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Send Email from the Command Line using Gmail Account

Sometimes you want to send a quick/short E-mail to somebody, send a TODO item to yourself, or let a script/program Email you when it’s done. For these I found the Linux mail command very useful.

Using it is as easy as typing:

mail -s “Subject” receipt@domain.com

Then enter the message and end it with [ctrl]+[D].

However, if your ISP s!#$% like mine, you’ll discover that no mail was really sent.

To work around this, I wanted to configure my mail program to use Gmail’s SMTP server.

After a little Googling I found this howto. (Tested on Ubuntu).

1. First, you will need the postfix package:

sudo apt-get install postfix

2. Now configure it: Append the following to /etc/postfix/main.cf  (you need super user privileges):

relayhost = [smtp.gmail.com]:587
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
smtp_sasl_security_options = noanonymous
smtp_tls_CAfile = /etc/postfix/cacert.pem
smtp_use_tls = yes

3. Next, add your username and password to /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd (create the file if it isn’t already)

[smtp.gmail.com]:587      user.name@gmail.com:password

4. Change permissions of sasl_passwd:

sudo chmod 400 /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

5. Translate sasl_passwd into “db” file so postfix will be able to read:

sudo postmap /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

6. Create a certificate:

cat /etc/ssl/certs/Thawte_Premium_Server_CA.pem | sudo tee -a /etc/postfix/cacert.pem

7. Restart postfix:

sudo postfix stop

sudo postfix start

8. Try it:

mail -s “Test” my.email@domain.com

(Then enter the message if any, and terminate with [ctrl]+[D])

That’s it. You’re done.

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Tags: Bash, Command Line Interface, Email, Linux