Sending automatically generated emails

anon112 · 11-26-2014, 04:35 PM

I have had no luck recently with postfix (see here ). So, I am now looking for a simple SMTP program that will automatically send emails after certain events. This should be a program that can be called from another program when a certain event is detected (I used to use mailx with postfix).

I've tried mutt and ssmtp on archlinux, however they don't seem to be able to log into my gmail to send anything (currently I'm trying to send email from my gmail account to myself since I my postfix mail server won't work). Additionally, any help I find on mutt tries to set me up with an IMAP server and that is NOT what I want -- there's some cases where the filesystem is read-only and may cause errors.

So, does anybody know of a very simple smtp client that will work with gmail, allow automatic emails to be sent from programs, and doesn't try to set me up with IMAP?

dugan · 11-26-2014, 05:10 PM

msmtp or ssmtp

These need to be built with encryption support before they can relay through gmail. The Arch Linux builds should have that taken care of, and there's an ssmtp->gmail guide right on the Arch Wiki.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SSMTP

If you're having trouble setting ssmtp up with gmail, and ssmtp has been built with ssl support, then the problem is most likely a problem with your configuration of ssmtp, not with ssmtp itself.

anon112 · 11-26-2014, 05:29 PM

The config files for those are plain text, so I would have to store my password in a plain text document? I don't see any way around that with ssmtp or msmtp...

EDIT: also, for anyone trying to do this, note that you need to enable less secure apps in the security settings of your account for gmail.

frankbell · 11-26-2014, 09:03 PM

After you configure msmtp (for example), set the permissions so that only owner can access the file.

Code:

chmod 600 [filename]

Update:

That is, chmod the relevant .*rc file.

Sorry for the lack of clarity.

anon112 · 11-27-2014, 09:21 AM

Quote:

set the permissions so that only owner can access the file

That might not work out so well on my system. In my case, there's a possibility that someone will use a live CD on the system. Wouldn't the "root" user on a live CD still be able to read the file? Is there no way to set up an encrypted password manager?