On Sun, 24 Nov 2002 17:13:20 +0100, Adam Bartley wrote: >Where I am at the moment I have a great internet connect but no >"provider" to give me access to an SMTP server. I did some reading in a >bookshop and saw that, at least under the Linux version, Perl has its own >little SMTP server that can be invoked.
Are you sure it's not just Sendmail or another similar program? >My thought is to make a small applet >that can act as my server at need, much as Sendmail or Exim do for me under >Linux. Does anybody know of any similar code I could canabalise or can >anyone suggest other starting points? If Lincoln Steins book, "Network Programming with Perl" (<http://modperl.com:9000/perl_networking/>) doesn't mention it, then you're pretty much on your own, I guess. And it doesn't look that way. Anyway, if you're remotely interested in writing your own network apps in Perl, I strongly advice you to get this book. As for an SMTP server, you could write a minimal server, starting with a tiny server from the book (part 3), and implement a state machine, which receives the requests from the client as per RFC 821/2821 (chapter 7 contains an example of a typical dialogue), and produce the proper replies at the right time. It looks simple enough (ahem). -- Bart.
