I have tried a couple of programs to send mail in my GNU/Linux system, and I'll be honest, the majority of them are clunky to use, not until I tried Mutt.
Mutt is a powerful text-based mail client for Unix or GNU/Linux operating systems. It features:
- color support
- message threading
- MIME support (including RFC2047 support for encoded headers)
- various features to support mailing lists, including list-reply
- POP3 support
- IMAP support
- full control of message headers when composing
- highly customizable, including keybindings and macros
- change configuration automatically based on recipients, current folder, etc.
- searches using regular expressions, including an internal pattern matching language
- easily include attachments when composing, even from the command line
- ability to specify alternate addresses for recognition of mail forwarded from other accounts, with ability to set the From: headers on replies/etc. accordingly
- multiple message tagging
- reply to or forward multiple messages at once
- small and efficient
- It's free! (no cost and GPL'ed)
- and many more
Install mutt using:
sudo apt install muttTo get started, simply enter 'mutt', if you don't already have a mailbox in place it would show:
/home/user/Mail does not exist. Create it? ([yes]/no):
Click y if you want it to create a mailbox for your user, and you should see something as follows:
To view your root mailbox, simply enter 'sudo mutt', and if a mailbox is available you'll see something as follows:
Sending Mail With mutt
There are a couple of ways you could send a mail with mutt, you can either use the text-based interface or use it directly in your shell, I'll show you both ways:
To send mail via the interface, use the following steps:
- Type m in your keyboard, and beneath the interface you'll see a "To:" enter the address you which to send email to
- Enter Subject, hit Enter and you'll be taken to your editor, this is where you would compose the message. Compose your message and save
- To send the mail, simply type y
To send it via the command line, you do the following:
echo "" | mutt -s "subject" -i body.txt recipient@example.com-s flag is used to specify the subject line of the email Also, -a flag is used to specify the location of the attachment file.
-i used to specify a file containing the message body.
Sending Mail With Attachment
There are a couple of ways you could send a mail with attachment using mutt, you can either use the text-based interface or use it directly in your shell, I'll show you both ways:
To send mail via the interface, use the following steps:
- Type m in your keyboard, and beneath the interface you'll see a "To:" enter the address you which to send email to
- Enter Subject, hit Enter and you'll be taken to your editor, this is where you would compose the message. Compose your message and save
- Now, you'll see 'Attach file ('?' for list): enter ?, and attach file in that directory. You can also change the directory where the file is located by typing c, once you are done...
- Type y to send
To send a mail with attachment via the command line, you do the following:
mutt -s "subject" recipient@example.com -a attachment.txt-a is used to used to specify attachment file. If you don't place -a end of the option, it won't work.