fetchmail woes

Hee-elp, Hee-elp (for those of you who remember Penelope Pitstop)

I've put a fetchmailrc (as follows), in ~/myLocalUserName

#-------------------------------------
poll pop.myISP.com
tracepolls
proto pop3
user "myUID"
pass "myPW"
is myLocalUserName here
and wants mda /usr/sbin/procmail
keep

set daemon 120
set syslog
#------------------------------------

I had been expecting that when I ran this daemon, it would periodically
check for e-mail on myISP, using myUID & myPW to log-on and download
e-mail into a local folder (either in the specified home directory or
/var/spool/mail/$USER. Fetchmail seems to log-on but no e-mails are added
to this directory (is $USER actually a directory named after the
myLocalUserName or a file?). The docs talk about port25 but do these
incoming e-mails ever manifest themselves as bytes on a disk in a
directory somewhere or do the e-mails remain etherial until Procmail - or
somesuch - has had its wicked way?

For the record, my proposed procmailrc file will look something like:
#------------------------------------------------------------------
VERBOSE=no #set to yes for debug

#LOGABSTRACT=all #remove hash to log all for debug
#set to 'no' for minimal logging

SHELL=/bin/sh
MAILDIR=$HOME/Mail
DEFAULT=$MAILDIR/inbox/cur #default inbox

PMDIR=$HOME/.Procmail #dir to store procmail related files
INCLUDERC=$PMDIR/testing.rc #procmail recipe file for testing
INCLUDERC=$PMDIR/recipe.rc #procmail recipe file

PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin

LOGFILE=$MAILDIR/log
DEFAULT=$MAILDIR/myInbox

# spamassassin and bogofilter recipes to followin recipe.rc
#-------------------------------------------------------------------

Please help. All the documentation I've found on the Web seems to be
designed for tech-heads, which I'm not. So please spell it out in a max of
two sylables and in some detail.

Much thanks,

Greg
(together we'll crack it. You have the glory & I'll have a working
system ;o)

"Greg" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news(E-Mail Removed). ..
> Hee-elp, Hee-elp (for those of you who remember Penelope Pitstop)
>
> I've put a fetchmailrc (as follows), in ~/myLocalUserName
>
> #-------------------------------------
> poll pop.myISP.com
> tracepolls
> proto pop3
> user "myUID"
> pass "myPW"
> is myLocalUserName here
> and wants mda /usr/sbin/procmail
> keep
>
> set daemon 120
> set syslog
> #------------------------------------
>
> I had been expecting that when I ran this daemon, it would periodically
> check for e-mail on myISP, using myUID & myPW to log-on and download
> e-mail into a local folder (either in the specified home directory or
> /var/spool/mail/$USER. Fetchmail seems to log-on but no e-mails are added
> to this directory (is $USER actually a directory named after the
> myLocalUserName or a file?). The docs talk about port25 but do these
> incoming e-mails ever manifest themselves as bytes on a disk in a
> directory somewhere or do the e-mails remain etherial until Procmail - or
> somesuch - has had its wicked way?
>
> For the record, my proposed procmailrc file will look something like:
> #------------------------------------------------------------------
> VERBOSE=no #set to yes for debug
>
> #LOGABSTRACT=all #remove hash to log all for debug
> #set to 'no' for minimal logging
>
> SHELL=/bin/sh
> MAILDIR=$HOME/Mail
> DEFAULT=$MAILDIR/inbox/cur #default inbox
>
> PMDIR=$HOME/.Procmail #dir to store procmail related files
> INCLUDERC=$PMDIR/testing.rc #procmail recipe file for testing
> INCLUDERC=$PMDIR/recipe.rc #procmail recipe file
>
> PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin
>
> LOGFILE=$MAILDIR/log
> DEFAULT=$MAILDIR/myInbox
>
> # spamassassin and bogofilter recipes to followin recipe.rc
> #-------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Please help. All the documentation I've found on the Web seems to be
> designed for tech-heads, which I'm not. So please spell it out in a max of
> two sylables and in some detail.
>
> Much thanks,
>
> Greg
> (together we'll crack it. You have the glory & I'll have a working
> system ;o)

Try taking off the daemon for now and then type
fetchmail -c
to see if there are any emails, then when you have an emaill try
fetchmail -a
And that might help - I had a similar problem to yours and this solved it
for me.

Instead of using the daemon, you may wish to use the crontab, edit it by
logging on as the user you wish to check mail for by typing
crontab -e
and then add the following line
* * * * * /usr/bin/fetchmail -a > /dev/null
HTH
Allan