URL Mystery

Sun Feb 25 20:48:53 UTC 2007

Evan Panagiotopoulos wrote:
> This is what I got from: telnet mail.poughkeepsieschools.org 80
> Trying 64.72.66.117...
> Connected to mail.poughkeepsieschools.org (64.72.66.117).
> Escape character is '^]'.
> get index.php
> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
> <html><head>
> <title>400 Bad Request</title>
> </head><body>
> <h1>Bad Request</h1>
> <p>Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.<br />
> </p>
> </body></html>
> Connection closed by foreign host.
>
> The server is accessed with https://...
> I'm not sure if I can use any of the above information.
>
> Evan
>   
If you need to do it as an encrypted session (normally a 'https://...' 
address in a browser), try this:

       openssl s_client -connect mail.poughkeepsieschools.org:443

Then you should get a bunch of stuff on the screen. After it stops, you 
should be able to treat it like a normal telnet session. I've always 
found supplying a little bit more information than just 'get index.php' 
is more helpful. I'd type this (replacing the <cr> with an enter -- HTTP 
requires two cr/lf's to signify the end of the header). Note the spaces 
around the first '/' in the first line, but no spaces around the second '/':

       GET / HTTP/1.1
       Host: mail.poughkeepsieschools.org
       <cr>

The output that follows should be a webpage. You can replace the first 
'/' in the first line with any relative path (so, for example, an 
address like 
http://mail.poughkeepsieschools.org/long/path/name/file.html would 
become "GET /long/path/name/file.html HTTP/1.1")

Hope this helps.
Justin W