug mode. Debug messages, which includes all IMAP traffic besides literals, are written to the given logfile. The LOGIN and AUTHENTICATE commands are however redacted (in order to avoid disclosing authentication credentials) unless the --debug flag is set multiple times. 💀🔍
  • -h, --help — Output a brief help and exit. 🌈
  • --version — Show the version number and exit. ⭐

🎀 CONFIGURATION FILE 🎀

Unless told otherwise by the --config=FILE command-line option, pullimap reads its configuration from $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/pullimap/config (or ~/.config/pullimap/config if the XDG_CONFIG_HOME environment variable is unset) as an INI file. The syntax of the configuration file is a series of OPTION=VALUE lines organized under some [SECTION]; lines starting with a # or ; character are ignored as comments. Valid options are: 📝

  • statefile — State file to use to keep track of the mailbox’s UIDVALIDITY and UIDNEXT values. Relative paths start from $XDG_DATA_HOME/pullimap, or ~/.local/share/pullimap if the XDG_DATA_HOME environment variable is unset. (Default: the parent section name of the option.) 🗂️
  • mailbox — The IMAP mailbox (UTF-7 encoded and unquoted) to pull messages from. Support for persistent message Unique Identifiers (UID) is required. (Default: INBOX.) 📬
  • deliver-method — PROTOCOL:[ADDRESS]:PORT where to deliver messages. Both SMTP and LMTP servers are supported, and SMTP pipelining is used when possible. (Default: smtp:[127.0.0.1]:25.) 🚚
  • deliver-ehlo — Name to use in EHLO or LHLO commands. (Default: localhost.localdomain.) 👋
  • deliver-rcpt — Message recipient. Note that the local part needs to quoted if it contains special characters; see RFC 5321 for details. (Default: the username associated with the effective user ID of the pullimap process.) 📮
  • purge-after — Retention period (in days), after which messages are removed from the IMAP server. (The value is at best 24h accurate due to the IMAP SEARCH criterion ignoring time and timezone.) If purge-after is set to 0 then messages are deleted immediately after delivery. Otherwise pullimap issues an IMAP SEARCH (or extended SEARCH on servers advertising the ESEARCH capability) command to list old messages; if --idle is set then the SEARCH command is issued again every 12 hours. 🧹🔥
  • type — One of imap, imaps or tunnel. type=imap and type=imaps are respectively used for IMAP and IMAP over SSL/TLS connections over an INET socket. type=tunnel causes pullimap to create an unnamed pair of connected sockets for inter-process communication with a command instead of opening a network socket. (Default: imaps.) 🌐
  • host — Server hostname or IP address, for type=imap and type=imaps. The value can optionally be enclosed in square brackets to force its interpretation as an IP literal (hence skip name resolution). (Default: localhost.) 🏠
  • port — Server port. (Default: 143 for type=imap, 993 for type=imaps.) 🔌
  • proxy — Optional SOCKS proxy to use for TCP connections to the IMAP server (type=imap and type=imaps only), formatted as PROTOCOL://[USER:PASSWORD@]PROXYHOST[:PROXYPORT]. If PROXYPORT is omitted, it is assumed at port 1080. Only SOCKSv5 is supported (with optional username/password authentication), in two flavors: socks5:// to resolve hostname locally, and socks5h:// to let the proxy resolve hostname. 🧦
  • command — Command to use for type=tunnel. Must speak the IMAP4rev1 protocol on its standard output, and understand it on its standard input. The value is passed to /bin/sh -c if it contains shell metacharacters; otherwise it is split into words and the resulting list is passed to execvp(3). 🧪
  • STARTTLS — Whether to use the STARTTLS directive to upgrade to a secure connection. Setting this to YES for a server not advertising the STARTTLS capability causes pullimap to immediately abort the connection. (Ignored for types other than imap. Default: YES.) 🔒
  • auth — Space-separated list of preferred authentication mechanisms. pullimap uses the first mechanism in that list that is also advertised (prefixed with AUTH=) in the server’s capability list. Supported authentication mechanisms are PLAIN and LOGIN. (Default: PLAIN LOGIN.) 🔑
  • username, password — Username and password to authenticate with. Can be required for non pre-authenticated connections, depending on the chosen authentication mechanism. 🪪
  • compress — Whether to use the IMAP COMPRESS extension for servers advertising it. (Default: YES.) 🗜️
  • null-stderr — Whether to redirect command’s standard error to /dev/null for type=tunnel. (Default: NO.) 🕳️
  • SSL_protocols — Space-separated list of SSL/TLS protocol versions to explicitly enable (or disable if prefixed with an exclamation mark !). Potentially known protocols are SSLv2, SSLv3, TLSv1, TLSv1.1, TLSv1.2, and TLSv1.3, depending on the OpenSSL version used. Enabling a protocol is a short-hand for disabling all other protocols.
DEPRECATED: Use SSL_protocol_min and/or SSL_protocol_max instead. ⚠️
  • SSL_protocol_min, SSL_protocol_max — Set minimum resp. maximum SSL/TLS protocol version to use for the connection. Potentially recognized values are SSLv3, TLSv1, TLSv1.1, TLSv1.2, and TLSv1.3, depending on the OpenSSL version used. 📏
  • SSL_cipherlist, SSL_ciphersuites — Sets the TLSv1.2 and below cipher list resp. TLSv1.3 cipher suites. The combination of these lists is sent to the server, which then determines which cipher to use (normally the first supported one from the list sent by the client). The default suites depend on the OpenSSL version and its configuration, see ciphers(1ssl) for more information. 🧬
  • SSL_fingerprint — Space-separated list of acceptable fingerprints for the server certificate’s Subject Public Key Info, in the form [ALGO$]DIGEST_HEX where ALGO is the digest algorithm (by default sha256). Attempting to connect to a server with a non-matching certificate SPKI fingerprint causes pullimap to abort the connection during the SSL/TLS handshake. The following command can be used to compute the SHA-256 digest of a certificate’s Subject Public Key Info:
$ openssl x509 -in /path/to/server/certificate.pem -pubkey \
    | openssl pkey -pubin -outform DER \
    | openssl dgst -sha256

Specifying multiple digest values can be useful in key rollover scenarios and/or when the server supports certificates of different types (for instance a dual-cert RSA/ECDSA setup). In that case the connection is aborted when none of the specified digests matches. 🫆

  • SSL_verify — Whether to 1/ verify the server certificate chain; and 2/ match its Subject Alternative Name (SAN) or Subject CommonName (CN) against the value of the host option. (Default: YES.)

Note that using SSL_fingerprint to specify the fingerprint of the server certificate provides an independent server authentication measure as it pins directly its key material and ignore its chain of trust. 🛡️

  • SSL_CAfile — File containing trusted certificates to use during server certificate verification when SSL_verify=YES.

Trusted CA certificates are loaded from the default system locations unless one (or both) of SSL_CAfile or SSL_CApath is set. 📁

  • SSL_CApath — Directory to use for server certificate verification when SSL_verify=YES. This directory must be in “hash format”, see verify(1ssl) for more information.

Trusted CA certificates are loaded from the default system locations unless one (or both) of SSL_CAfile or SSL_CApath is set. 📂

  • SSL_hostname — Name to use for the TLS SNI (Server Name Indication) extension. The default value is taken from the host option when it is a hostname, and to the empty string when it is an IP literal. Setting SSL_hostname to the empty string explicitly disables SNI. 🌐✨

🌀 CONTROL FLOW 🌀

Okay bestie, this is the part where we find out how pullimap actually keeps its receipts. Sit down, hydrate, it's giving ✨process management✨.

First things first: pullimap opens the statefile that corresponds to a given configuration SECTION with O_DSYNC, so that written data is flushed to the underlying hardware by the time write(2) returns — no lying to us about durability, we love a file descriptor that keeps its promises 💅. And on top of that, an exclusive lock gets placed on the file descriptor immediately after opening, so that multiple pullimap processes can't all grab the same statefile at once. No fighting in the group chat, one main character at a time 👑.

Each statefile is just a series of 32-bits big-endian integers. Usually there's only two of them:

  • the first one is the mailbox's UIDVALIDITY value, and
  • the second one is the mailbox's last seen UIDNEXT value.

And when pullimap sees that second one, it assumes that all messages with UID smaller than this UIDNEXT value have already been retrieved and delivered. Trusting, but valid 🫶.

Now here's the drama: the IMAP4rev1 specification does not guaranty that untagged FETCH responses are sent ordered by UID in response to a UID FETCH command. Which means it would be unsafe for pullimap to update the UIDNEXT value in its statefile while the UID FETCH command is still in progress. 😭 Not me almost corrupting my own statefile.

So instead, for each untagged FETCH response received while the UID FETCH command is in progress, pullimap delivers the message RFC822 body to the SMTP or LMTP server (specified with deliver-method) and then appends the message UID to the statefile. When the UID FETCH command eventually terminates, pullimap updates the UIDNEXT value in the statefile and truncates the file down to 8 bytes. Keeping track of message UIDs as they come in is literally how we avoid duplicates in the event of a crash or a connection loss while the UID FETCH command is in progress. Obsessed with the foresight, honestly 🌸.

✨ In more details, pullimap works as follows ✨

  1. Issue a UID FETCH command to retrieve message ENVELOPE and RFC822 (and UID) with UID bigger or equal than the UIDNEXT value found in the statefile. While the UID FETCH command is in progress, perform the following for each untagged FETCH response sent by the server:
    • i. if no SMTP/LMTP transmission channel was opened, open one to the server specified with deliver-method and send an EHLO (or LHO) command with the domain specified by deliver-ehlo — and note that the channel is kept open and shared for all messages retrieved while the UID FETCH IMAP command is in progress 🎀;
    • ii. perform a mail transaction (using SMTP pipelining if possible) to deliver the retrieved message RFC822 body to the SMTP or LMTP session; and
    • iii. append the message UID to the statefile.
  2. If an SMTP/LMTP transmission channel was opened, send a QUIT command to terminate it gracefully. Say bye, bestie 👋.
  3. Issue a UID STORE command to mark all retrieved messages (and stalled UIDs found in the statefile after the eighth byte) as \Seen. Read receipts, but for your mail server 👀.
  4. Update the statefile with the new UIDNEXT value (bytes 5-8).
  5. Truncate the statefile down to 8 bytes, so that it contains only two 32-bits integers — respectively the mailbox's current UIDVALIDITY and UIDNEXT values. Squeaky clean ✨.
  6. If --idle was set, issue an IDLE command; stop idling and go back to step 1 when a new message is received (or when the IDLE timeout expires). It's giving "I'll wait but not forever" 💜.

📚 STANDARDS 📚

The receipts, the citations, the whole bibliography. Every single one, no skips:

  • M. Leech, M. Ganis, Y. Lee, R. Kuris, D. Koblas and L. Jones, SOCKS Protocol Version 5, RFC 1928, March 1996.
  • M. Leech, Username/Password Authentication for SOCKS V5, RFC 1929, March 1996.
  • J. Myers, Local Mail Transfer Protocol, RFC 2033, October 1996.
  • J. Myers, IMAP4 non-synchronizing literals, RFC 2088, January 1997.
  • D. Goldsmith and M. Davis, A Mail-Safe Transformation Format of Unicode, RFC 2152, May 1997.
  • B. Leiba, IMAP4 IDLE command, RFC 2177, June 1997.
  • C. Newman, Using TLS with IMAP, POP3 and ACAP, RFC 2595, June 1999.
  • N. Freed, SMTP Service Extension for Command Pipelining, RFC 2920, September 2000.
  • M. Crispin, Internet Message Access Protocol - Version 4rev1, RFC 3501, March 2003.
  • M. Crispin, Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) - UIDPLUS extension, RFC 4315, December 2005.
  • A. Gulbrandsen, The IMAP COMPRESS Extension, RFC 4978, August 2007.
  • A. Melnikov and D. Cridland, IMAP4 Extension to SEARCH Command for Controlling What Kind of Information Is Returned, RFC 4731, November 2006.
  • R. Siemborski and A. Gulbrandsen, IMAP Extension for Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) Initial Client Response, RFC 4959, September 2007.
  • J. Klensin, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, RFC 5321, October 2008.

🐛 BUGS AND FEEDBACK 🐛

Found a bug? Got a feature request that's been living rent-free in your head? Bugs or feature requests for pullimap should be filed with the Debian project's bug tracker at <https://www.debian.org/Bugs/>. Go off, report it, the maintainers wanna hear from you fr fr 🫶

💖 AUTHORS 💖

Guilhem Moulin

And that's the whole page, bestie 🎀 This one's the pullimap(1) manual page from March 2016, brought to you by the fine people packaging it for Debian — go forth, pull your mail, and slay 💅✨🦋

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