cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/10863052
Noob question incoming, thanks in advance for any help with this!
I have a specific use case in which I want to send an automated email or text to myself once a day (the message is different each time–otherwise I would just set an alarm, lol!). I’m running Pop_OS on an old desktop computer. Where I’m stuck is getting an email to successfully send from the command line. I’m looking for easy-to-follow instructions that would help me do that, and none of the articles or videos I’ve come across thus far have helped.
I’m aware of Twilio and other services that send SMS messages, but I’m looking for something free. Especially since I only need to text one person (myself), and infrequently at that.
Below is my attempt to send an email with the telnet command. Nothing ever came through…
XXXXXXXX@pop-os:~$ telnet localhost smtp Trying ::1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. 220 pop-os ESMTP Exim 4.95 Ubuntu Sun, 07 Jan 2024 15:12:28 -0500 HELO gmail.com 250 pop-os Hello localhost [::1] mail from: XXXXXXXX@gmail.com 250 OK rcpt to: XXXXXXXX@gmail.com 250 Accepted data 354 Enter message, ending with "." on a line by itself Subject: Test Body: Is this working? . 250 OK id=1rMZW4-0002dj-Uy quit
You might be interested in ntfy as an alternative. You can just make a simple HTTP request and then get a notification on your phone.
Telnet is disabled in many contexts for security reasons.
But yes, you can send email with bash: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57410259/how-to-send-an-email-using-sendmail-command-in-linux
And with Python: https://docs.python.org/3/library/email.examples.html