[SOLVED] How to send email from command line?

dbrazeau · 03-02-2011, 02:24 PM

I'm looking for an easy way to send basic emails for the command line. I have tried configuring sendmail and mailx, but I have yet been able to receive a test email at my remote address.

I have read through a fair amount of "how to" on this but I am a little confused and obviously not doing something right.

My sendmail.mc file is as follows

Code:

divert(0)dnl
VERSIONID(`$Id: generic-linux.mc,v 8.1 1999/09/24 22:48:05 gshapiro Exp $')
OSTYPE(linux)dnl
DOMAIN(generic)dnl
MAILER(local)dnl
MAILER(smtp)dnl

When I try to send a test mail via

Code:

# mail -s "Hello world" myemail@gmail.com
test mail
EOT

I see

Code:

send-mail -i myemail@gmail.com

running in the process list for a while and then it goes away, but I never actually receive the email at my gmail account(I have also check the spam folder just in case). I have also tried sending the test email to my work email address, but that doesn't work either.

Any help would be great.

szboardstretcher · 03-02-2011, 02:30 PM

try this test:

Code:

sendmail -v someemail@somewhere.com
some text
.

(press "period and then enter" to end)

Post output

dbrazeau · 03-02-2011, 03:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by szboardstretcher

try this test:

Code:

sendmail -v someemail@somewhere.com
some text
.

(press "period and then enter" to end)

Post output

So I tried your suggestion, here is the output.

Code:

~ # sendmail -v myemail@gmail.com
test mail2
.
myemail@gmail.com... Connecting to [127.0.0.1] via relay...
myemail@gmail.com... Deferred: Connection refused by [127.0.0.1]

dbrazeau · 03-02-2011, 03:44 PM

Here is my /var/log/maillog... thought it might also be useful.

Code:

sendmail[1342]: p235KOdl001342: to=myemail@gmail.com, ctladdr=root (0/0), delay=00:00:03, 
xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=relay, pri=30009, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, 
stat=Deferred: Connection refused by [127.0.0.1]

eSelix · 03-02-2011, 04:17 PM

For quick, simple mails I use perl program sendEmail.

dbrazeau · 03-02-2011, 04:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eSelix

For quick, simple mails I use perl program sendEmail.

Thanks for your help.

I gave sendEmail a try but get this error:

Code:

sendEmail[5886]: ERROR => Connection attempt to localhost:25 failed: IO::Socket::INET: connect: Connection refused

I am eventually going setup smartd (smartmontools) to send SMART warning emails out, so I'm not sure if sendEmail would be sufficient anyway.

Stephen Morgan · 03-02-2011, 04:57 PM

I'm only a moderately competent user but, although it was simple enough to setup fetchmail, procmail and mailx for receiving mail I never managed to get sendmail to work.

Are you just trying to send through a remote smtp server, like through the smtp at gmail or yahoo? Or are you trying to run a full mail server? If it's the first then I'd recommend ssmtp, which I got working in about five minutes, which is less time than it took me to fail with sendmail by a very long way.

dbrazeau · 03-02-2011, 07:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephen Morgan

I'm only a moderately competent user but, although it was simple enough to setup fetchmail, procmail and mailx for receiving mail I never managed to get sendmail to work.

Are you just trying to send through a remote smtp server, like through the smtp at gmail or yahoo? Or are you trying to run a full mail server? If it's the first then I'd recommend ssmtp, which I got working in about five minutes, which is less time than it took me to fail with sendmail by a very long way.

I do not want to send my emails through a remote smtp server, since there is a good change my system will be running on a closed network. Maybe my issue is that I don't have a smtp server running locally. I though sendmail took care of that, but I may be wrong. What do I need to do to run the smtp server on my system?

szboardstretcher · 03-03-2011, 07:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dbrazeau

So I tried your suggestion, here is the output.

Code:

~ # sendmail -v myemail@gmail.com
test mail2
.
myemail@gmail.com... Connecting to [127.0.0.1] via relay...
myemail@gmail.com... Deferred: Connection refused by [127.0.0.1]

type

Code:

service sendmail start

dbrazeau · 03-03-2011, 11:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by szboardstretcher

type

Code:

service sendmail start

So do I really need the sendmail service running to only send emails? I seems like if all I want to do is send emails it could just invoke sendmail when I try to send an email rather than having it running always.

dbrazeau · 03-03-2011, 11:48 AM

Also how do I correctly setup my hostname and domain for sending out emails? Can I just use any domain I want?

dbrazeau · 03-03-2011, 12:03 PM

Ok, so I started up my sendmail service. I am currently using postfix for my sendmail server. It looks like it is trying to actually send the email to the gmail-smtp server now, but it keeps getting connection refused. (I also get connection refused when trying to send to my work email as well. Here is the output in the maillog.

Code:

postfix/pickup[1415]: 5789B374577: uid=0 from=<root>
postfix/cleanup[1538]: 5789B374577: message-id=<20110303174111.5789B374577@hostname.localdomain>
postfix/cleanup[1538]: warning: file system clock is 203 seconds ahead of local clock
postfix/cleanup[1538]: warning: resetting file time stamps - this hurts performance
postfix/qmgr[1416]: 5789B374577: from=<root@hostname.localdomain>, size=457, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
postfix/smtp[1540]: connect to gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[74.125.155.27]:25: Connection refused
postfix/smtp[1540]: connect to alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[74.125.65.27]:25: Connection refused
postfix/smtp[1540]: connect to alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[74.125.45.27]:25: Connection refused
postfix/smtp[1540]: connect to alt3.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[74.125.115.27]:25: Connection refused
postfix/smtp[1540]: connect to alt4.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[74.125.77.27]:25: Connection refused
postfix/smtp[1540]: 5789B374577: to=<myemail@gmail.com>, relay=none, delay=0.42, delays=0.39/0.02/0.01/0, dsn=4.4.1, status=deferred (connect to alt4.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[74.125.77.27]:25: Connection refused)

devUnix · 03-03-2011, 12:22 PM

I have written a tutorial on mail and mutt programs which is on the top of my blog:

http://unix-linux-dev.blogspot.com/

You can view it directly by opening this webpage:

http://unix-linux-dev.blogspot.com/2...nix-linux.html

I suggest you to look at my tutorial which is a step-by-step guide to mail and mutt programs, however not technically in-depth, but still it serves a good kick-start.

dbrazeau · 03-03-2011, 02:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by devUnix

I have written a tutorial on mail and mutt programs which is on the top of my blog:

http://unix-linux-dev.blogspot.com/

You can view it directly by opening this webpage:

http://unix-linux-dev.blogspot.com/2...nix-linux.html

I suggest you to look at my tutorial which is a step-by-step guide to mail and mutt programs, however not technically in-depth, but still it serves a good kick-start.

Thanks for pointing me to your blog, but it doesn't look like it is going to help me much. I can't even get the "Basic usage of mail" to work and it doesn't seem to cover mail server/domain configuration (where I think my issue lies).

dbrazeau · 03-03-2011, 07:27 PM

bump... any more help?