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I need to send mail from CLI (Cron) to a mail server that is on the same LAN. After some googling Mutt seemed like a good option as it appeared simply installing Mutt and adding SMTP options to .muttrc would do the trick.

So I installed Mutt but the first thing that confused is that during setup it started Postfix. After some more reading I understand Mutt is supposed to only view email, but looking at config examples I'm not sure if I can point Mutt directly at my mail server or need to use and configure Postfix as well.

Another issue is that muttrc doesn't exist. I can only find Muttrc in /etc/ but that file doesn't look similar to config files I found online.

My questions are:

  • Do I need to use Postfix or can I simply configure Mutt with the IP of my SMTP server?

  • Why is muttrc not located in the home folder? Can I create it myself?

I'm using Ubuntu 16.04

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2 Answers 2

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  1. You don't need postfix on your machine. You can configure mutt to use any SMTP server. This should be minimal mutt config. 
set from      = [email protected]
set smtp_url  = smtp[s]://[user[:pass]@]host[:port]
set smtp_user = user     # if not specified in the smtp_url
set smtp_pass = password # if not specified in the smtp_url
  1. You can create muttrc in your home directory. Remember the cron you want to send e-mails must be executed by the same user.
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  • Thanks, that works like a charm. I did have to put set in front of each command and add set from "mymailaddress" for the mail server to accept messages.
    – sjaak
    Mar 29, 2019 at 2:03
  • My mistake. I'll update the answer to reflect it.
    – Jakub Jindra
    Mar 29, 2019 at 5:35
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You can use "telnet" to send email. I did that before but just don't have a sample script on hand.

There is a good example here. https://www.novell.com/communities/coolsolutions/script-testing-smtp-telnet/

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  • I'll also need to attach some files. I'm not sure Telnet supports that. It would also be good practice to try and get Mutt to work.
    – sjaak
    Mar 28, 2019 at 7:20
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    maybe this will work? thegeekdiary.com/…
    – JinChin
    Mar 28, 2019 at 7:24

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