MSMTP mail client

📅 Created on: October 6, 2022

The MSMTP mail client is a small program capable of sending messages. I use it for sending messages from my server.

My working configuration is below. (password have been removed)

Config file /etc/msmtprc

# default values
defaults
auth            on
tls             on

# for debian based systems
tls_trust_file  /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

# for rhel based systems
#tls_trust_file  /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt

#tls_starttls   off
logfile         /var/log/msmtp.log

# Syslog logging with facility LOG_MAIL instead of the default LOG_USER.
syslog LOG_MAIL

aliases         /etc/aliases

# one.com
account one
host send.one.com
port 465
from no-reply@example.com
user no-reply@example.com
password <PLAIN_TEXT_PASSWORD>
auto_from off
domain example.com
tls_starttls off

# Set default account
account default : one

example mail file

Create a text file named “email.txt” and put some content in it.

To: me@example.com
From: no-reply@example.com
Subject: Email test from CLI
Hi,

This is a test message from my server.

Command run

Send a test email with this command. Please note that when send as normal user the log file is not accessible.

john@server:/tmp$ cat email.txt |msmtp -a one me@example.com
msmtp: cannot log to /var/log/msmtp.log: cannot open: Permission denied
msmtp: log info was: host=send.one.com tls=on auth=on user=no-reply@example.com from=no-reply@example.com recipients=me@example.com mailsize=154 smtpstatus=250 smtpmsg='250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as 616eb246-fabb-11e8-b718-d0431ea8a290' exitcode=EX_OK

Using Mutt

Sending email using msmtp is all well and good but if you want to send a message with an attachment it just won’t do it.

That’s where Mutt comes into the picture.

Typically installing mutt can be done with either “yum install mutt” or “apt install mutt”.

You don’t need to configure anything, but the from field of your message will then be username@server. if you create a config file you can set the from field to anything you like. Create the file /root/.muttrc if it does not exist.

set use_from=yes
set realname=”no-reply”
set from=no-reply@example.com
set envelope_from=yes

Note

if realname contains a space you should set the value in both double quotes and single quotes. e.g

set realname="'John Doe'"

Command run

A test email can be send with the following command. (test.txt is the file to attach and body.text is the message body)

john@server:~$ mutt -s "Testing Mutt" -a test.txt -- recipient@example.com < ./body.txt

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