EDIT: Thanks y’all! I got this working by installing mutt and configuring it with my Gmail info. Please note the warning from u/jherazob below–if this were something mission critical I would not want to rely on this solution.

================

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: [email protected]
250 OK
rcpt to: [email protected]
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
  • onoEnglish
    7·
    11 months ago

    Your current approach of talking raw SMTP is likely to be more hassle than is worthwhile, and since the days of permissive SMTP servers are long gone, might not work at all.

    Since you appear to be using an Debian-based Linux distro, I suggest this approach:

    • If you don’t specifically need exim, consider replacing it with the lightweight dma package (DragonFly Mail Agent): apt install dma
    • Configure dma (or exim) to use your ISP’s SMTP server as a smart host. (Or the Gmail SMTP server if your ISP doesn’t provide one.)
    • Use the /usr/sbin/sendmail command (which comes with dma or exim) to send messages from your scripting language of choice.

    If you prefer to receive messages as SMS, note that most major mobile carriers maintain an email-to-sms gateway for this purpose. Some web searches will probably lead you to the one for your carrier. They usually accept email at an address like [email protected]