Re: POP3 protocol question

[[e-mail]]

Verily did Chris Newman say on October 10, 1994:

> [e-mail] (Jerome Chan) writes:
>> Is there a POP3 extension that allows one to _send_ mail? An RFC maybe? A
>> hint?
>
>RFC-821 (SMTP) allows one to _send_ mail.  POP3 has no reason to
>duplicate this functionality.

I disagree with this in principle, but I seem to be a minority.

In any event, there is an XTND function called XMIT which many POP3
servers implement which will allow you to send mail through the POP
server.  To use, try sending 'XTND XMIT' to the POP3 server once you
are logged in to it.  If it implements the function you should get a
'+OK Start sending message.' or similar message.  At that point you
can send an rfc822 formatted mail message, terminated by a single '.'
on a line by itself.

In the case of a UNIX POP3 server, the message is just passed to
sendmail to be processed and taken care of.  So, there is little to no
extra processing that the server has to do to implement the function.
I believe most decent implementations of the POP3 protocol for UNIX
hosts implement the XTND XMIT function since it's relatively simple to
do so.

Brett McCoy, UNIX Systems Administrator
Computing and Network Services
Kansas State University,  Manhattan KS  66506
vox: [phone] / fax: [phone] / e-mail: [e-mail]