Sending mail from Linux shell script

Question

I want to send an email from a linux shell script. What is the standard command for this, and do I need to configure any special server names?

Answer 1

If the server is configured correctly, for example, it has an MTA, it can use the mail command.

For example, to send the contents of a file, you can do this:

$ cat /path/to/file | mail -s "your subject" [e-mail] 

man mail for more details.

Answer 2

If you need a clean and simple approach in bash and you don't want to use cat , echo , etc., the easiest way:

 mail -s "subject here" [e-mail] <<< "message" 

<<< used to redirect standard input. It has been part of bash for a long time.

Answer 3

If both Exim and ssmtp are running, you may run into problems. Therefore, if you just want to start a simple MTA, just for the simple smtp client to send email notifications for confirmation, first clear the pre-installed MTA, such as Exim or postfix, and reinstall ssmtp.

Then it is pretty simple, setting up only 2 files (revaliases and ssmtp.conf) - see ssmtp doc - and using in your bash or bourne script looks like this:

 #!/bin/sh SUBJECT=$1 RECEIVER=$2 TEXT=$3 SERVER_NAME=$HOSTNAME SENDER=$(whoami) USER="noreply" [[ -z $1 ]] && SUBJECT="Notification from $SENDER on server $SERVER_NAME" [[ -z $2 ]] && RECEIVER="another_configured_email_address" [[ -z $3 ]] && 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 the firewall output to smtp (25).

Answer 4

Another option for a bash script:

 mailbody="Testmail via bash script" echo "From: [e-mail]" >> /tmp/mailtest echo "To: [e-mail]" >> /tmp/mailtest echo "Subject: Mailtest subject" >> /tmp/mailtest echo "" >> /tmp/mailtest echo $mailbody >> /tmp/mailtest cat /tmp/mailtest | /usr/sbin/sendmail -t 

• The /tmp/mailtest overwritten every time this script is used.
• The sendmail location may vary for each system.
• When using this parameter in a cron script, you need to use the absolute path for the sendmail command.

Answer 5

Typically, you want to use the mail command to send your message using the local MTA (which will either deliver it using SMTP to the destination, or simply forward it to a more powerful SMTP server, for example, from your Internet service provider). If you don't have a local MTA (although it's a little unusual for a UNIX-like system to omit it), you can either use a minimalistic MTA, such as ssmtp .

ssmtp pretty easy to set up. Basically, you just need to indicate where your provider’s SMTP server is located:

 # 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 the myriads scripts that connect directly to the SMTP server and try to send a message there, for example, Smtp-Auth-Email-Script , smtp-cli , SendEmail , etc.

Answer 6

Recognizing that 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 the actual values ​​that you will use. In this example, encryption and authentication are not performed.

Answer 7

You don't even need an MTA. SMTP is simple enough to write directly to your SMTP server. You can even communicate via SSL / TLS if you have the OpenSSL package installed. Check out this post: https://33hops.com/send-email-from-bash-shell.html

Above is an example of how to send text / html email messages that will work out of the box. If you want to add attachments, the thing may get a little complicated, you will need to base64 encode the binaries and insert them between the borders. This is a good place to start an investigation: http://forums.codeguru.com/showthread.php?418377-Send-Email-w-attachments-using-SMTP

Answer 8

On linux , you can use the mail utility to send attachments with the -a option. Go through the man pages to read about the option. For example, the following code will send an attachment:

mail -s "CONFIRM THIS" -a attachment.txt [e-mail] <<< "Hello, buddy, see bug reports."

Answer 9

The mail command does this (who would have guessed ;-). Open a shell and enter man mail to get the manual page for the mail command for all available options.