I have a client that chooses to run exchange. I have a fedora core box that is also on the network. On the box is a cron script that checks for a website and/or file server being up and then emails out a warning to whoever. (script was written by a co-worker)

It currently uses "sendmail" to send mail out for the purpose of warning whoever. What I want to do is see if it is possible to send and/or receive an email from within a script that goes through the exchange server (pop access is enabled for internal use) for the specific purpose of checking that the exchange server is sending/receiving email correctly.

There have been a few issues where the exchange goes down or something in the dns record was goofed and the error was not recognized until business hours had begun. Obviously I would use the sendmail to relay a warning if the exchange server was down. And if the entire connection died I would have much larger problems.

Can you send and check mail on an pop mail/exchange server from within a script?