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.
1 | telnet mail.domain.ext 110 |
You should receive a reply like:
1 | Trying ???.???.???.???... |
2 | Connected to mail.domain.ext. |
3 | Escape character is '^]'. |
4 | +OK ready |
Then log in:
1 | USER userName |
This should give you:
1 | +OK Password required for userName. |
Now give your password:
1 | PASS passW0rd |
Should yeild:
1 | +OK userName has ? visible messages (? hidden) in ????? octets. |
To see a list of your emails awaiting collection use the
1 | 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
1 | RETR |
+ the id number of the message (e.g
1 | RETR 1 |
).
To delete a message use
1 | DELE |
+ the id number of the message (e.g
1 | DELE 1 |
).
To leave your mailbox and close the connection use
1 | QUIT |
