Question:

How do I manually telnet to my POP (Post Office Protocol) server to check if my mail server is accepting connections?

Answer:

This method of manually connecting to the mail server is sometimes necessary in order to help better troubleshoot Messaging/Mail issues. By directly telneting to the POP server, you can determine if the problem is within the client software or the server. Following is a list of commands to be executed from the UNIX command line or DOS shell using the telnet utility:

Telnetting to port 110 (the POP port).

 telnet machine 110

POP commands:

  USER uid           Log in as "uid"

  PASS password      Substitue "password" for your actual password

  STAT               List number of messages, total mailbox size

  LIST               List messages and sizes

  RETR n             Show message n

  DELE n             Mark message n for deletion

  RSET               Undo any changes

  QUIT               Logout (expunges messages if no RSET)
  
  TOP msg n          Show first n lines of message number msg

More commands (and the entire spec) are available at http://www.imc.org/rfc1939.

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