Sending a mail from a linux shell script

Question

I want to send an email from a Linux Shell script  What is the standard command to do this and do I need to set up any special server names

User · Answer

The mail command does that  who would have guessed  -   Open your shell and enter man mail to get the manual page for the mail command for all the options available

User · Answer

If the server is well configured  eg it has an up and running MTA  you can just use the mail command   For instance  to send the content of a file  you can do this     cat  path to file   mail -s  your subject  your email com   man mail for more details

User · Answer

Another option for in a bash script   mailbody  Testmail via bash script  echo  From  info myserver test   gt   tmp mailtest echo  To  john mywebsite test   gt  gt   tmp mailtest echo  Subject  Mailtest subject   gt  gt   tmp mailtest echo     gt  gt   tmp mailtest echo  mailbody  gt  gt   tmp mailtest cat  tmp mailtest    usr sbin sendmail -t    The file  tmp mailtest is overwritten everytime this script is used   The location of sendmail may differ per system   When using this in a cron script  you have to use the absolute path for the sendmail command

User · Answer

Generally  you d want to use mail command to send your message using local MTA  that will either deliver it using SMTP to the destination or just forward it into some more powerful SMTP server  for example  at your ISP   If you don t have a local MTA  although it s a bit unusual for a UNIX-like system to omit one   you can either use some minimalistic MTA like ssmtp   ssmtp is quite easy to configure  Basically  you ll just need to specify where your provider s SMTP server is     The place where the mail goes  The actual machine name is required   no MX records are consulted  Commonly mailhosts are named mail domain com   The example will fit if you are in domain com and you mailhub is so named  mailhub mail   Another option is to use one of myriads scripts that just connect to SMTP server directly and try to post a message there  such as Smtp-Auth-Email-Script  smtp-cli  SendEmail  etc

User · Answer

SEND MAIL FROM LINUX TO GMAIL  USING POSTFIX  1  install software  Debian and Ubuntu   apt-get update  amp  amp  apt-get install postfix mailutils   OpenSUSE   zypper update  amp  amp  zypper install postfix mailx cyrus-sasl   Fedora   dnf update  amp  amp  dnf install postfix mailx   CentOS   yum update  amp  amp  yum install postfix mailx cyrus-sasl cyrus-sasl-plain   Arch Linux   pacman -Sy postfix mailutils   FreeBSD   portsnap fetch extract update  cd  usr ports mail postfix  make config   in configaration select SASL support  make install clean  pkg install mailx   2  Configure Gmail   etc postfix  Create or edit the password file   vim  etc postfix sasl passwd   i m using vim u can use any file editer like nano  cat          Ubuntu  Fedora  CentOS Debian  OpenSUSE  Arch Linux   add this   where user replace with your mailname and password is your gmail password   smtp gmail com  587    user gmail com password   Save and close the file  and Make it accessible only by root  becouse its an sensitive content which contains ur password  chmod 600  usr local etc postfix sasl passwd    FreeBSD   directory  usr local etc postfix    vim  usr local etc postfix sasl passwd   Add the line    smtp gmail com  587    user gmail com password   Save and Make it accessible only by root   chmod 600  usr local etc postfix sasl passwd   3  Postfix configuration  configuration file main cf  6 parameters we must set in the Postfix  Ubuntu  Arch Linux Debian   edit   vim  etc postfix main cf   modify the following values   relayhost    smtp gmail com  587 smtp use tls   yes smtp sasl auth enable   yes smtp sasl security options   smtp sasl password maps   hash  etc postfix sasl passwd smtp tls CAfile    etc ssl certs ca-certificates crt   smtp sasl security options which in configuration will be set to empty  to ensure that no Gmail-incompatible security options are used   save and close  as like for  OpenSUSE   vim  etc postfix main cf   modify  relayhost    smtp gmail com  587 smtp use tls   yes smtp sasl auth enable   yes smtp sasl security options   smtp sasl password maps   hash  etc postfix sasl passwd smtp tls CAfile    etc ssl ca-bundle pem   it also requires  configuration of file master cf   modify   vim  etc postfix master cf   as by uncommenting this line remove      tlsmgr unix - - n 1000  1 tlsmg   save and close  Fedora  CentOS   vim  etc postfix main cf   modify  relayhost    smtp gmail com  587 smtp use tls   yes smtp sasl auth enable   yes smtp sasl security options   smtp sasl password maps   hash  etc postfix sasl passwd smtp tls CAfile    etc ssl certs ca-bundle crt   FreeBSD   vim  usr local etc postfix main cf   modify   relayhost    smtp gmail com  587 smtp use tls   yes smtp sasl auth enable   yes smtp sasl security options   smtp sasl password maps   hash  usr local etc postfix sasl passwd smtp tls CAfile    etc mail certs cacert pem   save and close this   4  Process Password File   Ubuntu  Fedora  CentOS  OpenSUSE  Arch Linux Debian   postmap  etc postfix sasl passwd   for freeBSD  postmap  usr local etc postfix sasl passwd   4 1  Restart postfix  Ubuntu  Fedora  CentOS  OpenSUSE  Arch Linux Debian   systemctl restart postfix service   for FreeBSD   service postfix onestart nano  etc rc conf   add  postfix enable YES   save then run to start  service postfix start   5  Enable  Less Secure Apps  In Gmail using help of below link  https   support google com accounts answer 6010255  6  Send A Test Email  mail -s  subject  recever domain com   press enter  add body of mail as your wish press enter then press ctrl d for proper termination  if it not working check the all steps again and check if u enable  less secure app  in your gmail  then restart postfix if u modify anything in that  for shell script create the  sh file and add 6 step command as your requirement  for example just for a sample     bin bash REALVALUE   df     grep     awk    print  5     sed  s    g   THRESHOLD 80  if     REALVALUE  -gt   THRESHOLD      then     mail -s  Disk Space Alert  mailid domainname com  lt  lt  EOF Your root partition remaining free space is critically low  Used   REALVALUE  EOF fi   The script sends an email when the disk usage rises above the percentage specified by the THRESHOLD varialbe  80  here

User · Answer

If both exim and ssmtp are running  you may enter into troubles  So if you just want to run a simple MTA  just to have a simple smtp client to send email notifications for insistance  you shall purge the eventually preinstalled MTA like exim or postfix first and reinstall ssmtp     Then it s quite straight forward  configuring only 2 files  revaliases and ssmtp conf  - See ssmtp doc -   and usage in your bash or bourne script is like       bin sh   SUBJECT  1   RECEIVER  2   TEXT  3    SERVER NAME  HOSTNAME   SENDER   whoami    USER  noreply      -z  1     amp  amp  SUBJECT  Notification from  SENDER on server  SERVER NAME       -z  2     amp  amp  RECEIVER  another configured email address        -z  3     amp  amp  TEXT  no text content     MAIL TXT  Subject   SUBJECT nFrom   SENDER nTo   RECEIVER n n TEXT    echo -e  MAIL TXT   sendmail -t   exit        Obviously do not forget to open your firewall output to the smtp port  25

User · Answer

Admitting you want to use some smtp server  you can do   export SUBJECT some subject export smtp somehost someport export EMAIL someaccount somedomain echo  some message    mailx -s   SUBJECT    EMAIL    Change somehost  someport  and someaccount somedomain to actual values that you would use   No encryption and no authentication is performed in this example

User · Answer

you can use  email  or  emailx  command     1    vim  etc mail rc   or   vim  etc nail rc  set from   xxx xxx com   set smtp   smtp exmail gmail com  gmail s smtp server  set smtp-auth-user   xxx xxx com  sender s email address set smtp-auth-password   xxxxxxx  get from gmail  not your email account passwd set smtp-auth login   Because if it is not sent from an authorized account  email will get to junk mail list    2     echo  Pls remember to remove unused ons topics     mail -s  waste topics  -a a txt developer xxx com  send to group user  developer xxxx com

User · Answer

On linux  mail utility can be used to send attachment with option  -a   Go through man pages to read about the option  For eg following code will send an attachment    mail -s  THIS IS SUBJECT   -a attachment txt name domain com  lt  lt  lt   Hi Buddy  Please find failure reports

User · Answer

You don t even need an MTA  The SMTP protocol is simple enough to directly write it to your SMTP server  You can even communicate over SSL TLS if you have the OpenSSL package installed  Check this post  https   33hops com send-email-from-bash-shell html  The above is an example on how to send text html e-mails that will work out of the box  If you want to add attachments the thing can get a bit more complicated  you will need to base64 encode the binary files and embed them between boundaries  THis is a good place to start investigating  http   forums codeguru com showthread php 418377-Send-Email-w-attachments-using-SMTP

User · Answer

If you want a clean and simple approach in bash  and you don t want to use cat  echo  etc   the simplest way would be   mail -s  subject here  email address com  lt  lt  lt   message     lt  lt  lt  is used to redirect standard input  It s been a part of bash for a long time

[linux] Sending a mail from a linux shell script

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