Linux® Command Line and Shell Scripting Bible

Chapter 26. Using E-Mail

IN THIS CHAPTER

• E-mail and Linux

• Setting up an e-mail server

• Sending simple messages

• Using attachments with Mutt

With the popularity of e-mail, these days just about everyone has an e-mail address. Because of that, people often expect to receive data via e-mail instead of seeing files or printouts. That's no different in the shell script world. If you generate any type of report from your shell script, most likely at some point you'll be asked to e-mail the results to someone. This chapter shows you just how to set up your Linux system to support e-mailing directly from your shell scripts. It also shows you how to make sure that your Linux system can send outbound mail messages, and how to make sure you have a mail client that can do that from the command line. But first, the chapter presents a brief overview of the way Linux handles e-mails in general.

The Basics of Linux E-Mail

Sometimes the hardest part of using e-mail in your shell scripts is understanding just how the e-mail system works in Linux. Knowing what software packages perform what tasks is crucial in getting e-mails from your shell script to your inbox. This section walks you through the basics of how Linux systems use e-mail, and what you need to have in place before you can use it.

E-Mail in Linux

The Linux system derives its e-mail system from the Unix environment. One of the main goals of the Unix operating system was to modularize software. Instead of having one monolithic program that handles ...