Hello,

I am currently working on CentOS 7.2. I am trying to send email to myself on the same local machine. I get message as no mail for Nik (my username).

I have installed xmail
$ yum install xmail

and here is what I am entering in mail description

$ mail -s "Test mail" Nik < newfile

I have already created a newfile in my home directory. I am really not able to figure out what exactly is going wrong. Please assist me on the same

xmail is, in general (the name has been used for other things) an email CLIENT. Are you running any email SERVER on your machine? (sendmail is the oldest, but there are a couple of dozen possible other choices) If you have nothing to RECEIVE the email, your SENDING the email would be EXPECTED to fail.

Generally, if you have an email server running it will be listening on port 25 for incoming connections. In secure mode, it will only listen in 127.0.0.1:25.

I am not running any email server. How do I send email on the same local system. My trainer sent email to his local system in one of his videos (I am learning from pluralsight.com)

I am quite new to Linux so please reply in easy simple steps. Thanks in advance

The simplest way I know on the local system is to use mail (default linux mail system)
"man mail" to see how it works and try it.

man mail is helpful. Thanks. But still my problem is not solved.

I'm pretty sure it was mailx, not xmail.

A standard CentOS 7 install should include the Postfix mail server:

Yes mailx sorry. But still not working

That is because, even for the local system, you need a mail SERVER to accept, process, and distribute the mail. If you do not have one installed and running, there is nothing to deliver that email. Try installing postfix.

Package 2ostfix-2.10.1-9.el7.x86_64 already installed and latest version
Nothing to do

Postfix is already installed

And is it running as a service? Is it listening on port 25?


Would you like some light reading in case it needs configuration? https://www.golinuxcloud.com/configu...tp-relay-rhel/

On my system, as it has been for years, mail (also now known as mailx) is both the server and client. Since the early 90s have been able to send & receive mail on the local machine. The servers postfix or sendmail have only been needed when mail is sent outward or received inward from another host (LAN or internet)

This is my default, and I have never installed mail or mailx and have not installed nor configured sendmail nor postfix. Mail has always worked on the local machine.
One thing that is certain with mail & mailx is that it can only work when sending/receiving mail from an existing user account on that machine or with a proper entry in /etc/aliases, while sendmail & postfix can send/receive mail for the domain, even if the user is not local on that server.

from https://www.binarytides.com/linux-mailx-command/

Searching, I found no examples of how to make mail, xmail, or mailx act like a MTA. It needs to communicate (SMTP, IMAP, or other mail protocol) to the MTA that acts as the server and delivery agent.

If anyone has a URL pointing to a documentation that shows how to make the CLIENT act like an MTA, please provide that so I can read through that documentation.

Read the man page for esmtprc. The config details are there.

That is the man page for the configuration file for esmtp - libESMTP to Sendmail compatibility interface. That requires using SENDMAIL MTA.

That does not involve using mail, xmail, or mailx WITHOUT an MTA as both mail server (MTA) and client as described.

BTW your process list shows "mailq" running. Mailq is an MTA, a replacement for sendmail (and in some ways an improved MTA). In other words you were running an MTA serving your mail functions. Every time you send mail using mail, mailx, or xmail you are using the mail SERVER (mailq) to deliver or route that mail. It is the MTA that enables delivery from the email clients. (Although, the MTA CAN be running on a rmeote machine and serving and accepting email using SMTP, if your client understands smtp and either pop/pop3 or IMAP protocols.)

Which brings us back to this: to properly deliver local mail on his machine, the OP needs an MTA running. It should be listening to port 25 on at least one IP address on that machine, possibly the loopback address 127.0.0.1

I found this url https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=179366

In the last comment he is mentioned that he had wrongly configured MAIL variable in his bashrc

Anything to do with my issue?