The Geek Diary

Mutt, Mail and Telnet – Send mails from linux command line or terminal

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Mutt

Mutt is a small but powerful text-based e-mail client for Unix-like operating systems. With the mutt command, one can send and read emails. Mutt supports both maildir & mbox mail formats. Mutt is compatible with POP & IMAP protocols.

Syntax

# mutt -s "Subject of the Mail" recipient-address@domain.com < /dev/null

Example 1: Send a test mail where the mail body is blank:

# mutt -s "Test Mail" thegeekdiary@gmail.com < /dev/null

Above Command will send a mail with subject “ Test Mail” to thegeekdiary@gmail.com

Example 2: Send Mail with attachments.
Syntax :

# mutt -s "Subject of the Mail" -a  /tmp/[file-to-be-attached] recipient-address@domain.com < /tmp/[mail body contents file]

Example:

# mutt  -s "test mail plz ignore" -a /tmp/backup.tgz  thegeekdiary@gmail.com
NOTE: When we send mail from the console, the mail sender name will be root(in case if we are logged in with root user) if we want to change the sender name and email, then Create a file in user’s home directory.
# cat .muttrc
set from = "noreply@tgdmail.com"
set realname = "MAIL ADMIN"

Mail

Mail is an e-mail client, which is used to send and receive mails.

Syntax

# mail  -s [subject] -c [cc-addr] -b [bcc-addr] to-addr... < /mailbody.txt

Example:

# mail -s "test mail plz ignore" thegeekdiary@gmail.com

Above Command will send a mail with subject “test mail plz ignore” and body of mail will be the contents of /tmp/body.txt file.

Telnet

The telnet command is used to communicate with another host using the TELNET protocol. Telnet can be used to send emails, as shown below:

mutt and mail commands in Linux

Where:

  • mail from: specify the e-mail id from where the mail will be send.
  • rcpt to: specify the recipient email-id.
  • data: it is the command after which we can specify the subject of the mail.
  • Subject: subject of the mail.
  • quit: is the command to exit.

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