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Sending Emails from DOS

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new_castle_j

Experienced Member
Joined
Dec 3, 2011
Messages
361
Location
Texas, USA
Curious, does anyone here use DOS to send email? Is there a program that can do this with a yahoo account for example? Something simple from command line perhaps. I want to be able to sign my emails with:

Sent from my 386 PC
 
I haven't tried e-mail from DOS yet, but this was the first result that Google pulled up for me:

http://www.pmail.com/overviews/ovw_pmail.htm

EDIT: Might just be for local e-mails. I'm not really sure.

EDIT 2: Yeah, no TCP/IP support. Should've read it before posting I guess. But maybe it'll still be of use to someone.
 
I've sent email from DOS using the netcat program in mTCP. You need to know a bit about how SMTP servers work but it's not too difficult. If you have ever used TELNET to talk to an SMTP server then you can figure it out.

The tricky part is figuring out what sort of authentication you SMTP server will accept and then encoding your userid and password correctly. It's just a base64 encoding.

I plan on turning this into a standalone program that can send email from the command line; fill in some fields in a template file and it will do the connecting and sending.


Mike
 
Yahoo mail doesn't use the traditional POP/SMTP or IMAP protocols unless you sign up for the Full Featured Email Service (with a monthly fee last time I checked). Choose your favorite web browser for DOS (Arachne, WebBoy, Lynx) because that is the only way to do it.

Pegasus mail can connect to a local mail server which in turn can download POP or IMAP email. It is complicated but your email will be read or sent through a DOS client. Read through the various links at www.pmail.com including the one pointed out by jmetal88.
 
I connect quite regularly to Yahoo mail using both IMAP and POP3, so I'm a little confused. Passwords are not sent as cleartext, however.

Back in the DOS days, however, I used UUCP, which almost no commercial mail server supports nowadays.
 
mbbrutman said:
I've sent email from DOS using the netcat program in mTCP.
I plan on turning this into a standalone program that can send email from the command line; fill in some fields in a template file and it will do the connecting and sending.


Mike
Click to expand...

Hey, I like this idea, in the mean time I can start playing around with netcat, fun.
Thanks!
 
Here is a sample file to get you started:

HELO localhost
AUTH LOGIN
BASE64USERIDGOESHERE
BASE64PASSWORDGOESHERE
MAIL FROM: <you@you.com>
RCPT TO: <friend@friend.com>
DATA
From: "Me" <you@you.com>
To: "Friend" <friend@friend.com>
Subject: Test message
Date: Sat, 30 May 2015 21:57:00 -0800
This space is for rent.

.
QUIT


Use your local ISP's SMTP server, adjust the userid, password, and other fields, and this should get you started. (You'll need a base64 encoder, but those are easy to find and there are online ones too.)


Mike
 
Don't forget that most modern mailservers, also yahoo, are using TLS/SSL encryption. From testing I know that a motorola 68000 @ 8 MHz is not fast enough to do that in accetable time (the mailserver times out while the 68000 is still calculating...), just a 68030 @ 32 Mhz is just fast enough. This has been tested with ATARI ST and TT using TROLL email client, see http://ptonthat.fr/ . So how should an XT be fast enough for the encryption?
 
I never had an issue with a 16MHz 030 in a stock A3000.. never even thought about it.

Shouldn't a 25MHz '386 be at least as fast?
 
As someone spitballing from no significant knowledge of network underpinnings beyond the laughable bit of rote memorization required for the CompTIA A+ exam, it really seems like there should be some kind of TLS proxy device so you could avoid having to worry about that. But I'm probably talking nonsense.
 
1ST1 said:
Don't forget that most modern mailservers, also yahoo, are using TLS/SSL encryption. From testing I know that a motorola 68000 @ 8 MHz is not fast enough to do that in accetable time (the mailserver times out while the 68000 is still calculating...), just a 68030 @ 32 Mhz is just fast enough. This has been tested with ATARI ST and TT using TROLL email client, see http://ptonthat.fr/ . So how should an XT be fast enough for the encryption?
Click to expand...

Most ISP's, at least in the UK still provide an un-encrypted non-ssl smtp server, although I note mine has stopped doing this....
 
Oops brain fade. If you have another computer running Linux or XP/Windows/7 set up an SMTP server on that which relays to the ISP's server and route the mail from your DOS box through that...
 
g4ugm said:
Most ISP's, at least in the UK still provide an un-encrypted non-ssl smtp server, although I note mine has stopped doing this....
Click to expand...

No so much here--Yahoo, Gmail and secureserver seem to all require encryption. That's not to say that you couldn't set up a "tweener" as a mail client/relay to your old DOS system. You could certainly set up an RPi do do that.
 
Ha! I just sent my first email from DOS today, I'm using the tools provided by Datalight and their Single User Network Add-ON for DOS. There is a sendmail.exe file in the package that takes an input file which gets created by their makemail.exe program and does all of the talking to the SMTP server. There is no authentication mechanism in the programs, so I signed up for a free account with SMTP2GO which allows me to use my public IP address as an authentication method. The free account allows up to 20 emails to be sent per day, works great!
 
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