Accessing Lotus Notes via telnet

0
votes

I'm working on exporting e-mail from a Lotus Domino server for backup and I'm wondering.. How can I access the server via telnet and see all my available e-mail messages?

2
lotus-noteslotus-dominolotus
I'm curious why you would want to get in via telnet instead of a richer method. Or is this a security question? The last time I used telnet, we still had mainframes. - David Navarre

2 Answers

4
votes

There is no way of accessing e-Mail messages using telnet. The mails are encapsuled in a database file with the extension ".nsf" that can only be read by Domino- servers or Notes- clients.

Of course you can write an interface in Lotus Domino Designer (as an agent or a webservice) or use http and wget to get to your mails (if configured on your Domino), but I'm sure, this is not, what you are looking for.

So the simple answer is the one in the first sentence of this posting: It is not possible...

1
votes

If the Domino server has POP3 or IMAP enabled, then you could use telnet to connect to the appropriate port (110 for POP3, or 143 for IMAP) and issue the correct commands for the given protocol to authenticate and retrieve messages.

See Example of accessing IMAP over telnet and Example of accessing SMTP and POP3 over telnet.

Of course, not all Domino servers run the POP3 or IMAP tasks, and I don't know many Domino admins who would consider turning them on just for backup purposes.

Even then, I really can't imagine why you would want to do this, except for test purposes. I'm sure there are pre-written POP3 and IMAP libraries that you could use instead of coding it all manually at the telnet level.

And frankly, there are much better ways available for accessing Notes data. E.g., the Notes APIs for C, C++, Java, and COM, and also DXL. The C API even includes a special set of calls designed specifically for backup and archiving programs that will get you bit-for-bit fidelity that every other method loses.