[GRLUG] Thunderbird on Win7

[Philip J. Robar]

On Mar 6, 2011, at 6:07 PM, Eric Beversluis wrote:

> It's not clear to me what that would establish. Wouldn't a mail server
> not be open to telnet? 
> "eric at eric-lenovo:~$ telnet mail.omnis.com
> Trying 216.239.128.27...
> telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection timed out
> eric at eric-lenovo:~$ sudo ping 216.239.128.27
> PING 216.239.128.27 (216.239.128.27) 56(84) bytes of data.
> ^C
> --- 216.239.128.27 ping statistics ---
> 23 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 22175ms
> 
> eric at eric-lenovo:~$ telnet mail.omnis.com:587
> telnet: could not resolve mail.omnis.com:587/telnet: Name or service not
> known"
> 
>> From Win7/Putty:
> "220 relay.omnis.com ESMTP Postfix - (mail-hub-d.omnis.com)

knecht:~ pjrobar$ telnet mail.omnis.com 587 <----- NOTE: A space between the address and port number—not a colon.
Trying 216.239.128.27...
Connected to mail.omnis.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 relay.omnis.com ESMTP Postfix - (mail-hub-b.omnis.com)
ehlo test.com                                                        <------ That's how you say hello to a mail server, it returns a list of features it supports.
250-mail-hub-b.omnis.com
250-PIPELINING
250-SIZE 20480000
250-VRFY
250-ETRN
250-STARTTLS
250-AUTH PLAIN LOGIN
250-AUTH=PLAIN LOGIN
250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
250-8BITMIME
250 DSN
^]

>From the above it's clear that port 587 at telnet.omnis.com is open, that the mail server supports TLS: "250-STARTTLS" and that it's expecting a plain, unencrypted user name and password.

I'd suggest searching on "telnet smtp test" and "telnet smtp test tls". The later returns multiple step by step guides on testing your connection and the authentication process.

This site: http://www.computerperformance.co.uk/exchange2003/exchange2003_SMTP_Auth_Login.htm for example uses a Microsoft client so you should be able to follow along with out too much trouble. (It's example server is Exchange, but SMTP is SMTP so it should work with a Postfix server also.) (The author makes the unfortunate mistake of interchanging the terms encrypt and encode, but don't worry this example is what you want for a plain login authentication process.)

Phil


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