Hello,

After I telnet to pop3 server, let say I have 1000 messages in there which command do I delete all of them at once?

I don't want to type dele #'s each message.
Yes you may suggest me to use the mail client software, but I just want to do from the telnet mode.

Thanks
Bob

Erm, telnet to the pop server? Not something I'm familiar with...

Do you mean telnet to a server and then use the unix "mail" utility to process the messages?

If so, delete will take a range of numbers. So if you have 500 messages you could do "delete 1-500". I think you may also be able to simply do "delete *", but I'm not 100% sure of that. You'd need to try it.

Sean

If you want to connect directly to the pop3 daemon, the commands supported will vary wildly from one server to the next. Check the man page for the pop3 server you have installed.

# telnet localhost 110
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
+OK QPOP (version 3.0.1) at domain.com starting.
user username
+OK Password required for username.
pass passwd
+OK username has 0 visible messages (0 hidden) in 0 octets.
list
+OK 0 visible messages (0 octets)
.
quit
+OK Pop server at domain.com signing off.
Connection closed by foreign host.

From the qpopper man page:

%telnet pop.qualcomm.com 110
Trying...
Connected to pop.qualcomm.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
+OK QPOP (version 3.0) at pop.qualcomm.com starting.
quit
+OK Pop server at pop.qualcomm.com signing off.
Connection closed by foreign host.

If you have pine installed as a mail reader, you can easily select a numeric range of messages to be deleted after you authenticate normally.

If you want to delete all of the messages and you are logged in you could try
echo "" > /var/mail/username
substituting system appropriate paths and usernames.