Sending email using mail command

The external mailx command is an electronic post office. You can send, receive, and store messages using the mailx command. It is based on the old mail command but provides a much better interface for handling messages.  More modern and more capable version of mail command line client is Mutt which is cabale of handing attachment when sending emails.

You can use the tilde (~) commands to edit, review, and modify your message before sending it to the recipient. You can list, display, save, delete, and pipe messages while in command mode. In general terms mailx provides you with a memo/message handler. You can send to one or multiple users. You can reply to the original author or to the author and all other recipients of a message. It even allows you to store messages and replies in files based on user names.

Like many of the UNIX commands mailx has been changed and enhanced by most vendors. Therefore, there is no guarantee the information that follows pertains exactly to your system's mail program. The mailx information that follows is AT&T System V. The mail information is from various BSD based systems. Information common to all systems was used, hopefully providing a complete base of information for the BSD mail command.

Throughout the module we refer to the mailx command. The BSD mail command is assumed to be synonymous unless stated differently.

---

NOTE: 
The old mail command is not documented in this book. It is slow, limited, and cumbersome to use. The BSD mail is usually located in /usr/ucb/mail. The mail program in /bin/mail is the old version of mail.

 

To Send Mail:

     mailx [ -dFinUV ] [ -h num ] [ -r adr ] [ -s subject ] recipients

If you specify user_names, mailx attempts to send the message to the list of users. If you do not specify any user_names, mailx reads messages from your mailbox or specified file and enters command mode.

SENDING MAIL

To send mail you simply specify the users you want to send messages as arguments to mailx. For example,

     mailx bill jill phil

sends the message you enter to the users, bill, jill, and phil. When you specify user names on the command line, mailx knows you want to send a message to recipients. After you press Return on the command line mailx prompts you for a subject line. You can press Return to have mailx ignore the subject line or you can enter a line of text. For example,

     mailx barb
     Subject: About the database problem!

Only the first 40 characters of the subject line are displayed when the user displays the header information using the h command.

After you enter the Subject line, mailx enters a simple editor or input mode. You enter your message text line-by-line pressing Return at the end of each line. You can use the Backspace key to erase characters on the current line but you cannot return to previous lines. To end the message you press Ctrl-D at the beginning of a line.

You can use the tilde escape commands to perform special functions while in input mode. One of the tilde commands allows you to enter the editor of your choice to edit the message. So even though mailx does not provide a true editor, it does allow you to invoke one to edit your message. For example,

     mailx barb
     Subject: About the database problem!
     ~v

causes mailx to enter the visual editor for you to edit your message.

The mailx header and tilde escape commands are discussed in the next two sections.

Examples

Adapted from Linux mail command examples – send mails from command line – BinaryTides By Silver Moon | July 23, 2020 24 Comments

Here are some examples of how to use the mail command to send mails from the command line. These examples shall give you a basic idea of the various options and features supported by the mail command.

Note: If you are trying to send a test mail to some mail provider like gmail or outlook, then you would need to run these commands on a server with proper configuration. If you try to send mail from you local machine or desktop, then most spam filters would probably block it.

Sending a simple mail

Run the command below, to send an email to [email protected]. The s option specifies the subject of the mail followed by the recipient email address.

$ mail -s "Hello World" [email protected]

The above command is not finished upon hitting Enter. Next you have to type in the message. When you're done, hit 'Ctrl-D' at the beginning of a line

$ mail -s "Hello World" [email protected]
Cc:
Hi Peter
How are you
I am fine
Good Bye
<Ctrl+D>

The shell asks for the 'Cc' (Carbon copy) field. Enter the CC address and press enter or press enter without anything to skip.

From the next line type in your message. Pressing enter would create a new line in the message. Once you are done entering the message, press . Once you do that, the mail command would dispatch the message for delivery and done.

Send a single line message

You can send one liner email message using "<<<" in bash:

$ mail -s "This is the subject" [email protected] <<< 'This is the message'

Send a message with the body of the messages sluped from the file

If the email message is in a file then we can use it directly to send the mail. This is useful when calling the mail command from shell scripts or other programs written in perl or php for example.

$ mail -s "Hello World" [email protected] < /home/user/mailcontent.txt

Or , using cat,

$ cat  /home/user/mailcontent.txt | mail -s "This is the subject" [email protected]

Specify CC and BCC recipients

Other useful parameters in the mail command are:

-c email-address (CC - send a carbon copy to email-address)
-b email-address (BCC - send a blind carbon copy to email-address)

Here's and example of how you might use these options

$ mail -s "Hello World" [email protected] -c [email protected] -b [email protected]

Sending to multiple recipients

It is also possible to specify multiple recipients by joining them with a comma.

$ mail -s "Hello World" [email protected],[email protected]

Specify the FROM name and address

The "-a" option allows to specify additional header information to attach with the message. It can be used to provide the "FROM" name and address. Here is a quick example

# echo "This is the message body" | mail -s "This is the subject" [email protected] -aFrom:[email protected]

The a option basically adds additional headers. To specify the from name, use the following syntax.

$ echo "This is the body" | mail -s "Subject" -aFrom:Harry\<[email protected]\> [email protected]

Note that we have to escape the less/great arrows since they have special meaning for the shell prompt. When you are issuing the command from within some script, you would omit that.

Send mail to a local system user

To send mail to a local system user just use the username in place of the recipient address

$ mail -s "Hello World" username

You could also append "@hostname" to the username, where the hostname should be the hostname of the current system.

Verbose output

Sometimes when testing mail servers, you would want to check the SMTP commands being used by the mail command. Use the "-v" option for that

$ mail -v -s "This is the subject" [email protected] <<< 'This is the message'

If the mail fails to deliver due to an improperly configured mail server for example, the smtp command log will show what has gone wrong.

Send mail with bash/shell scripts

This example demonstrates how the output of a command can be used as the message in the email.
Here is an easy shell script that reports disc usage over mail.

#!/bin/bash
du -sh | mail -s "disk usage report" [email protected]

Open a new file and add the lines above to that file, save it and run on your box. You will receive an email that contains "du -sh" output.

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