How To: Command-Line Email as Simply as Possible

[andrew.46]

Hi,

Can you confirm that gmail has changed to the Equifax Secure CA now after the problem of the expired cert?

Andrew

[DFord425]

I can't find heirloom-mailx either. Anybody know where to find it?

I recently found this and i am trying to do the same thing. I cannot find heirloom-mailx or nail. I tried to use the apt-get install command for both. Also i am trying to modify the msmtrpc file but i cant find it. Does anyone know where i find it.

[r.stiltskin]

I cannot find heirloom-mailx or nail. I tried to use the apt-get install command for both. Also i am trying to modify the msmtrpc file but i cant find it. Does anyone know where i find it.

You don't need heirloom-mailx or nail. It turned out that mailx (included in the Ubuntu distro) works fine. As for msmtprc -- you create it.

If you need more info:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
USING MAIL + MSMTP TO SEND EMAILS FROM A TERMINAL PROMPT OR FROM A SCRIPT:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
mail (/usr/bin/mail) is provided by mailx or smail (smail requires mailx and uucp), and msmtp provides the interface to the isp that forwards the mail. So:
~$ sudo apt-get install msmtp smail uucp
(mailx will be installed as a dependency)

In your home directory, create a ~/.mailrc file containing just:

set sendmail=/usr/bin/msmtp

Create a config file for msmtp; mine is ~/.msmtprc but I think a systemwide /etc/msmtprc file would work as well. For my Verizon account this file consists of:

# .msmtprc    ##configuration file for msmtp

#account    verizon
host        outgoing.verizon.net
from        [from address to appear on the email]
auth        login
tls         off
user        [username]@verizon.net
password    [************]

#account default : verizon

notes:
- The lines "account verizon" and "account default : verizon" are commented out -- they seem to be unnecessary if only 1 account is listed in the file.
- The [from address ...] can be whatever you want to appear on the email; it does not have to be your isp account address.
- The line "auth login" is to be copied exactly. This "login" is NOT your username.
- You'll have to determine the appropriate entries for the host, auth, and tls lines, depending on your isp.


To send an email manually from a terminal prompt, type a first line consisting of the command, the subject and one or more recipient addresses (no commas):

~$ mail -s "the subject line" [first recipient] [second recipient] [...]

followed by <enter>.
Then type the body of the message. This can be on multiple lines (<enter> will not terminate the message).
Finally, to terminate the message, type <enter> at the end of the last message line, and then type ctrl-D at the beginning of the next line.

To send an email from, say, a perl script, include a line similar to this in the script:

system("echo \"Body of the message\" | mail -s \"Subject line\" recipient1@address1 recipient2@address2");

[mhourahine]

Thanks for this info and for the helpful comments afterwards. This saved me alot of time.

heirloom-mailx seems to be just called mailx now

sudo apt-get install mailx

should do the trick

[mitchhb]

Thank you for the detailed directions. I think I have followed them carefully and have installed mailx and mstmp.

But when I try to send mail, I get the error message "msmtp: no recipients given". Any suggestions about what mistake I might have made? Thanks for any help.

[r.stiltskin]

I don't know -- I can't find any way to produce that error message.

[mitchhb]

Update: I was able to send mail using msmtp directly but see the error message when trying to send using mailx. So there is some issue between mails and msmtp.

[mitchhb]

Resolved: I had been using mailx from the mailutils package. After I installed it from mailx, everything works.

[djmm]

Fantastic. Just what I've been looking for. Thanks for documenting this. This is something that should definitely be incorporated into the distro too - simple out of the box smtp at least.

While these instructions work great for $USER, is anyone using a modified set for a system-wide solution or is that not possible given that, say, using gmail requires specific user settings?

I'm asking because I only have 3 users on the machine and then root. I could set this up for the other 3 users and root as well, but wondering if there's any configuration that can be shared and what the system-level file equivalents are.

[r.stiltskin]

I haven't tried it but I believe you can replace the ~/.mailrc with /etc/mail.rc and replace ~/.msmtprc with /etc/msmtprc and that should work system-wide if all users share the same isp settings.