[Techtalk] Mail server messages: What does this mean?

[Maria Blackmore]

hi

On Wed, 26 Feb 2003, Morgan Landry wrote:

> I want to know if my school's mail server uses any authentication 
> besides just LOGIN.  What does this mean?
> 
> 250-AUTH GSSAPI NTLM LOGIN
> 250-AUTH=LOGIN

That means it supports GSSAPI, NT Lan Manager, and LOGIN authentication
methods.  the "250-AUTH=LOGIN" login line is especially for
outlook/outlook express because it's a non-compliant broken heap of
... stuff

> The entire message to a 'EHLO' prompt is below.

ok

> 250-TURN
> 250-ATRN
> 250-ETRN

TURN methods, to dequeue mail that's destined for a particular place

> 250-SIZE

prenotification of message size, so that if a mail server can't accept a
mail because of the size, you get to find out before you've already sent
everything up to the point where the cutoff is, and only THEN get a 550

> 250-PIPELINING

means you can send multiple commands one after another without having to
wait for a response from the previous command

> 250-DSN

delivery status notification

> 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES

uhm, speaks for itself :)

> 250-8bitmime
> 250-BINARYMIME
> 250-CHUNKING

various transfer methods

> 250-VRFY

lets you verify an address exists before you send an email to it, usually
turned off nowadays because it lets spammers harvest addresses

> 250-X-EXPS GSSAPI NTLM LOGIN
> 250-X-EXPS=LOGIN
> 250-AUTH GSSAPI NTLM LOGIN
> 250-AUTH=LOGIN

login methods, can't see anything different from above here

> 250-X-LINK2STATE

not seen this before, presumably a result of microsofts "embrace and
extend"

> 250-XEXCH50

ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh, exchange, sorry

> 250 OK

the response to the EHLO .. notice the space between the code and the
message, this indicates that it's the last line of the EHLO response.

I think LOGIN is probably the way to go here :)

Maria