Send Email From Terminal with Gmail in Ubuntu 18.04

Step 1 – Install msmtp.

sudo apt-get install msmtp-mta

Step 2 – Configure msmtp.

Create and open a file called .msmtprc in your home directory.

gedit ~/.msmtprc

Paste the following into this file. Replace username@gmail.com in both places with your gmail address and also replace yourpassword with your gmail password. When you have finished, save and close the file.

defaults
logfile ~/msmtp.log
account gmail
auth on
host smtp.gmail.com
from username@gmail.com
auth on
tls on
tls_trust_file /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
user username@gmail.com
password yourpassword
port 587
account default : gmail

Since your password is saved as plain text in this file, run the following command to keep other users from viewing it.

chmod 600 ~/.msmtprc

Step 3 – Install heirloom-mailx.

You will most likely need to add a repository to install this. First open /etc/apt/sources.list with this command. You will need to enter your password twice if this is your first time running an admin command since your last session. This is normal.

gedit admin:///etc/apt/sources.list

Paste the following into the bottom of the file, then save and close the file.

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-security main universe

Now update your repositories.

sudo apt-get update

Step 4 – Configure mailx.

Create and open a file called .mailrc in your home directory.

gedit ~/.mailrc

Paste this into the file, then save and close it.

set sendmail="/usr/bin/msmtp"
set message-sendmail-extra-arguments="-a gmail"

Step 5 – Login to your gmail account to allow less secure apps.

Follow this link -> https://myaccount.google.com/lesssecureapps to allow less secure apps to run. This needs to be turned on in order to send emails with this method.

You should now be able to send emails from the command line.

Change username@whatever.com to the recipient’s address. After you press the Enter key to run this command, it will allow you to write the body of the message. When you have finished writing the body of the message, press and hold CTRL + d to send the message. The terminal will briefly display EOT to let you know your message has been sent and then your terminal will exit.

mail -s "This is the subject." username@whatever.com

The following commands will not require you to press CTRL + d to send, making them ideal for scripts.

You can insert the contents of a text file into the body of your message with the command below.

mail -s "This is the subject." username@whatever.com < /path/to/yourfile.txt

You can pipe the body into the email with the echo command.

echo "This is the body." | mail -s "This is the subject." username@whatever.com

You can send a message to multiple recipients like this.

echo "This is the body." | mail -s "This is the subject." username@whatever.com,username2@whatever.com

And you can add an attachment like this.

echo "This is the body." | mail -s "This is the subject." -a "/path/to/attachment" username@whatever.com

I hope this tutorial has been helpful. This is probably my last post for the year. I’ll see you all in 2020!