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Telnet - SMTP Commands (Sending Mail Using Telnet) : Possible Problems

To send email using telnet, you need an internet connection, the address of a mail server that can relay for you, and a valid email address. You open a telnet connection to the mail server on port 25, identify yourself and where you're sending from, provide the sender and recipient addresses, type the message body and subject, then send with a single period on its own line and close the connection. Common issues include the sender or recipient domains not existing, needing to specify the sender before the recipient, and relaying being denied if not using the provider for internet access.

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128 views2 pages

Telnet - SMTP Commands (Sending Mail Using Telnet) : Possible Problems

To send email using telnet, you need an internet connection, the address of a mail server that can relay for you, and a valid email address. You open a telnet connection to the mail server on port 25, identify yourself and where you're sending from, provide the sender and recipient addresses, type the message body and subject, then send with a single period on its own line and close the connection. Common issues include the sender or recipient domains not existing, needing to specify the sender before the recipient, and relaying being denied if not using the provider for internet access.

Uploaded by

ashish_amarnath
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Telnet - SMTP Commands (sending mail using telnet)

In order to access your mailbox you will need 3 things:

 An active internet connection (an embarrasing stage to miss sometimes!)


 The address of a mail server capable of relaying for you - usually provided by your dialup
provider (e.g. mail.domain.ext)
 A valid email address (e.g. [email protected])

The first thing to do is to open a connection from your computer to your mail server.
telnet mail.domain.ext 25
You should receive a reply like:
Trying ???.???.???.???...
Connected to mail.domain.ext.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mail.domain.ext ESMTP Sendmail ?version-number?; ?date+time+gmtoffset?

You will then need to delcare where you are sending the email from:
HELO local.domain.name - dont worry too much about your local domain name although you
really should use your exact fully qualified domain name as seen by the outside world the mail
server has no choice but to take your word for it as of RFC822-RFC1123.
This should give you:
250 mail.domain.ext Hello local.domain.name [loc.al.i.p], pleased to meet you

Now give your email address:


(On many mailservers the space after the : is required rather that optional. Thanks to Justing
Goldberg)
MAIL FROM: [email protected]
Should yeild:
250 2.1.0 [email protected]... Sender ok
If it doesn't please see possible problems.

Now give the recipients address:


RCPT TO: [email protected]
Should yeild:
250 2.1.0 [email protected]... Recipient ok
If it doesn't please see possible problems. Note Google mail servers require < and > around the
email address (thanks to Paul Beattie).

To start composing the message issue the command DATA

If you want a subject for your email type Subject:-type subject here- then press enter
twice (these are needed to conform to RFC 882)

You may now proceed to type the body of your message (e.g. hello [email protected]
from [email protected])
To tell the mail server that you have completed the message enter a single "." on a line on it's
own.
The mail server should reply with: 250 2.0.0 ???????? Message accepted for delivery

You can close the connection by issuing the QUIT command.


The mailserver should reply with something like:221 2.0.0 mail.domain.ext closing
connection
Connection closed by foreign host.

Here are a list of problems I've encountered and their fixes


501 [email protected]... Sender domain must exist
The domain that you are sending from must exist

503 Need MAIL before RCPT


A recipient has been specified before a sender.

550 [email protected]... Relaying Denied


The mail server has refused to relay mail for you, this may be for any number of reasons but
typical resons include:
Not using this provider for an internet connection and/or
Not using an email address provided by the owner of the server.

Some things to watch out for:


1. If you type too quickly, sometimes it won't recognise your text (weird!)
2. The backspace key sometimes does not work with some telnet clients (even though it may
seem as though it does)

I'll be putting more as and when I get them and figure out how to fix each problem.

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