Sometimes it's necessary to check your mail from another location than from your home computer. If you can't or don't want to reconfigure your email client at the remote location to check your SpinnNet mail, checking via telnet is the best way to go in a pinch.
To use fetchmail to get your mail, telnet or ssh to ftp.spinn.net by doing the following:
In Windows:
Push the Start button and click Run
In the box that comes up type
telnet ftp.spinn.net
and hit return.
In Linux/AIX/Unix/etc:
At the command prompt type
telnet ftp.spinn.net
or
ssh ftp.spinn.net
Type your SpinnNet username (your email address without the @spinn.net) at the login: prompt and then type your password.
To use fetchmail once in awhile, not all the time
You should get to a prompt. At the prompt, type
fetchmail -a -k -p POP3 mail.spinn.net
-a means get all mail, even old mail. -k means keep the mail on the server so you can get it later. You can leave either off but the rest of the command must stay just like that.
It will ask for your password and then it should download your mail. To read your mail, type
pine -i
and Pine will open with any email you may have.
To use fetchmail often:
Telnet into ftp.spinn.net like normal. Type
pico .fetchmailrc
Don't forget the . at the beginning.
The Pico text editor will come up. Enter the following lines into Pico:
poll mail.spinn.net proto POP3 pass **YOUR PASSWORD** keep
If you want fetchmail to delete the mail off the server, leave the keep line out.
When you're done entering those lines, type
Control-X
Answer Yes to the Save modified buffer command hit enter when it asks you for the filename since you named it .fetchmailrc above.
After you have saved the file and returned to the prompt, you must type the following at the prompt:
chmod 0600 .fetchmailrc
This sets the file to only be readable by you since it contains your password.
Now you should be able to just type
fetchmail
at the prompt instead of all the other commands when you want to check your mail. Fetchmail is a powerful program and has many options we haven't discussed. To find the other options, type
man fetchmail
This page is like a man page, it's ugly but it works. If you have a problem with it, email sysadmin@spinn.net, it's his fault.