POP(1)

NAME
pop - client to retreive mail from pop server.

SYNOPSIS
pop

DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents the perl version of pop. pop retreives mail from a remote host. It is primarily used by systems that use intermittent network connections, such as slip, ppp or term. When started, pop looks for server information in the file ~/.pop, which should contain a line with the following information:

    server_name pop_port login_name password

server_name is the name of the host from which mail is to be retrieved. This machine must be running a pop daemon. pop_port is the port number of the pop service on this host, and is typically port 110. login and password are your login and password on the server. Since it contains sensitive data, ~/.pop must have permissions 600 (chmod 600 ~/.pop). pop will complain and exit if ~/.pop has the wrong permissions.

If the file ~/.pop does not exist pop will prompt for the host, port and login information interactively.

pop downloads mail from the server to a file /usr/spool/mail/user_name, where user_name is the name of the account that invoked pop. After messages have been successfully downloaded, the copies on the server are deleted. pop checks the mail server every five minutes, downloading any new messages.

pop is written in perl(1), and is easily modified. Note that you must perl installed on your system to use this verion of pop.

AUTHOR
William M. Perry (wmperry@indiana.edu)
Additional enhancements and manpage by Bill Reynolds (bill@goshawk.lanl.gov)

SEE ALSO
The pop protocol is documented in RFC 1081.