Send and receive mails on the command-line, for Linux and macOS.

$ mail

Mail is located at /usr/bin/mail on macOS and Linux.

Without setting up an SMTP server like Gmail, you can get the benefit of localhost mails for logging. Such as running crontab commands and mailing successes and failures (or just failures) to localhost’s mailbox (if MAILTO is set to a username).

Help

Usage

There is no --help but you use a bad flag you’ll get this:

Usage: mail [-EiInv] [-s subject] [-c cc-addr] [-b bcc-addr] [-F] to-addr ...
       mail [-EHiInNv] [-F] -f [name]
       mail [-EHiInNv] [-F] [-u user]
       mail -e [-f name]
       mail -H

Man page

View help.

$ man mail

See online at mail manpage for macOS.

Some highlights:

     -E      Do not send messages with an empty body.  This is useful for piping errors from
             cron(8) scripts.

     -e      Test for the presence of mail in the (by default, system) mailbox.  An exit
             status of 0 is returned if it has mail; otherwise, an exit status of 1 is
             returned.

     -H      Write a header summary only.

Interactive mode usage

Output from running ? help command in interactive mode:

? ?
    Mail   Commands
t <message list>                type messages
n                               goto and type next message
e <message list>                edit messages
f <message list>                give head lines of messages
d <message list>                delete messages
s <message list> file           append messages to file
u <message list>                undelete messages
R <message list>                reply to message senders
r <message list>                reply to message senders and all recipients
pre <message list>              make messages go back to /var/mail
m <user list>                   mail to specific users
q                               quit, saving unresolved messages in mbox
x                               quit, do not remove system mailbox
h                               print out active message headers
!                               shell escape
cd [directory]                  chdir to directory or home if none given

A <message list> consists of integers, ranges of same, or user names separated
by spaces.  If omitted, Mail uses the last message typed.

A <user list> consists of user names or aliases separated by spaces.
Aliases are defined in .mailrc in your home directory.

Directories

Relevant directories:

  • /usr/bin/mail
  • /var/mail/michael or your username
  • ~/mbox

Install

Debian/Ubuntu

Install.

sudo apt-get install mailutils

You’ll get prompted for configuration on first install. You can pick localhost if you only need to use it for crontab mails and don’t need a server.

Note that the user’s mailbox cannot be created without root access.

You’ll get this error each time:

$ mail

Cannot open mailbox /var/mail/michael: Permission denied
No mail for michael

So run this:

$ sudo touch /var/mail/michael
$ sudo chown michael /var/mail/michael

Now you can run mail.

macOS

I have mail installed on macOS too. Perhaps standard or installed with coreutils.

TBC

Run

Interactive

Start interactive session.

Press enter to advanced through mail. The prompt will change to ? and a point at > for the current position.

$ mail

Sample output:

$ mail

Mail version 8.1 6/6/93.  Type ? for help.
"/var/mail/mcurrin": 7 messages 7 unread
>U  1 mcurrin@C02WL0Y2HV2T  Sun Aug 30 15:36  15/739   "Unicron task failed!"
 U  2 mcurrin@C02WL0Y2HV2T  Tue Sep  1 10:39  15/739   "Unicron task failed!"
 ...
 N  6 mcurrin@C02WL0Y2HV2T  Tue Sep  1 13:33  14/729   "Unicron task failed!"
?

$ mail

Mail version 8.1 6/6/93.  Type ? for help.
"/var/mail/mcurrin": 6 messages 1 new 6 unread
 U  1 mcurrin@C02WL0Y2HV2T  Tue Sep  1 11:02  15/739   "Unicron task failed!"
 U  2 mcurrin@C02WL0Y2HV2T  Tue Sep  1 12:00  20/765   "Cron <mcurrin@C02WL0Y2HV2T> echo Testing!"
 U  3 mcurrin@C02WL0Y2HV2T  Tue Sep  1 12:05  15/739   "Unicron task failed!"
 U  4 mcurrin@C02WL0Y2HV2T  Tue Sep  1 12:34  15/739   "Unicron task failed!"
 U  5 mcurrin@C02WL0Y2HV2T  Tue Sep  1 13:01  15/739   "Unicron task failed!"
>N  6 mcurrin@C02WL0Y2HV2T  Tue Sep  1 13:33  14/729   "Unicron task failed!"

Enter a number and press to view that mail or just press enter. Press it repeatedly. Press spacebar to jump to end of mail.

After you read a mail it becomes read. And will be moved out the mailbox.

Exit.

? q

Delete

Delete target mail.

? d 2

Delete all.

? d *

Check mail status

See Man page section of this page.

$ mail -e && echo 'You have mail' || echo 'Mailbox is empty'

Warning - if there is a permissions error or mail is not installed, you’ll also get the latter message.

Note that after mail is read, it is archived, but just moved from one storage space to another.

Read mail

You will get notified in a terminal window when you have unread mail. When a new tab starts or you press enter.

There is an interval value for this which I think defaults to 60 for one hour.

Use this command to display status, show mail list summary and exit.

$ mail -H

Mail version 8.1 6/6/93.  Type ? for help.
"/var/mail/mcurrin": 7 messages 7 unread
>U  1 mcurrin@C02WL0Y2HV2T  Sun Aug 30 15:36  15/739   "Unicron task failed!"
 U  2 mcurrin@C02WL0Y2HV2T  Tue Sep  1 10:39  15/739   "Unicron task failed!"

Send mail

Recipients

You can send to yourself or another user by setting as target my-user, which is the same as my-user@localhost.

Alternatively, send to external address (e.g. example@example.com), however, you will have to configure an SMTP server with credentials, such using your Gmail account. Be careful when storing your email password in plain text on your machine.

How to set up SMTP server access to send mail over the network.

Send

Send a mail to yourself using address as one of:

  • Your username e.g. michael or $USER
  • Local address e.g. michael@localhost
  • System address (host is set up on installing mailutils) e.g. michael@dell-lite

Single line:

$ echo "This is the body" | mail -s "My subject" $USER

Multi-line using a Bash heredoc set up using a pair of EOF characters.

$ mail -s "My subject" $USER <<EOF
This is
the body
EOF

If you omit the message, you’ll be prompted for it. You can use CTRL+D to trigger the EOF character. Press enter to skip over Cc.

$ mail michael@dell-lite

Cc:
Subject: Mail to self
My content

Read it:

$ mail

"/var/mail/michael": 2 messages 1 new 1 unread
 U   1 Mail Delivery Syst Mon Nov 16 16:35  73/2216  Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender
>N   2 Michael            Mon Nov 16 16:43  15/429   Mail to self

? 2

Return-Path: <michael@dell-lite>
X-Original-To: michael@dell-lite
Delivered-To: michael@dell-lite
Received: by dell-lite (Postfix, from userid 1000)
        id 3550D25E1744; Mon, 16 Nov 2020 16:43:25 +0200 (SAST)
To: <michael@dell-lite>
Subject: Mail to self
X-Mailer: mail (GNU Mailutils 3.7)
Message-Id: <20201116144325.3550D25E1744@dell-lite>
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2020 16:43:25 +0200 (SAST)
From: Michael <michael@dell-lite>

My content

? q

Saved 1 message in /home/michael/mbox
Held 1 message in /var/mail/michael

Storage

Where mail is stored.

Mail is stored here when it is read.

$ view /var/mail/$USER

Then moved here once it is read.

$ view ~/mbox

From the man page:

     /var/mail/*		 Post office.
     ~/mbox			 User's old mail.
     ~/.mailrc			 File giving initial mail commands.  This can be overridden by setting the MAILRC environment variable.
     /tmp/R*			 Temporary files.
     /usr/share/misc/mail.*help  Help files.

     /usr/share/misc/mail.rc
     /usr/local/etc/mail.rc
     /etc/mail.rc		 System-wide initialization files.  Each file will be sourced, in order, if it exists.

Alternatives

See also mutt command.

discussion

$ brew install mutt

Or Postfix.

post