telnet smtp postfix fetchmail

ram112 · n00b Joined: 02 Apr 2006 Posts: 3

Guys,

I am new gentoo user, so please ignore any obvious mistakes I do. I am trying to write a simple mail application for which I need fetchmail and perhaps some sendmail'ish functionality. Here is what I want :

Get all the mails from my pop3/imap server via fetchmail (pop.gmail.com)
Issues :
I installed fetchmail and configured fetchmailconf. It seems to connect to the pop3 and trying to get the e-mail and throws this ::

reading message ramesh.mishra@gmail-pop.l.google.com:1 of 14 (9522 octets)
fetchmail: SMTP connect to localhost failed

When I check my telnet client
telnet localhost
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
Connection closed by foreign host.

I cannot telnet to local host however xinetd is running..I cannot telnet to smtp 25 also.

The question is do I need an smtp server running to make this work(like postfix or something)..but then why telnet won't work.
_________________
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a
habit -Aristotle

magic919 · Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 7:17 pm Post subject:

You need to install an MTA, like Postfix, for Fetchmail to hand off to. Forget the telnet bit as you have nothing running on port 25 until you install MTA.

DaveArb · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2004 Posts: 510 Location: Texas, USA

In addition to magic919's answer, when you ever do get around to checking with telnet, you need a "25" on the end of your command, as in:

telnet localhost 25

Otherwise you're just trying to connect to its telnet service, not SMTP.

soigres · Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 4:33 pm Post subject:

hi, i'm trying to check for new mails with fetchmail on gmail and it gives me socket error... do i need some MTA? what can it be?

ram112 · n00b Joined: 02 Apr 2006 Posts: 3

thanks guys, Yeah I figured I will need an MTA with all the information in the forums. I installed postfix and procmail. Will configure those and try to see if it works. Mean while tried getmail and it is able to fetch the mail without any issues. So works for now.

Also, If I am doing a telnet localhost without a port, it probably means I am trying to telnet to myself and should'nt it succeed if xinetd is running. I may be wrong but I tried this on another machine as here are the results.

telnet localhost
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.

SunOS 5.8
login:
bayberry ~> ps -leaf | grep inetd
8 S root 298 1 0 51 20 ? 335 ? Mar 28 ? 0:01 /usr/sbin/inetd -s
_________________
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a
habit -Aristotle

magic919 · Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 8:56 pm Post subject:

Telnet to localhost should work if you have telnetd running. Probably not many of using running telnetd on servers these days.

ram112 · n00b Joined: 02 Apr 2006 Posts: 3

yeah, I also don't run it, its only for debugging purposes. Not sure why it does not allow me to connect with xinetd running. It does not say connection refused , it just quits.
_________________
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a
habit -Aristotle

Sebatical · Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 10:51 pm Post subject:

Did you ever figure out how to resolve this? I've set my telnetd disabled value to "no", but I still cannot connect to my linux box from my windows machine.
_________________
"When the gas runs out, just wreck it.. You insured the thing.."
Soul Coughing