Configure gmail on your linux machine using postfix/sendmail to enable sending emails from your gmail account through the command line

Ans: Here is the step by step process of sending email from linux:

To send emails from your Linux server, you need some basic tools:

• A command-line email client (s-nail)

• An SMTP authentication library (cyrus-sasl-plain)

• And optionally, postfix (an MTA often required as a dependency for mail-related commands)

Next, you need to set up a configuration file that tells the mail (or s-nail) command how to send mail via Gmail. You’ll do this by editing a hidden config file in your home directory called .mailrc.

Inside the file, you'll specify:

• Gmail’s SMTP server and port

• Authentication credentials

• Security options (like STARTTLS)

• Your "from" email address

Now that your config is ready, you can send an email using a single command. You provide:

• The body text

• The subject

• The recipient email

Here is the detailed commands you can run to achieve above things:

-> sudo yum install postfix s-nail cyrus-sasl-plain

-> vi ~/.mailrc

# Set MTA to use Gmail's SMTP server with STARTTLS
set mta=smtp://smtp.gmail.com:587

# Authentication settings
set smtp-auth=login
set smtp-auth-user=[email protected]
set smtp-auth-password=otvvzptnxcjrlvfn

# Email settings
set from="[email protected]"

# Enable TLS
set ssl-verify=ignore
set smtp-use-starttls


(Replace with your actual email and Gmail App Password)
-> :wq

-> echo "Leave message body, example: Need support on creating AWS account" | mail -s "subject of email" [email protected]

Here is the screenshot of the email: