Telnet – POP Commands (retrieving mail using telnet)
Friday, July 20th, 2012 - 4:09 pm - System Administration
In order to access your mailbox you will need 4 things:
- An active internet connection
- The address of your pop mail server (e.g. mail.domain.ext)
- Your username (e.g. UserName/Email Address normally)
- Your password (e.g. Password)
The first thing to do is to open a connection from your computer to your mail server.
telnet mail.domain.ext 110
You should receive a reply like:
Trying ???.???.???.???... Connected to mail.domain.ext. Escape character is '^]'. +OK ready
Then log in:
USER userName
This should give you:
+OK Password required for userName.
Now give your password:
PASS passW0rd
Should yeild:
+OK userName has ? visible messages (? hidden) in ????? octets.
To see a list of your emails awaiting collection use the
LIST
command, this will also show you the id number of your messages (e.g. 1 or 2 etc.)
To view the contents of an email type
RETR
+ the id number of the message (e.g
RETR 1
).
To delete a message use
DELE
+ the id number of the message (e.g
DELE 1
).
To leave your mailbox and close the connection use
QUIT