Is my provider ignoring the POP3 standard, or am I misunderstanding...

POP3 RFC 1939 states that the RETR cmd returns the actual email msg,
however, when I issued the RETR cmd on my provider's server, it simply
returned the number of bytes in the msg... I had to issue a LIST cmd to
see the actual email msg.

My question is: who is wrong, the standard or my provider, or is there
another explanation?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Also, if this question belongs on another group, I would very much
appreciate knowing where I should post it.

Thanks,
M. McDonnell

Re: Is my provider ignoring the POP3 standard, or am I misunderstanding...

MichaelDMcDonnell@yahoo.com wrote:

>POP3 RFC 1939 states that the RETR cmd returns the actual email msg,
>however, when I issued the RETR cmd on my provider's server, it simply
>returned the number of bytes in the msg... I had to issue a LIST cmd to
>see the actual email msg.

Are you sure you've got that the right way round? The LIST command
should give you the message size whilst RETR should give you the
message. Have you tried reading your mailbox with an email client such
as Outlook Express? If that can read the mail fine then your POP3
server must be responding the right way around to commnads. If it
can't read the mail fine then every subscriber would be on the phone
to support wanting to know why not. So if you think the commands are
responding the wrogn way round I think there must be another
explanattion. How did you arrive at your conclusion?

Re: Is my provider ignoring the POP3 standard, or am I misunderstanding...

On May 6, 4:19 am, Landmark wrote:
> MichaelDMcDonn...@yahoo.com wrote:
> >POP3 RFC 1939 states that the RETR cmd returns the actual email msg,
> >however, when I issued the RETR cmd on my provider's server, it simply
> >returned the number of bytes in the msg... I had to issue a LIST cmd to
> >see the actual email msg.
>
> Are you sure you've got that the right way round? The LIST command
> should give you the message size whilst RETR should give you the
> message. Have you tried reading your mailbox with an email client such
> as Outlook Express? If that can read the mail fine then your POP3
> server must be responding the right way around to commnads. If it
> can't read the mail fine then every subscriber would be on the phone
> to support wanting to know why not. So if you think the commands are
> responding the wrogn way round I think there must be another
> explanattion. How did you arrive at your conclusion?

Thank you for your response. In answer to your question, I'm running a
small C program that prompts me for a cmd to send to the server. The
code sends the cmd, then waits for a response. When the response is
received, it prints the result to the screen. I first issue the USER,
PASS, and STAT cmds, and they all work. When I issue the RETR, I get
the behavior I've described.

Re: Is my provider ignoring the POP3 standard, or am Imisunderstanding...

Actually, as you revealed on comp.protocols.tcp-ip, the problem is that
you have not read the POP3 specification and instead are guessing how POP3
works by empirical testing.

Please read RFC 1939. All is revealed there.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

Re: Is my provider ignoring the POP3 standard, or am I misunderstanding...

In article <1178462508.585371.92800@w5g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>,
wrote:
: I'm running a
:small C program that prompts me for a cmd to send to the server. The
:code sends the cmd, then waits for a response. When the response is
:received, it prints the result to the screen. I first issue the USER,
:PASS, and STAT cmds, and they all work. When I issue the RETR, I get
:the behavior I've described.

The problem is almost certainly with your C program and not with the
server. I suggest that you forget about the C program and just use a
telnet client to connect to the POP3 port on the server. You can type
whatever commands you wish and see exactly how the server responds.
Using telnet is pretty much SOP for looking into POP server anomalies.

--
Bob Nichols AT comcast.net I am "RNichols42"

Re: Is my provider ignoring the POP3 standard, or am I misunderstanding...

MichaelDMcDonnell@yahoo.com wrote:

>Thank you for your response. In answer to your question, I'm running a
>small C program that prompts me for a cmd to send to the server. The
>code sends the cmd, then waits for a response. When the response is
>received, it prints the result to the screen. I first issue the USER,
>PASS, and STAT cmds, and they all work. When I issue the RETR, I get
>the behavior I've described.

I agree with Robert's answer. Before you decide that the POP3 server
is broken you should be testing it with Telnet, not with your own C
program. I'd foolishly assumed you were using a proven Telnet program
to obtain your results.