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Roboman1723
Asked: 2014-09-11 07:43:25 +0800 CST

How to send an email using command line? [duplicate]

  • 772

Here's what I have:

cat UserReport.txt | mail -s "TestSubject" "[email protected]"

It's a small file, much smaller than a picture so it should send almost instantly. Though I receive nothing. I installed mailutils but might have installed it incorrectly.

How can I send an email from a bash script?

command-line

3 Answers

  1. First of all you need to install and configure Postfix to Use Gmail SMTP on Ubuntu.

    Install all necessary packages:

    $ sudo apt-get install postfix mailutils libsasl2-2 ca-certificates libsasl2-modules

    If you do not have postfix installed before, postfix configuration wizard will ask you some questions. Just select your server as Internet Site and for FQDN use something like mail.example.com

    Then open your postfix config file:

    $ sudo -H gedit /etc/postfix/main.cf

    and add following lines to it:

    relayhost = [smtp.gmail.com]:587
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
smtp_sasl_security_options = noanonymous
smtp_tls_CAfile = /etc/postfix/cacert.pem
smtp_use_tls = yes

    You might have noticed that we haven’t specified our Gmail username and password in above lines. They will go into a different file. Open/Create:

    $ sudo -H gedit /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

    And add following line:

    [smtp.gmail.com]:587    [email protected]:PASSWORD

    If you want to use your Google App’s domain, please replace @gmail.com with your @domain.com.

    Fix permission and update postfix config to use sasl_passwd file:

    $ sudo chmod 400 /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
$ sudo postmap /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

    Next, validate certificates to avoid running into error. Just run following command:

    $ cat /etc/ssl/certs/Thawte_Premium_Server_CA.pem | sudo tee -a /etc/postfix/cacert.pem

    Finally, reload postfix config for changes to take effect:

    $ sudo /etc/init.d/postfix reload

    Testing

    Check if mails are sent via Gmail SMTP server

    If you have configured everything correctly, following command should generate a test mail from your server to your mailbox.

    echo "Test mail from postfix" | mail -s "Test Postfix" [email protected]

    To further verify, if mail sent from above command is actually sent via Gmail’s SMTP server, you can log into Gmail account [email protected] with PASSWORD and check "Sent Mail" folder in that Gmail account. By default, Gmail always keeps a copy of mail being sent through its web-interface as well as SMTP server. This logging is one strong reason that we often use Gmail when mail delivery is critical.

    Troubleshooting

    Error: "SASL authentication failed; server smtp.gmail.com"

    You need to unlock the captcha by visiting this page https://www.google.com/accounts/DisplayUnlockCaptcha

    You can run test again after unlocking captcha.
    source

    You need to use following syntax of mail and mutt to send emails, note that if you want to send attachment file via mail command it's not support or it's better I say I can not send my attached file via mail command, instead you can use mutt command line, it's very useful. and in mutt command you have to type attachment arguments after the email address. I test it and works fine.

    you can install mutt via this command:

    $ sudo apt-get install mutt

    Using mail 

    mail -s "TestSubject" [email protected] -a "UserReport.txt"  < MessageBody.txt

    Using mutt

    mutt -s "TestSubject" [email protected] -a "UserReport.txt"  < MessageBody.txt

    While UserReport.txt is your attachment file, MessageBody is text/file of your body of email, TestSubject is your email subject.

    -s flag is used for "Subject" and -a flag is used for "Attachment file"

    • 31

  2. UPDATED MANY YEARS LATER: Working on Ubuntu 16

    1. Allow "less secure apps" to connect to your Gmail by following this link:

      https://myaccount.google.com/lesssecureapps?pli=1

    2. Run the following commands:

      sudo update-ca-certificates
sudo apt-get install msmtp-mta
nano ~/.msmtprc

    3. Set the following msmtp config (replace [email protected], yourUsername and yourPassword):

      account gmail
auth on
host smtp.gmail.com
port 587
auth on
tls on
tls_trust_file /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
from [email protected]
user yourUsername
password yourPassword

account default : gmail

    4. Config mail to use msmtp:

      nano ~/.mailrc

    5. Paste this:

      set sendmail="/usr/bin/msmtp"

    6. Finally send your mail (replace [email protected]):

      echo hello | mail -s test [email protected]

    7. Alternative you can use "mailx" to even send attachments easily:

      echo "mail body" | mailx -a /path/to/your/file.doc -s "mail subject" [email protected]
    • 2

  3. Your line could look in shortest way like in this little shell-script:

    #!/bin/bash
cat email.txt && sendmail [email protected] < /tmp/email.txt
    • 2