SWAKS(1)

NAME
swaks - SMTP transaction tester

USAGE
swaks [--help|--version] | (see description of options below)

OPTIONS

--pipe
    This option takes as its argument a program and the program's arguments. If this option is present, swaks opens a pipe to the program and enters an SMTP transaction over that pipe rather than connecting to a remote server. Some MTAs have testing modes using stdin/stdout. This option allows you to tie into those options. For example, if you implemented DNSBL checking with exim and you wanted to make sure it was working, you could run 'swaks --pipe "exim -bh 127.0.0.2"'.

    In an ideal world the process you are talking to should behave exactly like an SMTP server on stdin and stdout. Any debugging should be sent to stderr, which will be directed to your terminal. In the real world swaks can generally handle some debug on the child's stdout, but there are no guarantees on how much it can handle.

--socket
    This option takes as its argument a unix domain socket file. If this option is present, swaks enters an SMTP transaction over over the unix domains socket rather than over an internet domain socket. I think this option has uses when combined with a (yet unwritten) LMTP mode, but to be honest at this point I just implemented it because I could.

-l, --input-file
    Argument to -l must be a path to a file containing TOKEN->VALUE pairs. The TOKEN and VALUE must be separated by whitespace. These tokens set values which would otherwise be set by command line arguments. See the description of the corresponding command line argument for details of each token. Valid tokens are FROM (-f), TO (-t), SERVER (-s), DATA (-d), HELO (-h), PORT (-p), INTERFACE (-li), and TIMEOUT (-to).

-t, --to
    Use argument as "RCPT TO" address, or prompt user if no argument specified. Overridden by -l token TO. Multiple recipients can be specified by supplying as one comma-delimited argument.

    There is no default for this option. If no to addess is specified with -t or TO token, user will be prompted for To: address on STDIN.

-f, --from
    Use argument as "MAIL FROM" address, or prompt user if no argument specified. Overridden by -l token FROM. If no from address is specified, default is user@host, where user is the best guess at user currently running program, and host is best guess at DNS hostname of local host. The string <> can be supplied to mean the null sender.

-s, --server
    Use argument as mail server to which to connect, or prompt user if no argument specified. Overridden by -l token SERVER. If unspecified, swaks tries to determine primary MX of destination address. If Net::DNS module is not available, tries to connect to A record for recipient's domain.

-p, --port
    Use argument as port to connect to on server, or prompt user if no argument is specified. This can be either a port number or a service name. Overridden by -l token PORT. If unspecified, swaks will use service lmtp if --protocol is LMTP, service smtps if --tls-on-connect is used, and smtp otherwise.

-h, --helo, --ehlo
    Use argument as argument to SMTP EHLO/HELO command, or prompt use if no argument is specified. Overridden by -l token HELO. If unspecified, swaks uses best guess at DNS hostname of local host.

-d, --data
    Use argument as DATA portion of SMTP transaction, or prompt user if no argument specified. Overridden by -l token DATA.

    This string should be on one single line, with a literal \n representing where line breaks should be placed. Leading dots will be quoted. Closing dot is not required but is allowed. Very basic token parsing is done. %F is replaced with the value that will be used for "MAIL FROM", %T is replaced with "RCPT TO" values, %D is replaced with a timestamp, %H is replaced with the contents of --add-header, and %B is replaced with the message body. See the --body option for the default body text.

    Default value for this option is "Date: %D\nTo: %T\nFrom: %F\nSubject: test %D\nX-Mailer: swaks v$p_version jetmore.org/john/code/#swaks\n%H\n\n%B\n".

--body
    Specify the body of the email. The default is "This is a test mailing". If no argument to --body, you will be prompted to supply one. If '-' is supplied, body will be read from standard input. If any other text is provided and the text represents an openable file, the content of that file is used as the body. If it does not respresent an openable file, the text itself is used as the body.

--attach
    When one or more --attach option is supplied, the message is changed into a multipart/mixed MIME message. The arguments to --attach are processed the same as --body with regard to stdin, file contents, etc. --attach can be supplie multiple times to create multiple attachments. By default each attachment is attached as a application/octet-stream file. See --attach-type for changing this behaviour.

    When the message changes to MIME format, the previous body (%B) is attached as a text/plain type as the first attachment. --body can still be used to specify the contents of this body attachment.

    It is legal for '-' (STDIN) to be specified as an argument multiple times (once for --body and multiple times for --attach). In this case, the same content will be attached each time it is specified. This is useful for attaching the same content with multiple MIME types.

--attach-type
    By default, content that gets MIME attached to a message with the --attach option is encoded as application/octet-stream. --attach-type changes the mime type for every --attach option which follows it. It can be specified multiple times.

-ah, --add-header
    In the strictest sense, all this does is provide a value that replaces the %H token in the data. Because of where %H is located in the default DATA, practically it is used to add custom headers without having to recraft the entire body.

    The option can either be specified multiple times or a single time with multiple headers seperated by a literal '\n' string. So, "--add-header 'Foo: bar' --add-header 'Baz: foo'" and "--add-header 'Foo: bar\nBaz: foo'" end up adding the same two headers.

--header, --h-Header
    These options allow a way to change headers that already exist in the DATA. These two calls do the same thing:

    --header "Subject: foo" --h-Subject foo

    Subject is the example used. If the header does not exist in the body already, these calls behave identically to --add-header. The purpose of this option it to provide a fast way to change the nature of the default DATA for specific tests. For instance if you wanted to test a subject filer in a mail system, you could use --h-Subject "SPAM STRING" to test rather than having to craft and entire new DATA string to pass to --data.

--timeout
    Use argument as the SMTP transaction timeout, or prompt user if no argument given. Overridden by the -l token TIMEOUT. Argument can either be a pure digit, which will be interpretted as seconds, or can have a specifier s or m (5s = 5 seconds, 3m = 180 seconds). As a special case, 0 means don't timeout the transactions. Default value is 30s.

--protocol
    Specify which protocol to use in the transaction. Valid options are shown in the table below. Currently the 'core' protocols are SMTP, ESMTP, and LMTP. By using variations of these protocol types one can specify default ports, whether authentication should be attempted, and the type of TLS connection that should be attempted. The default protocol is ESMTP. This table demonstrates the available arguments to --protocol and the options each sets as a side effect:

               HELO            AUTH    TLS     PORT
       --------------------------------------------------
       SMTP    HELO                            smtp  / 25
       SSMTP   EHLO->HELO              -tlsc   smtps / 465
       SSMTPA  EHLO->HELO      -a      -tlsc   smtps / 465
       SMTPS   HELO                    -tlsc   smtps / 465
       ESMTP   EHLO->HELO                      smtp  / 25
       ESMTPA  EHLO->HELO      -a              smtp  / 25
       ESMTPS  EHLO->HELO              -tls    smtp  / 25
       ESMTPSA EHLO->HELO      -a      -tls    smtp  / 25
       LMTP    LHLO                            lmtp  / 24
       LMTPA   LHLO            -a              lmtp  / 24
       LMTPS   LHLO                    -tls    lmtp  / 24
       LMTPSA  LHLO            -a      -tls    lmtp  / 24

-li, --local-interface
    Use argument as the local interface for the SMTP connection, or prompt user if no argument given. Overridden by the -l token INTERFACE. Argument can be an IP or a hostname. Default action is to let OS choose local interface.

-g  If specified, swaks will read the DATA value for the mail from STDIN. If there is a From_ line in the email, it will be removed (but see -nsf option). Useful for delivering real message (stored in files) instead of using example messages.

-nsf, --no-strip-from
    Don't strip the From_ line from the DATA portion, if present.

-n, --suppress-data
    If this option is specified, swaks summarizes the DATA portion of the SMTP transaction instead of printing every line.

-q, --quit-after
    The argument to this option is used as an indicator of where to quit the SMTP transaction. It can be thought of as "quit after", with valid arguments CONNECT, FISRT-HELO, TLS, HELO, AUTH, MAIL, and RCPT. In a non-STARTTLS session, FIRST-HELO and HELO behave the same way. In a STARTTLS session, FIRST-HELO quits after the first HELO sent, while HELO quits after the second HELO is sent.

    For convenience, LHLO and EHLO are synonyms for HELO, FIRST-EHLO and FIRST-LHLO for FIRST-HELO, FROM for MAIL, and TO for RCPT.

-m  Emulate Mail command. Least used option in swaks.

--support
    Cause swaks to print its capabilities and exit. Certain features require non-standard perl modules. This options evaluates whether these modules are present and lets you know which functionality is present.

-S, --silent
    Cause swaks to be silent. "-S" causes swaks to print no output until an error occurs, after which all output is shown. "-S -S" causes swaks to only show error conditions. "-S -S -S" shows no output.

--pipeline
    If the remote server supports it, attempt SMTP PIPELINING (RFC 2920). This is a younger option, if you experience problems with it please notify the author. Potential problem areas include servers accepting DATA even though there were no valid recipients (swaks should send empty body in that case, not QUIT) and deadlocks caused by sending packets outside the tcp window size.

-tls
    Require connection to use STARTTLS. Exit if TLS not available for any reason (not advertised, negotiations failed, etc).

-tlso, --tls-optional
    Attempt to use STARTTLS if possible, continue t/ normal transaction if TLS unavailable.

-tlsc, --tls-on-connect
    Initiate a TLS connection immediately on connection. Use to test smtps/ssmtp servers. If this options is specified, the default port changes from 25 to 465, though this can still be overridden with the -p option.

-a, --auth
    Require authentication. If Authentication fails or is unavailable, stop transaction. -a can take an argument specifying which type(s) of authentication to try. If multiple, comma-delimited arguments are given, each specified auth type is tried in order until one succeeds or they all fail. swaks currently supports PLAIN, LOGIN, and CRAM-MD5. If no argument is given any available authentication type is used. If neither password (-ap) or username (-au) is supplied on command line, swaks will prompt on STDIN.

    SPA (NTLM/MSN) authentication is now supported. Tested as a client against Exim and Stalker's CommuniGate, but implementation may be incomplete. Authen::NTLM is currently required. Note that CPAN hosts two different Authen::NTLM modules. Current implementation requires Mark Bush's implementation (Authen/NTLM-1.02.tar.gz). Plan to reimplement directly at some point to avoid confusion.

    DIGEST-MD5 is now supported. Tested as a client only against Stalker's Communigate, so implementation may be incomplete. Requires Authen::DigestMD5 module.

    CRAM-SHA1 is now supported. Only tested against a hacked server implementation in Exim, so may be incomplete or incorrect. Requires Digest::SHA1 module.

-ao, --auth-optional
    Same as -a, but if authentication is unavailable or fails, attempts to continue transaction.

-au, --auth-user
    Supply the username for authentication. The string <> can be supplied to mean an empty username.

    For SPA authentication, a "domain" can be specified after the regular username with a % seperator. For instance, if "-ap user@example.com%NTDOM" is passed, "user@example.com" is the username and "NTDOM" is the domain. NOTE: I don't actually have access to a mail server where the domain isn't ignored, so this may be implemented incorrectly.

-ap, --auth-password
    Supply the password for authentication. The string <> can be supplied to mean an empty password.

-am --auth-map
    Provides a way to map alternate names onto base authentication types. Useful for any sites that use alternate names for common types. This functionality is actually used internally to map types SPA and MSN onto the base type NTLM. The command line argument to simulate this would be "--auth-map SPA=NTLM,MSN=NTLM". The base types supported are LOGIN, PLAIN, CRAM-MD5, DIGEST-MD5, and NTLM. SPA and MSN are mapped on to NTLM automatically.

-apt, --auth-plaintext
    Instead of showing AUTH strings literally (in base64), translate them to plaintext before printing on screen.

-nth, --no-hints
    Don't show transaction hints. (Useful in conjunction with -hr to create copy/paste-able transactions

-hr, --hide-receive
    Don't display reception lines

-hs, --hide-send
    Don't display sending lines

-stl, --show-time-lapse
    Display time lapse between send/receive pairs. If 'i' is provided as argument or the Time::HiRes module is unavailable the time lapse will be integer only, otherwise it will be to the thousandth of a second.

--force-getpwuid
    In releases 20050709.1 and earlier of swaks the local_part of an automatically generated sender email address would be found using the getpwuid system call on the euid of the current process. Depending on the users' desires, this may be confusing. Following the 20050709.1 release the local_part is not looked up via the getlogin() funtion which attempts to look up the actual username of the logged in user, regardless of the euid of the process they are currently running.

    An example of where this might be an issue is running swaks under sudo for testing reasons when interacting with --pipe or --socket. It makes sense that you need to run the process as a specific username but you would prefer your email to be from your real username. You could always do this manually using the -s option, but this is an attempt to make it easier.

    --force-getpwuid forces the old behaviour for anyone who prefered that behaviour. Also, if there is no "real" user for getlogin() to look up, the old getpwuid method will be used. This would happen if the process was run from cron or some other headless daemon.

--help
    This screen.

--version
    Version info.

EXAMPLES

swaks
    prompt user for to address and send a default email.

cat mailfile | swaks -g -n -t user@example.com -tlso -a -au user -ap password
    send the contents of "mailfile" to user@example.com, using TLS if available, requiring authentication, using user/password as authentication information.

COMMENTS
This program was written because I was testing a new MTA on an alternate port. I did so much testing that using interactive telnet grew tiresome. Over the next several years this program was fleshed out and every single option was added as a direct need of some testing I was doing as the mail admin of a medium sized ISP, with the exception of TLS support which was added on a whim. As such, all options are reasonably well thought out and fairly well tested (though TLS could use more testing).

REQUIRES
swaks does not have any single requirement except the standard module Getopt::Long. However, there may be modules that are required for a given invocation of swaks. The following list details the features reported by the --support option, what is actually being tested, and the consequences of the feature being reported as "not available"

AUTH CRAM-MD5
    CRAM-MD5 authentication requires the Digest::MD5 perl module. If this is unavailable and authentication is required, swaks will error if CRAM-MD5 was the specific authentication type requested, or if no specific auth type was requested but CRAM-MD5 was the only type advertised by the server.

AUTH CRAM-SHA1
    CRAM-SHA1 authentication requires the Digest::SHA1 perl module. If this is unavailable and authentication is required, swaks will error if CRAM-SHA1 was the specific authentication type requested, or if no specific auth type was requested but CRAM-SHA1 was the only type advertised by the server.

AUTH DIGEST-MD5
    DIGEST-MD5 authentication requires the Authen::DigestMD5 perl module. If this is unavailable and authentication is required, swaks will error if DIGEST-MD5 was the specific authentication type requested, or if no specific auth type was requested but DIGEST-MD5 was the only type advertised by the server.

AUTH NTLM
    NTLM/SPA/MSN authentication requires the Authen::NTLM perl module. If this is unavailable and authentication is required, swaks will error if NTLM was the specific authentication type requested, or if no specific auth type was requested but NTLM was the only type advertised by the server. Note that there are two modules using the Authen::NTLM namespace on CPAN. The Mark Bush implementation (Authen/NTLM-1.02.tar.gz) is the version required here.

Basic AUTH
    All authentication types require base64 encoding and decoding. If possible, swaks uses the MIME::Base64 perl module to perform these actions. However, if MIME::Base64 is not available swaks will use its own onboard base64 routines. These are slower than the MIME::Base64 routines and less reviewed, though they have been tested thoroughly. When possible it is recommended that you install MIME::Base64.

Date Manipulation
    swaks generates an RFC compliant date string when it interpolates the %D token in message bodies. In order to build the GMT offset in this string, it needs the Time::Local module. It would be very odd for this module not to be available because it has been included in the perl distribution for some time. However, if it is not loadable for some reason and swaks interpolates a %D token (as it would when using the default body), the date string is in GMT instead of your local timezone.

High Resolution Timing
    When diagnosing SMTP delays using --show-time-lapse, by default high resolution timing is attempted using the Time::HiRes module. If this module is not available, swaks uses a much poorer timing source with one second granularity.

Local Hostname Detection
    swaks uses your local machine's hostname to build the HELO string and sending email address when they are not specified on the command line. If the Sys::Hostname module (which is a part of the base distribution) is not available for some reason, the user is prompted interactively for the HELO and sender strings. Note that Sys::Hostname can sometimes fail to find the local hostname even when the module is available, which has the same behaviour.

MX Routing
    If the destination mail server is not specified using the --server option, swaks attempts to use DNS to route the message based on the recipient email address. If the Net::DNS perl module is not available, swaks uses 'localhost' as the outbound mail server.

Pipe Transport
    The IPC::Open2 module is required to deliver a message to a spawned subprocess using the --pipe option. If this module, which is included in the base perl distribution, in not available, attempting to call swaks with the --pipe option will result in an error.

Socket Transport
    The IO::Socket module is required to deliver a message to an internet domain socket (the default behaviour of swaks) and to a unix domain socket (specified with the --socket option). If this module, which is included in the base perl distribution, is not available, attempting to call swaks with the --server or --socket options (or none of the --socket, --server, and --pipe options) will result in an error.

TLS TLS functionality requires the Net::SSLeay perl module. If this module is not available and TLS was required (using the --tls-on-connect or --tls options), the session will error out. If TLS was requested but not required (using the --tls-optional option), swaks will continue but not attempt a TLS session.

PORTABILITY

Operating Systems
    This program was primarily intended for use on unix-like operating systems, and it should work on any reasonable version thereof. It has been developed and tested on Solaris, Linux, and Mac OS X and is feature complete on all of these.

    This program is known to demonstrate basic functionality on Windows using ActiveState's Perl. It has not been fully tested. Known to work are basic SMTP functionality and the LOGIN, PLAIN, and CRAM-MD5 auth types. Unknown is any TLS functionality and the NTLM/SPA and Digest-MD5 auth types.

    Because this program should work anywhere Perl works, I would appreciate knowing about any new operating systems you've thoroughly used swaks on as well as any problems encountered on a new OS.

Mail Servers
    This program was almost exclusively developed against Exim mail servers. It was been used casually by the author, though not thoroughly tested, with sendmail, smail, and Communigate. Because all functionality in swaks is based off of known standards it should work with any fairly modern mail server. If a problem is found, please alert the author at the address below.

EXIT CODES

0   no errors occurred

1   error parsing command line options

2   error connecting to remote server

3   unknown connection type

4   while running with connection type of "pipe", fatal problem writing to or reading from the child process

5   while running with connection type of "pipe", child process died unexpectedly. This can mean that the program specified with --pipe doesn't exist.

6   Connection closed unexpectedly. If the close is detected in response to the 'QUIT' swaks sends following an unexpected response, the error code for that unexpected response is used instead.

    For instance, if a mail server returns a 550 response to a MAIL FROM: and then immediately closes the connection, swaks detects that the connection is closed, but uses the more specific exit code 23 to detail the nature of the failure.

    If instead the server return a 250 code and then immediately closes the connection, swaks will use the exit code 6 because there is not a more specific exit code.

10  error in prerequisites (needed module not available)

21  error reading initial banner from server

22  error in HELO transaction

23  error in MAIL transaction

24  no RCPTs accepted

25  server returned error to DATA request

26  server did not accept mail following data

27  server returned error after normal-session quit request

28  error in AUTH transaction

29  error in TLS transaction

32  error in EHLO following TLS negotiation

CONTACT

proj-swaks@jetmore.net
    Please use this address for general contact, questions, patches, requests, etc.

updates-swaks@jetmore.net
    If you would like to be put on a list to receive notifications when a new version of swaks is released, please send an email to this address.

jetmore.org/john/code/#swaks
    Change logs, this help, and the latest version is found at this link.