Downloads:

• Project Page: http://jetmore.org/john/code/swaks/
• v20120320.0 distribution: http://jetmore.org/john/code/swaks/swaks-20120320.0.tar.gz
• v20120320.0 script only: http://jetmore.org/john/code/swaks/swaks-20120320.0/swaks
• v20120320.0 reference: http://jetmore.org/john/code/swaks/swaks-20120320.0/doc/ref.txt
• v20120320.0 changelog: http://jetmore.org/john/code/swaks/swaks-20120320.0/doc/Changes.txt

IPv6 Support

The largest feature of this release is IPv6 support. This functionality survived a reasonable pre-release test period largely intact. I am still not convinced that my handling of MX records that point to both IPv4 and IPv6 domains is the best, but I didn’t receive any feedback on alternate solutions. I decided to release as is and see how my initial implementation held up to wider use.

New Features:

• -4 and -6 options to force IPv4 or IPv6.
• Added –local-port option
• Added –dump-as-body and –dump-as-body-shows-password options, allowing session configuration information to be sent in the test email itself. (Suggested by Chris Pimlott)
• –dump (and therefore –dump-as-body) includes a new line for a “reconstructed command line”. This is a sort of a synthetic command line including the real command line, any environment variable configs, and any config files.

Notable Changes:

• The DIGEST-SHA1 authentication type now requires the Digest::SHA perl module instead of Digest::SHA1. Digest::SHA1 has always been an extra install step, while Digest::SHA has been in the core perl distribution for many years. (Suggested by Andreas Metzler)
• The -m option, marked deprecated since 2007, has been removed.

Notable Bugs Fixed:

• In some very rare cases, a server response can be a base64-encoded success response, or a plaintext failure. Previously in that situation swaks did not handle the case of the plaintext error and the –auth-plaintext option well, resulting in confusing output.

LINK REMOVED – this was a development release and the changes have been incorporated in official releases. Please see the project home page at http://jetmore.org/john/code/swaks/ for the latest release.

There is no documentation included yet, but the only real change to the documentation is the addition of the -4 and -6 options to force IPv4 or IPv6. There are a few unrelated tweaks since the last release, but nothing that needs documentation at this point.

Static routing (where the target server is explicitly set using the –server option) is fairly solid and intuitive in my opinion. MX routing when -4 or -6 is given is also pretty solid – the MXs are cycled through and only chosen if the MX has the correct IP records associated with it (if -4 set, the exchanger is only chose if it has A records).

The only really muddy issue I have outstanding is how much work to do sorting out MX records when neither -4 or -6 is specified. If I were to build the most robust thing I could, I would have to find the local machine’s interfaces to see if IPv6 will be available, then sort the MX records accordingly. However, I really don’t want to get that deep into the local machine config. As the code stands right now, without a hint about whether we will be using IPv4 or IPv6 at transport time, we can end up choosing an A-only MX record on an IPv6-only machine, or an AAAA-only MX record on an IPv4 machine.

Still early goings on this. Please download it and try it out and let me know what you think. Feedback greatly appreciated.

On November 11, 2003, I posted a link to vmail on the exim-users mailing list.  I received lots of constructive responses, including one note that the name vmail was very generic, and also in use by another project (I wish I could remember who noted that, but I can’t find it in the mailing list archives).

I don’t remember much about picking the name swaks, but it fit my main criteria, which were that the name should be distinct and should be pronounceable.  I’ve never been very happy with the acronym expansion “SWiss Army Knife Smtp” for several reasons, the most important of which is that it really ought to be “SWiss Army SMTP”, but “swas” isn’t nearly as distinctive in the dialect of English I speak natively.

So, here I am with the name swaks, which I’m mostly happy with.  However, while the name swaks is unique for a software package, there are other, non-software uses that I wassn’t aware of before I chose the name:

“Sealed With A Kiss”

I’m not 100% sure what the original version of “SWAK” in this context was.  Perhaps written on the back of an envelope containing a love note?  The usage that pops up occasionally on the internet means something like “sent with love” or just “with love”.

bad / poor / ill (Afrikaans)

I just recently learned this one (hence this blog post).  This popped up in the headline “SA se bes en swaks gekledes in 2011″, which native Afrikaans speakers translated as “SA’s best and worst dressed list”.  Google Translate doesn’t like the phrase “swaks gekledes”, but after poking a bit I got it to translate “swak” as “poor” and “swak geklede” as “ill-dressed”.

I’ve put a much shorter and slightly more formal version of this post in the docs for the next release.  I’ll add new meanings as I find them.  If you know of others, please send them in and I’ll post them.

A new version of swaks is currently available for download.

Downloads:

• Project Page: http://jetmore.org/john/code/swaks/
• v20111230.0 distribution: http://jetmore.org/john/code/swaks/swaks-20111230.0.tar.gz
• v20111230.0 script only: http://jetmore.org/john/code/swaks/swaks-20111230.0/swaks
• v20111230.0 reference: http://jetmore.org/john/code/swaks/swaks-20111230.0/doc/ref.txt

New Features:

• Added –output-file family of options to capture some or all output without requiring shell redirection
• Added –protect-prompt option to protect “sensitive” user input (currently only auth passwords)
• Added –auth-hide-password to replace recoverable passwords in SMTP session output with a dummy string
• Added –auth-extra to have a single interface to pass non-standard authentication options into swaks. Currently used by NTLM and DIGEST-MD5.
• Added –show-raw-text option to provide more details of exact data being sent on the wire

Notable Changes:

• SMTP Data token parsing has been changed from single-character (%F) to multi-character (%FROM_ADDRESS%) to reduce chance of collisions with message text, especially non-ascii language encoding. See –use-old-data-tokens to recover old tokens while transitioning. (issue reported by Peter Baranyi)
• Specifying the NTLM/MSN/SPA DOMAIN by appending “%DOMAIN” to the username is no longer supported. See the new –auth-extra command.
• The DIGEST-MD5 authentication no longer uses the (buggy) Authen::DigestMD5 module. The Authen::SASL module is now used.

Notable Bugs Fixed:

• Previous release broke ability to use –header to set custom headers (first reported by David Favor)
• Previous release would not allow a file to be used to provide the message data if the file name contained the character “n”. (first reported by dietrich.rebmann@******)
• swaks has never properly handled creating date strings for timezones that are not on an even hour boundary. (report from, and patch provided by, Peter Samuelson)
• The documented behavior of the “no-” prefix on swaks’ options did not work when –OPTION and –no-OPTION were given in the same context.
• The DIGEST-MD5 auth type was not completely implemented. Worked extensively with Erwan Legrand to get as complete and useful an implementation as possible.
• Previous release contained a regression in which TLS responses sent in multiple packets were not processed correctly. (reported by Peter J. Holzer)

Here are links to the script and the Changelog for this version:

LINK REMOVED – this was a development release and the changes have been incorporated in official releases. Please see the project home page at http://jetmore.org/john/code/swaks/ for the latest release.

I don’t have a pretty version of new features or bug fixes yet but the Changelog can be trawled for a decent overview.

Any testing notes or last minute requests can be dropped as a comment here if you want, but they are most useful as an email to proj-swaks@jetmore.net.

Current

• Website – http://jetmore.org/john/code/swaks
• Update list – There’s no UI for this, but emailing updates-swaks@jetmore.net and asking to be notified of new releases will get you on the notify list.

New

• This blog.  This is my personal blog, but I am maintaining a swaks category at http://www.jetmore.org/john/blog/c/swaks/.  This category has a dedicated RSS feed at http://www.jetmore.org/john/blog/c/swaks/feed/.
• Twitter – http://twitter.com/SwaksSMTP
• Google+ - https://plus.google.com/u/0/110270727761256449657

Future

• I don’t really have any desire to run a mailing list myself but there have been some requests for one (which I assume would be very, very low traffic).
• swaks.net – I own this domain, at some point in the future I think it makes sense for the swaks distribution to move to it.
• Trac – swaks’ “todo” list is not huge, and not especially hard to hold in my head, but I like the idea of Trac or something similar because of its ticket/commit cross reference and the timeline to help remember the history of the development.  Not sold on this being worth the effort of maintaining yet.