What does this Fetchmail error mean?

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 12:53 am

2 messages for crushingbelial02@gmail.com at pop.gmail.com (167321 octets).
reading message crushingbelial02@gmail.com@pop.gmail.com:1 of 2 (29464 octets) .fetchmail: SMTP error: 550 unknown user
fetchmail: mail from FETCHMAIL-DAEMON@debian.Belkin bounced to bounce-9413636-48371121@promo.tigeronline.com
............................ flushed
reading message crushingbelial02@gmail.com@pop.gmail.com:2 of 2 (137857 octets) .fetchmail: SMTP error: 550 unknown user
fetchmail: mail from FETCHMAIL-DAEMON@debian.Belkin bounced to frappr@frappr.com......................................................................................................................................... flushed

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 12:27 pm

It's saying "crushingbelial02@gmail.com" does not exist on your system, and is bouncing the mail back to the sender.

What does your fetchmailrc line look like for this host?

You should have something like

Code: Select all

user crushingbelial02@gmail.com is boogerboy here

(with boogerboy being your login on the local system) That tells fetchmail what local user a remote E-mail address maps to. Check the syntax, because that line is from memory, but it's close.

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 3:36 pm

This is what the config file looks like:

# Configuration created Sat Feb 4 01:11:59 2006 by fetchmailconf 1.43.2
set postmaster "ben"
set bouncemail
set no spambounce
set properties ""
poll pop.gmail.com with proto POP3 and options no dns
user 'crushingbelial02@gmail.com' there is 'linuxlala' here ssl

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 12:07 pm

Wally Balljacker wrote:This is what the config file looks like:

# Configuration created Sat Feb 4 01:11:59 2006 by fetchmailconf 1.43.2
set postmaster "ben"
set bouncemail
set no spambounce
set properties ""
poll pop.gmail.com with proto POP3 and options no dns
user 'crushingbelial02@gmail.com' there is 'linuxlala' here ssl

Hmmmm... seems OK. Unfortunately I don't have my Linux mailserver at hand, so I can't compare.

I'm assuming linuxlala is your login on the machine on which fetchmail is running. Might try removing "set bouncemail," which I assume will cause the mail to be delivered to "postmaster" or root instead. At least then you can get mail for now.

I'll look at my config when I get home and see if there's something I'm missing.

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 4:29 pm

Gomer_X wrote:
Wally Balljacker wrote:This is what the config file looks like:

# Configuration created Sat Feb 4 01:11:59 2006 by fetchmailconf 1.43.2
set postmaster "ben"
set bouncemail
set no spambounce
set properties ""
poll pop.gmail.com with proto POP3 and options no dns
user 'crushingbelial02@gmail.com' there is 'linuxlala' here ssl
Hmmmm... seems OK. Unfortunately I don't have my Linux mailserver at hand, so I can't compare.

I'm assuming linuxlala is your login on the machine on which fetchmail is running. Might try removing "set bouncemail," which I assume will cause the mail to be delivered to "postmaster" or root instead. At least then you can get mail for now.

I'll look at my config when I get home and see if there's something I'm missing.

I get mail, but I've been kicked off alot of news subscription lists and such, because every message I get gets bounced back to the sender. I turned bouncemail off, but I still get these errors:

reading message crushingbelial02@gmail.com@pop.gmail.com:1 of 3 (4693 octets) fe tchmail: SMTP error: 550 unknown user
.... flushed
reading message crushingbelial02@gmail.com@pop.gmail.com:2 of 3 (3541 octets) .f etchmail: SMTP error: 550 unknown user
.. flushed
reading message crushingbelial02@gmail.com@pop.gmail.com:3 of 3 (2532 octets) .f etchmail: SMTP error: 550 unknown user
. flushed

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 8:57 pm

I was finally able to reproduce the error. "SMTP error 550: unknown user" is not a fetchmail error. SMTP is an outgoing protocol. Fetchmail receives the message and tosses it to sendmail (or whatever your mailer is), which tries to deliver it to 'linuxlala' on your system. Sendmail complains it can't find the user and bounces the message.

When I go into .fetchmailrc and misspell my user name on the local system, I get the same error.

The only thing that makes sense is 'linuxlala' doesn't exist as a user on your system. Doublecheck and make sure the spelling is correct. If that doesn't work, I'll have to think some more.

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 1:56 am

Gomer_X wrote:I was finally able to reproduce the error. "SMTP error 550: unknown user" is not a fetchmail error. SMTP is an outgoing protocol. Fetchmail receives the message and tosses it to sendmail (or whatever your mailer is), which tries to deliver it to 'linuxlala' on your system. Sendmail complains it can't find the user and bounces the message.

When I go into .fetchmailrc and misspell my user name on the local system, I get the same error.

The only thing that makes sense is 'linuxlala' doesn't exist as a user on your system. Doublecheck and make sure the spelling is correct. If that doesn't work, I'll have to think some more.

Thanks for the help. I didn't realize I was supposed to change "linuxlala" to my username. Works great now.

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 12:56 pm

Wally Balljacker wrote: Thanks for the help. I didn't realize I was supposed to change "linuxlala" to my username. Works great now.

w00t!!!1!!

Glad it worked out. It was a fun problem to solve. In the process I managed to get my Gmail account set up to download to my home system, which is another one of those things I've been meaning to do forever.