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.
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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
Many cell providers have a mail to SMS gateway. Just sent email to the correct address and you’ll get SMS. As far as sending mail either with bash or with Python. That is quite possible and not hard.
Sorry I do not have the code at hand. Memory is Python standard library has SMTP capability and Bash you can just use the mail command. May have to configure mail on your Linux box too or just use a remote server.