getmails - Man Page

getmails [-p]  [OPTION] ...

getmails is a wrapper script for getmail to retrieve messages with multiple independent configuration files $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/getmail/* or for backward compatibility ~/.getmail/config/* instead of a single ~/.getmailrc file.

The configuration file name can be any arbitrary names.  It's a good idea to use the corresponding email address as its name since it is the most intuitive choice.  For example $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/getmail/foo@example.org .

To disable operation for an email account temporary, rename its configuration file to the hidden file such as $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/getmail/.foo@example.org . Then, it is ignored as configuration file.

For the robust operation, the editor generated files such as $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/getmail/foo~ , $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/getmail/#foo# , $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/getmail/foo.swp , and $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/getmail/foo.bak are also ignored as configuration file.

When there are multiple email configuration files, getmails retrieves mails sequentially.  But adding an optional option -p before other options makes getmails invoke getmail with each configuration file in parallel to retrieve mails.

The option provided as OPTION is passed to getmail as is.  The use of the -r option is not a good idea.

The existence of $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/getmail/stop can prevent this wrapper script to execute getmail.

Report bugs to <https://github.com/getmail6/getmail6/issues>

Copyright 2011-2017 Osamu Aoki
Copyright 2025 Roland Puntaier
This is free software; see the file COPYING for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.