Script to telnet?

Zeno McDohl · 05-06-2009, 11:14 AM

I want to write a script (bash?) to telnet and login to a POP3 mail server and do a STAT. If something wrong happens (timeout, etc) I want it to write the output to a file.

Is this straightforward to do? Is bash not the best way to do this?

colucix · 05-06-2009, 11:31 AM

Maybe Python is better for this kind of task. The package poplib allows connections to a POP3 server and let you run any command defined in the POP3 protocol (RFC 1725) including STAT.

Zeno McDohl · 05-06-2009, 11:36 AM

Well I want as little as possible involved here to ensure any connection issues that arise are on the POP3 server end, which is why I wanted to use telnet in a script somehow.

I'll look into Python though.
[EDIT] It was easy to get this done:

Code:

import getpass, poplib

M = poplib.POP3('mail.server.com')
M.user('email')
M.pass_('blah')
numMessages = len(M.list()[1])
print numMessages

Now I just need to figure out how to write the output to a file if something wrong happens.