[SOLVED] How to send internal e-mail on Linux, using the mail command?

sl33p · 06-03-2009, 08:57 AM

Hy guys,

I'm studying for the LPI exam, and faced one simple (well, not that simple for me) question:

Quote:

Send an E-mail to your local account. Try two different ways to send and read it. How can you check that it really arrived?

I decided to try using the 'mail' and 'pine' commands. So:

1) Using the root account, intending to send an e-mail to myself (root):

Code:

# mail -s "Hello root!" root
Simple form of sending e-mails internally.
^D (this keystroke is to finish the e-mail)
EOT

2) Using 'pine', another e-mail client:

The mail is composed correctly, with 'To:' field set to:

Quote:

root@slack-VM.patree.com

which is my hostname, as my box runs in a VMWare Slack 12.2 image.

In both cases, nothing was received in my mailbox (by typing #mail)...
Additionally I don't see any new e-mails when I look at the file '/var/spool/mail/root'.

Do I need extra information configuring my mail client/server/service?

Thanks in advance!
sl33p

ramram29 · 06-03-2009, 02:36 PM

Is your MTA running?

sl33p · 06-04-2009, 08:52 AM

Hey, thanks for replying.

Well, I've searched the web for MTA[1] and found out:

Quote:

Internet mail is broken down into three basic parts:

1. MTA or Mail Transfer Agents - sendmail, qmail, etc
2. Mail Retrieval Software - pop3, imap, etc
3. Mail User Agent (MUA): E-Mail client - Netscape, MUTT, etc

This means I have to setup an MTA like sendmail as to send a simple e-mail to myself?

[1]http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialMailMTA.html

saagar · 06-04-2009, 11:03 AM

1. Just log in as root and type mail, and you should see lot of system-generated mails sent to root.
2.Next, find out how to check the status of the default MTA.
In RHEL5 it is,
service sendmail status
or service postfix status.
It should be running.
3.type netstat -ant | grep 25
it should give you a message something like
127.0.0.1:*

Restart the service.
4.Type
mail root
< type the message >
put a dot (.) to end the message and quit
5.now again type mail
you should see the mail sent to yourself...
thanks.

rsciw · 06-04-2009, 11:35 AM

backtrack's debian based.
so unless they screwed around a lot there (never know :P )

you can check via

sudo /etc/init.d/yourmta status

sl33p · 06-04-2009, 01:05 PM

saagar,

Thanks man! I am using Slack 12.2 VMWare image, and by default Slack's MTA (sendmail at /etc/rc.d/rc.sendmail) is not started for my runlevel.

That's why I couldn't send any e-mail before. When I started the sendmail daemon, all the 20 messages on the queued appeared. lol

Once again, thanks!

saagar · 06-04-2009, 08:13 PM

ok. thanks a lot.