With hints from folks, I managed to figure out that using spamassassin as the MDA like that confusing fetchmail example says is not the right thing: spamassassin won't lock the spool and will thusly yield messages smashed together. Set spamassassin up as a procmail filter like everyone else on the planet; it all happens to be configured to do that on my machine already, so I only had to not specify an MDA to fetchmail for it to bring the SMTP server and so procmail into the loop.
Meanwhile I'm still having the socket error that delays most of my mail:
fetchmail: POP3> DELE 2
fetchmail: POP3< +OK
fetchmail: POP3> TOP 3 99999999
fetchmail: POP3< +OK
reading message markpasc@some.example.com:3 of 13 (36049 octets)
#***************.***[dit dash dot]******** flushed
fetchmail: POP3> DELE 3
fetchmail: socket error while fetching from some.server.com
fetchmail: 5.9.11 querying some.example.com (protocol POP3) at Tue Jun 25 11:20:34 2002: poll completed
fetchmail: Query status=2 (SOCKET)
fetchmail: 5.9.11 querying other.example.com (protocol POP3) at Tue Jun 25 11:20:34 2002: poll started
I haven't the slightest idea what it is, but I would at least like to have fetchmail try again. It doesn't. Anyone have suggestions?
