Using curl to send email

Question

How can I use the curl command line program to send an email from a gmail account?

I have tried the following:

curl -n --ssl-reqd --mail-from "<[email protected]>" --mail-rcpt "<[email protected]>" --url smtps://smtp.gmail.com:465 -T file.txt 

With file.txt being the email's contents, however, when I run this command I get the following error:

curl: (67) Access denied: 530 

Is it possible to send an email from an account that is hosted by a personal server, still using curl? Does that make the authentication process easier?

Answer 1

curl --ssl-reqd \   --url 'smtps://smtp.gmail.com:465' \   --user '[email protected]:password' \   --mail-from '[email protected]' \   --mail-rcpt '[email protected]' \   --upload-file mail.txt 

mail.txt file contents:

From: "User Name" <[email protected]> To: "John Smith" <[email protected]> Subject: This is a test  Hi John, I’m sending this mail with curl thru my gmail account. Bye! 

Additional info:

1. I’m using curl version 7.21.6 with SSL support.

2. You don't need to use the --insecure switch, which prevents curl from performing SSL connection verification. See this online resource for further details.

3. It’s considered a bad security practice to pass account credentials thru command line arguments. Use --netrc-file. See the documentation.

4. You must turn on access for less secure apps or the newer App passwords.

Answer 2

if one wants to send mails as carbon copy or blind carbon copy:

curl --url 'smtps://smtp.gmail.com:465' --ssl-reqd \   --mail-from '[email protected]' --mail-rcpt '[email protected]' \   --mail-rcpt '[email protected]' --mail-rcpt '[email protected]' \   --upload-file mail.txt --user '[email protected]:password' --insecure 

From: "User Name" <[email protected]> To: "John Smith" <[email protected]> Cc: "Mary Smith" <[email protected]> Subject: This is a test  a BCC recipient eli is not specified in the data, just in the RCPT list.