Send Gmail from the Linux Command Line

In this post I'm going to show how to send an email from the Linux command line through your Gmail account. This can be handy if you're a command line junkie. The real power, however, is in being able to send an email automatically from a script. I'll be doing another post where I use this in a script to notify me when something has changed on my system. For now though, I'll just show the setup so you can send an email from the command line.  This process has been tested on Ubuntu 12.04 and Linux Mint 13.

First off, I must acknowledge that I did not figure this out on my own. Ubuntu Forums member, Stephen Morgan, showed how to do it here.

Install msmtp

The first step is to install the msmtp-mta package.

After the install is complete you'll need to set up the defaults file with your Gmail account information. You need to create a file in your home directory called .msmtprc.

Paste the following into the file and edit the portions in bold to reflect your account information.

Save the file and exit the text editor. Since this file contains your account credentials, you'll want to change the permissions to make the file readable only by you.

Install mailx

Now that your computer is configured to talk to Gmail, you need a command line email program to handle writing your email. For this I'm going to use mailx from the heirloom-mailx package.

Now you need to set up the defaults file so that mailx uses msmtp to send out the email. This file is called .mailrc.

Now paste the following into the file and save it.

You should now be able to send email from your terminal command line.

Sending email from the command line

Now you can send email from the command line like this:

The cursor will go to a blank line. Enter your email message. When you're done, hit <Enter> to go to a blank line and then hit <Ctrl>+D to end your message. You have just sent your email.

Here you can see that I've sent an email to myself from my Gmail account.

You can also use a message saved in a text file rather than entering it interactively. This is especially useful if you're automating this process in a script. In this example, the email is saved in a file called message.txt.

This content originally appeared at http://tuxtweaks.com/2012/10/send-gmail-from-the-linux-command-line/.

Comments

13 Responses to “Send Gmail from the Linux Command Line”

1. Menno says:

   October 14, 2012 at 6:57 AM

   Does this work if you normally use two-factor authentication for your gmail account?

   Reply
   • Ton van Overbeek says:

     January 26, 2013 at 10:06 AM

     Yes, works with two-factor authentication.
     You will have to generate an application specific password for msmtp on your pi on your Google account page.
     Use this application specific password in your .msmtprc file.

     Reply
     • Linerd says:

       January 28, 2013 at 1:48 PM

       Thanks for the tip!

       Reply
2. unni smohan says:

   November 15, 2012 at 6:21 AM

   hi thanks this really worked.
   I need to know whether we can do it in redhat linux enterprise editon 5 also?
   if yes then how?

   Reply
3. James says:

   December 27, 2012 at 9:23 PM

   Perfect, and super-easy to set up (Ubuntu Precise here). Thanks!

   Reply
4. Mike says:

   January 8, 2013 at 5:36 PM

   Exactly what I was looking for and it works! Thanks!

   Reply
5. Edward G Prentice says:

   January 26, 2013 at 9:30 AM

   To use with Gmail's two-step authentication, generate a password for msmtp and use that instead of your regular password in the .msmtprc file.

   http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=185833

   Reply
   • Linerd says:

     January 28, 2013 at 1:49 PM

     Thanks for the tip on 2 Factor authentication.

     Reply
6. Tom says:

   February 2, 2013 at 1:03 PM

   nice, simple instructions. works a treat!
   is there any way to attach files?

   Reply
   • Linerd says:

     February 2, 2013 at 4:44 PM

     Great question. It turns out it's quite simple, just use the -a switch followed by the path to your attachment file. In the example below the attachment is an image called "attachment.png".

     mail -s "Subject" -a attachment.png [email protected] < message.txt

     Reply
     • Tom says:

       February 5, 2013 at 6:49 AM

       awesome, thanks very much

       Reply
7. Luke Mackenzie says:

   February 20, 2013 at 10:56 AM

   I followed the insructions but get:

   send-mail: account default not found: no configuration file available

   Reply
8. bk322 says:

   March 11, 2013 at 3:44 AM

   Thanks, I've profited from this.

   Reply