In this post I’m going to explain how to set up sSMTP in order to send emails through your Gmail right from the Terminal. Once you have sSMTP set up you can also use cron jobs to get you computer/server to automatically email you when there is a problem. Please note that this only works on Linux (and Mac OS X).
First we install sSMTP:
sudo apt-get install ssmtp
Configure sSMTP by editing ssmtp.conf:
vi /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf
You can delete everything in that file and just replace it with this:
root=your_username@gmail.com
UseSTARTTLS=YES
UseTLS=YES
mailhub=smtp.gmail.com:465
rewriteDomain=gmail.com
FromLineOverride=YES
AuthUser=username
AuthPass=********
(If the gmail is a Google Apps account then use the full email address for the AuthUser.)
Now we need to edit revaliases to add each user account we want to send mail from:
vi /etc/ssmtp/revaliases
Add:
root:username@gmail.com:smtp.gmail.com:587
user:username@gmail.com:smtp.gmail.com:587
And we’re done!
To send emails from the Terminal either type:
echo “email content” | mail -s “email subject” recipient_email@domain.com
or:
ssmtp recipient_email@domain.com
Then enter the following:
To:Â recipient_email@domain.com
From: your_email@gmail.com
Subject: this is your email subject
And here you write the content of the email
And to send the email, press: CTRL+D
(N.B. The empty line between the Subject and the content of the email must not be omitted)
You can also send emails using a text file:
ssmtp recipient_email@domain.com < message.txt
(The contents of message.txt must be in the same format as above)
Depending on your machine’s set up, it may be necessary to remove sendmail and install mailutils:
sudo service sendmail stop
sudo apt-get remove sendmail
sudo apt-get install mailutils
If you have any questions please leave a comment!
