GNU Mailutils
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3.7.3 Movemail Usage Summary

movemail [option...] inbox destfile [password]

The first argument, inbox, is the url (see Mailbox) of the source mailbox. The second argument, destfile, traditionally means destination file, i.e. the UNIX mailbox to copy messages to. However, mailutils movemail extends the meaning of this parameter. You may actually specify any valid url as destfile parameter.³.

For compatibility with older implementations of movemail, the source argument can also have the form:

po:username[:pop-server]

where pop-server is the IP address or hostname of a POP3 server to connect to and username is the name of the user on that server. The password is then supplied by the third argument.

It is equivalent to the following URL:

pop://username[:password]@pop-server

In fact, whenever source refers to a remote mailbox, the password argument can be used to pass the password. However, the safer ticket method is of course preferred.

Options are one or more of the following:

--emacs

Output information used by Emacs rmail interface.

--ignore-errors

Try to continue after errors.

--max-messages=count

Process at most count messages.

--notify

Enable biff notification.

--onerror=kw[,kw...]

What to do on errors. See onerror statement, for a description of kw.

-P modelist

--owner=modelist

Control mailbox ownership. modelist is a comma-separated list of one or more ownership change methods. See mailbox-ownership-methods, for a description of available methods.

This option is useful only when running movemail as root.

-p

--preserve

--keep-messages

Don’t remove transferred messages from the source mailbox.

--program-id=fmt

Set program identifier for diagnostics (default: the program name). See movemail-program-id, for a description of its argument.

-r

--reverse

Reverse the order of retrieved messages.

-u

--uidl

Use UIDLs to avoid downloading the same message twice.

-v

--verbose

Increase verbosity level.

The common options are also understood (see Common Options).