3.6.1 Movemail Options

This subsection discusses movemail options from the point of view of an Emacs Rmail user.

To set various options to movemail from Rmail, use rmail-movemail-flags variable, or `Rmail Movemail Flags' section from the menu.

Some POP servers return messages in reversed order. To fix the order, use `-p' option or its synonym `--reverse'.

If the remote server supports TLS encryption, use `--tls' to instruct movemail to initiate encrypted connection.

Quite a few options control how movemail handles mail locking (a way of preventing simultaneous access to the source mailbox). By default, before accessing mailbox file, movemail will first see if the file named `file.lock' (so called lock file) exists. If so, it will assume that the mailbox is being used by another program and will sleep one second. If `file.lock' file disappears after this wait period, the program will proceed. Otherwise, it will repeat this action ten times. If after ten wait periods the lock file does not disappear, movemail gives up and exits.

If the lock file does not exist, movemail will create it, thereby indicating to other programs that the mailbox is being used, and will proceed to copying messages to the destination file. When finished, movemail closes the mailbox and removes the lock file.

Several options control this behavior. To change the default sleep period use `--lock-retry-timeout'. Its argument is the timeout value in seconds.

To change number of retries, use `--lock-retry-count'. For example, setting rmail-movemail-flags to

--lock-retry-timeout=2 --lock-retry-count=5

instructs movemail to make five attempts to acquire the lock file, with two-second intervals between the attempts.

You may also force movemail to remove the lock file if it is older than a given amount of time (a so called stale lock file). To do so, use the following option:

--lock-expire-timeout=seconds

The `--lock-expire-timeout' sets the number of seconds after which a lock file is considered stale.

There are special programs that can be used to lock and unlock mailboxes. A common example of such programs is dotlock. If you wish to use such external locking program instead of the default mailutils locking mechanism, use option `--external-locker'. Argument to this option specifies the full name of the external program to use.