You just reminded me of my time working at Sendmail, where I often had to telnet to port 25 of some machine, and pretend to be a mail server sending email.
I used to be able to send all the commands without having to look them up. Not sure I could still do that today.
I think can still do it, 30 years after I last had to. The trauma of debugging sendmail m4 config issues for
hours while the company e-mail remained dysfunctional has permanently etched it into my mind.
EHLO example.com
MAIL FROM:<foo@example.com>
RCPT TO:<bar@example.com>
DATA
Subject: Hello, World
I have crawled through the depths of hell to deliver unto you this message.
.
I haven't worked at sendmail or even anything e-mail related, and I can do that… just enough e-mail fixing as side work. Let's call it sysadmin calluses.
What made me stumble recently was having to talk LMTP to fix a mailman setup. Cheeky fuckers changed EHLO into LHLO for LMTP. (To avoid any mixups between the protocols, which is fair.)
Also TO doesn't need to match. When you send to a group of BCC the envelope To has to specify the exact recipient, but the DATA doesn't. Similar with the envelope From and the one in the DATA - also useful to control bounces or who gets a reply.
Yeah I know the protocol and can do that manual, because I had to debug it often enough.
Well observed, sir. I’m felicitous, since, during the
course of the penultimate solar sojourn, I terminated my uninterrupted
categorisation of the vocabulary of our post-Norman tongue.
I hope you will not object if I also offer my most enthusiastic contrafribularities.
Thus, I’m anaspeptic, frasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericombobulations.
May I offer you a pendigestatery
interludicule? Anything I can do to facilitate your velocitous
extramuralisation.
Just to be the man/woman/non-binary who sends mail 500 miles to your front door?
You had me at EHL0.