My IMAP cheat sheet

       241 words, 2 minutes

When I want to check if an IMAP server is working properly, I telnet it and run basics commands. Here are (IMAP) commands that I keep using.

Connexion

Either connect to the IMAP (clear text) port:

# telnet <i>FQDN</i> 143

Or connect to the TLS IMAP port:

# openssl s_client -connect <i>FQDN</i>:993

In both case, the server should reply something like:

* OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ SASL-IR LOGIN-REFERRALS ID ENABLE AUTH=PLAIN] Dovecot ready.

when it is ready to play with you.

Logging in and out

Enter your user credentials:

. login <i>username</i> <i>password</i>
. OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ SASL-IR LOGIN-REFERRALS ID ENABLE SORT SORT=DISPLAY THREAD=REFERENCES THREAD=REFS MULTIAPPEND UNSELECT IDLE CHILDREN NAMESPACE UIDPLUS LIST-EXTENDED I18NLEVEL=1 CONDSTORE QRESYNC ESEARCH ESORT SEARCHRES WITHIN CONTEXT=SEARCH LIST-STATUS] Logged in

And log-out when you’re done:

. logout
* BYE Logging out
. OK Logout completed.
closed

Mailbox list

You can list your e-mail folders as follow:

. list "" "*"
* LIST (HasNoChildren) "." "Trash"
* LIST (HasNoChildren) "." "Sent"
* LIST (HasNoChildren) "." "Drafts"
* LIST (HasNoChildren) "." "INBOX"
. OK List completed.

You can get information on the folders using the following command:

. status Trash (messages)
* STATUS "Trash" (MESSAGES 55)
. OK Status completed.
. status INBOX (unseen)
* STATUS "INBOX" (UNSEEN 32)
. OK Status completed.

That’ll be enough to test my IMAP server.
More commands are described in Bob Peers’s excellent “Accessing IMAP email accounts using telnet” article.

That’s All Folks!