Send authenticated gmail from command line
Overview
You can send basic email from the command line. That's been done a million times before, including by me! Did you know that you can send email from the command line, from your gmail account that you authenticated to? That's a big deal for some people. This document describes how to do that.
Sending gmail from command line
Install packages msmtp and mutt. yum install msmtp mutt Write the conf file
and fill in the pertinent information. # write conf file tf=/etc/msmtprc
touch "${tf}"; chmod 0600 "${tf}"; chown root:root "${tf}"; cat <<EOF >"${tf}"
account default tls on tls_certcheck off auth on host smtp.gmail.com port 587
user bgstack15@gmail.com from bgstack15@gmail.com password plaintextpassword #
account second tls on tls_certcheck off auth on host smtp.gmail.com port 587
user secondaccount@gmail.com from secondaccount@gmail.com password
plaintextpassword EOF Now you can send an email with this command. echo -e
"From: Pretty Name\r\nSubject: Example subject\r\nContent goes here." | msmtp
--debug --from=default -t destination@example.com
Sending attachments
Configure mutt if you want to send attachments from the command line. cat
<<EOF >> /etc/Muttrc.local set sendmail="/usr/bin/msmtp" set use_from=yes set
realname="Pretty Name" set from=bgstack15@gmail.com set envelope_from=yes EOF
Send an email in html format and with an attachment. subject="This is the
subject Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html" mutt -a ~/attachment.txt -s
"${subject}" -- destination@example.com << EOF <html><body><pre> This will be
fixed width font. I find it useful for sending code fragments or log files.
</pre></body></html> EOF
Authenticating to gmail from command line
The Arch Linux wiki provides an important reminder:
Tip: If using Gmail you'll need to either
- Allow "Less Secure Apps" in Settings > Security. Make sure to sign out of your other Gmail accounts first because the security settings part of Google Accounts can not manage concurrent sessions of more than one account.
- Enable two factor authentication and create an app password.
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