Linux: Send gmail from the command line

Install msmtp

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

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.
nano ~/.msmtprc

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

#Gmail account
defaults
logfile ~/msmtp.log

account gmail
auth on
host smtp.gmail.com
from [email protected]
auth on
tls on
tls_trust_file /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/Equifax_Secure_CA.crt
user [email protected]
password your_gmail_password
port 587

account default : gmail

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.
chmod 600 .msmtprc
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.
sudo apt-get install heirloom-mailx

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

Now paste the following into the file and save it.
set sendmail=”/usr/bin/msmtp”
set message-sendmail-extra-arguments=”-a gmail”

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:
mail -s “Subject” [email protected]

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.

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.
mail -s “Subject” [email protected] < message.txt

By: Linerd and txtweaks