smtpd — Sample Mail Servers¶

Mail Server Base Class¶

The base class for all of the provided example servers is SMTPServer. It handles communicating with the client, receiving incoming data, and provides a convenient hook to override to process the message once it is fully available.

The constructor arguments are the local address to listen for connections and the remote address where proxied messages should be delivered. The method process_message() is provided as a hook to be overridden by a derived class. It is called when the message is completely received, and given these arguments:

peer

The client’s address, a tuple containing IP and incoming port.

mailfrom

The “from” information out of the message envelope, given to the server by the client when the message is delivered. This does not necessarily match the From header in all cases.

rcpttos

The list of recipients from the message envelope. Again, this does not always match the To header, especially if a recipient is being blind carbon copied.

data

The full RFC 5322 message body.

The default implementation of process_message() raises NotImplementedError. The next example defines a subclass that overrides the method to print information about the messages it receives.

import smtpd
import asyncore


class CustomSMTPServer(smtpd.SMTPServer):

    def process_message(self, peer, mailfrom, rcpttos, data):
        print('Receiving message from:', peer)
        print('Message addressed from:', mailfrom)
        print('Message addressed to  :', rcpttos)
        print('Message length        :', len(data))


server = CustomSMTPServer(('127.0.0.1', 1025), None)

asyncore.loop()

SMTPServer uses asyncore, so to run the server call asyncore.loop().

A client is needed to demonstrate the server. One of the examples from the section on smtplib can be adapted to create a client to send data to the test server running locally on port 1025.

import smtplib
import email.utils
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

# Create the message
msg = MIMEText('This is the body of the message.')
msg['To'] = email.utils.formataddr(('Recipient',
                                    'recipient@example.com'))
msg['From'] = email.utils.formataddr(('Author',
                                      'author@example.com'))
msg['Subject'] = 'Simple test message'

server = smtplib.SMTP('127.0.0.1', 1025)
server.set_debuglevel(True)  # show communication with the server
try:
    server.sendmail('author@example.com',
                    ['recipient@example.com'],
                    msg.as_string())
finally:
    server.quit()

To test the programs, run smtpd_custom.py in one terminal and smtpd_senddata.py in another.

$ python3 smtpd_custom.py

Receiving message from: ('127.0.0.1', 58541)
Message addressed from: author@example.com
Message addressed to  : ['recipient@example.com']
Message length        : 229

The debug output from smtpd_senddata.py shows all of the communication with the server.

$ python3 smtpd_senddata.py

send: 'ehlo 1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.
0.0.0.0.0.0.ip6.arpa\r\n'
reply: b'250-1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0
.0.0.0.0.0.0.ip6.arpa\r\n'
reply: b'250-SIZE 33554432\r\n'
reply: b'250 HELP\r\n'
reply: retcode (250); Msg: b'1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0
.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.ip6.arpa\nSIZE 33554432\nHELP'
send: 'mail FROM:<author@example.com> size=236\r\n'
reply: b'250 OK\r\n'
reply: retcode (250); Msg: b'OK'
send: 'rcpt TO:<recipient@example.com>\r\n'
reply: b'250 OK\r\n'
reply: retcode (250); Msg: b'OK'
send: 'data\r\n'
reply: b'354 End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>\r\n'
reply: retcode (354); Msg: b'End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>'
data: (354, b'End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>')
send: b'Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"\r\nMIME-Ver
sion: 1.0\r\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\r\nTo: Recipient <r
ecipient@example.com>\r\nFrom: Author <author@example.com>\r\nSu
bject: Simple test message\r\n\r\nThis is the body of the messag
e.\r\n.\r\n'
reply: b'250 OK\r\n'
reply: retcode (250); Msg: b'OK'
data: (250, b'OK')
send: 'quit\r\n'
reply: b'221 Bye\r\n'
reply: retcode (221); Msg: b'Bye'

To stop the server, press Ctrl-C.

Debugging Server¶

The previous example shows the arguments to process_message(), but smtpd also includes a server specifically designed for more complete debugging, called DebuggingServer. It prints the entire incoming message to the console and then stops processing (it does not proxy the message to a real mail server).

import smtpd
import asyncore

server = smtpd.DebuggingServer(('127.0.0.1', 1025), None)

asyncore.loop()

Using the smtpd_senddata.py client program from earlier, the output of the DebuggingServer is:

---------- MESSAGE FOLLOWS ----------
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
To: Recipient <recipient@example.com>
From: Author <author@example.com>
Subject: Simple test message
X-Peer: 127.0.0.1

This is the body of the message.
------------ END MESSAGE ------------

Proxy Server¶

The PureProxy class implements a straightforward proxy server. Incoming messages are forwarded upstream to the server given as argument to the constructor.

The steps for setting up the proxy server are similar to the debug server.

import smtpd
import asyncore

server = smtpd.PureProxy(('127.0.0.1', 1025), ('mail', 25))

asyncore.loop()

It prints no output, though, so to verify that it is working look at the mail server logs.

Aug 20 19:16:34 homer sendmail[6785]: m9JNGXJb006785:
from=<author@example.com>, size=248, class=0, nrcpts=1,
msgid=<200810192316.m9JNGXJb006785@homer.example.com>,
proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA, relay=[192.168.1.17]