Manually testing a SMTP connection from the command line.

By | 1 August 2011

I have often had to manually test a SMTP (mail server) connection from the command line but I always forget the exact order of the commands in the conversation. This test is done via a standard telnet client on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX and Windows. If I remember correctly, in Windows you will have to enable echo to see your commands as they are typed (Set local_echo). Here is my walk through:

telnet mailserver.domain.com 25
helo mydomainname.com
mail from: myemail@mydomain.com
rcpt to: testemailaddress@mydomain.com
data
“Some Random Text.”
.

Remember the single period is the end of the conversation and signifies the end of the message to the SMTP server. A message should not be delivered to testemailaddress@mydomain.com from myemail@mydomain.com. The body of the e-mail will contain “Some Random Text.”

4 thoughts on “Manually testing a SMTP connection from the command line.

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