Hi All,
I would like to send an email through a remote SMTP server. How can this be done? I will be sending the email from a bash shell script.
I'm using a unix machine. uname -a returns: Linux linux 2.4.21 BrandZ fake linux i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux
Thank you.
Contacting a remote SMTP server directly is not generally the way this is done. What, for example, if the server is temporarily unavailable?
The easier route is to run a local mailserver such as postfix, exim or qmail, and set it up to send mail through a remote server. Then you can just use command-line sendmail to send your e-mail.
In postfix on Ubuntu, I put the following in master.cf:
relayhost = [smtp.my-isp.com]
smtp_generic_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/generic
You need the last line in case your ISP's mail server requires that all outgoing mail originates from [email protected]. Then you'll also need /etc/postfix/generic like this:
youruser@localhost [email protected]
Add other variants (e.g. [email protected]) as necessary.
The mailx command can be used to send email non-interactively,
but the classical implementation talks to a local mail transport agent.
There are simple MTAs which will just send email through a remote SMTP server,
and won't accept any local email.
Another solution is to use heirloom-mailx,
(formerly known as nail I think)
which supports talking to an SMTP server directly instead of using a local MTA.
For instance, you may invoke it as follows:
heirloom-mailx -S smtp=smtp.your-isp.com \
-S [email protected] \
-s "subject" <<EOM
Hello, $name,
This is an automatic reminder, sent out once a month, ...
[the rest of your message]
EOM
i'm not sure if it still works.. but you might wanne use telnet. at least you should be able to write a bashscript using it