dsmtpd - an SMTP server for debugging

Sometimes I need to use an SMTP server to check my outgoing emails, but I don’t want to pollute the internet with useless emails.

In this case, I developed this small tool for myself, but you may be interested in this project. I called it dsmtpd, which stands for debugger SMTP server (the last ’d’ comes from the smtpd Python library).

Installation

This package is on pypi, so you can use pip to install it:

pip install dsmtpd

Use it

To use it, it’s very simple:

dsmtpd

2013-01-13 14:00:07,346 INFO: Starting SMTP server at 127.0.0.1:1025

By default, the server will run on port 1025 on the loopback interface. It’s pretty easy.

Indeed, there is a small help:

dsmtpd --help

dsmtpd: A small SMTP server for the smart developer

Usage:
    dsmtpd [-i <iface>] [-p <port>] [-d <directory>]

Options:
    -p <port>      Specify the port for the SMTP server [default: 1025]
    -i <iface>     Specify the interface [default: 127.0.0.1]
    -d <directory> Specify the directory to save the incoming emails
    -h --help
    --version

Change the port

If you want to change the default port, you can do it with the ‘-p’ option:

sudo dsmtpd -p 25

2013-01-13 14:00:07,346 INFO: Starting SMTP server at 127.0.0.1:25

Change the interface

By default, dsmtpd listens to the loopback but you can change that with the ‘-i’ option:

dsmtpd -i YOUR_IP

2013-01-13 14:00:07,346 INFO: Starting SMTP server at YOUR_IP:1025

2013-01-13 14:00:19,634 INFO: 127.0.0.1:55549: stephane@wirtel.be -> stephane@wirtel.be [test Sun, 13 Jan 2013 14:00:19 +0100]

You can store the incoming emails

There is a cool feature with dsmtpd, all the emails can be caught by the mail server with the ‘-d’ parameter:

dsmtpd -d store_directory

This store directory is a maildir directory, so you will be able to use the mutt software to see the emails. It’s really useful if you want to see all the emails with the description of the headers. :

mutt -f store_directory

Contributions

The project is hosted on github