Sending mail using smtp commands via telnet

[Gerald Combs]

Rob Becker wrote:
> I'm working on testing that mail is delivered properly from outside our
> network, through our various virus and spam filters and to the
> appropriate email server.  I would like to telnet into one of our mail
> gateways and send a message from there destined to a new internal
> server.  I know how to telnet into the mail server, but I'm not finding
> the appropriate commands to actually send a message once I'm connected.
> Can anyone point me in the right direction.  My googling skills have
> failed me on this one since I can't seem to hit the magic phrase
> necessary to find a resource on this topic.  Any help, pointers,
> references greatly appreciate.

You might try RFC 2821, the current official standard for SMTP:

  http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

Appendix D lists several example transactions, which should get you started.