OS X: sending mail to localhost - macos

For testing purposes I want send mail to my localhost user account rather than my webserver. I am unsure how to do this using mail.app. Any help would be appreciated.

#Tautologistics
OSX does have a built-in MTA (SMTP server), to turn it on you can type:
sudo launchctl start org.postfix.master
then you can send mail to localhost like you desire
sample showing an SMTP server running from my machine running 10.6.1
>telnet 127.0.0.1 25
Trying 127.0.0.1...
telnet: connect to address 127.0.0.1: Connection refused
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host
>sudo launchctl start org.postfix.master
>telnet 127.0.0.1 25
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 machinename.example.com ESMTP Postfix

If you don't specifically want to use Mail.app, you can send mail using the mail command. Open Terminal and:
mail -s "Testing" `whoami`#`hostname`
<type something>
Ctrl-D to finish and send
Those are backticks, not single quotes. whoami returns the current user's username and hostname returns the local machine's hostname. It could also be explicit:
mail -s "Testing" john#mymac.local
EDIT: Just read your clarification. Mail.app stores it's data in ~/Mail, mostly in an SQLite database (the 'Envenlope Index' file). The tables of interest would be mailboxes and messages. The text of the email is stored in individual files in the respective mailbox/folder directories. This would probably be the way to go, if you want to access email that has been fetched by Mail.app (in realtime).
Yet another option would be to export your mail from the Mail.app using the mbox format and access it using the technique described by dbr. Depending on whether or not realtime access is desired, you might be able to script something up that automates the export.

I'm looking to login into my (local) mail server, access a mailbox, and do some parsing. So, I assume there's a mail server running locally but not sure how to access it
The local mail isn't stored in a POP3/IMAP server, but rather using a UNIX'y mbox. A file stored in /var/mail/ (the file-name is the users login)
For example..
$ mail dbr
Subject: hi
test
^d # ctrl+d (EOF)
$ cat /var/mail/dbr
From dbr#parabola.local Tue Dec 30 13:43:57 2008
Return-Path: <dbr#parabola.local>
X-Original-To: dbr
Delivered-To: dbr#parabola.local
Received: by parabola.local (Postfix, from userid 501)
id 4FEA1158E36; Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:43:57 +1030 (CST)
To: dbr#parabola.local
Subject: hi
Message-Id: <20081230031357.4FEA1158E36#parabola.local>
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:43:57 +1030 (CST)
From: dbr#parabola.local (dbr)
test
Not sure about Ruby (I had a search around, but couldn't find anything, although there is undoubtably a module for this), but I know Python has a maildir.mbox module, which would use in the following way:
>>> msgs = mailbox.mbox("/var/mail/dbr")
>>> for msg in msgs:
... print "Subject:", msg['subject']
...
Subject: hi

Unless you are running OSX Server, then there's no SMTP/IMAP/POP3 server running locally. You can get one up and running very easily using Post Fix Enabler or, if you don't mind the command line, use MacPorts to install postfix:
sudo port install postfix

Send mail from localhost LocalhostMail is a simple and fast solution for Mac OS X that lets you send email messages from your PHP-application (or any other, located on localhost) by Mail.app included with Mac OS X. If you use PHP, just add to MySQL database new messages, and our application will send them through a Mail application. LocalhostMail uses your mail account in Mail.app to send these messages, so you do not need a separate SMTP-server for your localhost.localhostmail.com

codelogic,
thanks, I did know about sending mail from the terminal. I think my question was not well thought out. I'm looking to login into my (local) mail server, access a mailbox, and do some parsing. So, I assume there's a mail server running locally but not sure how to access it.
I'm using ruby:
pop = Net::POP3.new 'macbook.local'
pop.start 'me', 'mypass'
but get a Timeout::Error: execution expired

Related

SMTP EOFError when Checking for Email Existence

I've written a simple script to test for the existence of an email address by initiating an SMTP communication without ever sending a message. For most domains, this works. But for some, like the one show below, I get an EOF error. I don't have this issue when using telnet to communicate with the SMTP server directly.
require 'net/smtp'
mx_server = 'mx1.optonline.net' # Example of a problematic mail host
Net::SMTP.start mx_server, 25 do |smtp|
smtp.helo 'mydomain.com'
smtp.mailfrom 'user#mydomain.com' # Triggers an EOF error
smtp.rcptto 'target#optonline.net' # Typically triggers an error if the address doesn't exist
end

Mail sending with shell Scipt is not working

I need to send a mail regarding deployment of an application using shell script.
For this I have just created a shell script and tested with
#!/bin/bash
TO_ADDRESS="to.person#domain.com"
FROM_ADDRESS="from.me#domain.com"
SUBJECT="Test mail"
BODY="hai friend, this mail is automated from shell script for Release automation."
echo ${BODY}| mail -s ${SUBJECT} ${TO_ADDRESS} -- -r ${FROM_ADDRESS}
But while running this script, it is printing like:
You have new mail in /var/spool/mail/jaykay
And a file named jaykay is created in /var/spool/mail/
Why this is happening?
How can I send a mail using shell script?
And the output file looks like
From jaykay Wed Aug 20 04:08:53 2014
Return-Path: <jaykay>
Received: (from jaykay#localhost)
by e7021.com (8.14.4/8.14.4/Submit) id s7K98rdu004168;
Wed, 20 Aug 2014 04:08:53 -0500
From: Jini K Johny <jaykay>
Message-Id: <201408200908.s7K98rdu004168#e7021.com>
Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 04:08:53 -0500
To: to.person#domain.com, -r, --, from.me#domain.com
Subject: Test mail
User-Agent: Heirloom mailx 12.4 7/29/08
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
hai friend, this mail is automated from shell script for Release automation.
Your fundamental problem is that you must use proper quoting. This is basically a duplicate of a question which gets asked here every day.
Without quotes, the second token in $SUBJECT is interpreted as the address to send to.
An email is submitted for delivery to mail (the second word in "Test mail").
The address is undeliverable, so you get a bounce message.
The bounce message is delivered to your inbox.
Your shell notifies you that your inbox has a new message.
Additionally, it seems that your version of mail does not understand the -- option, so it gets taken as just one more address to send to. (You would get a bounce message from that, I suppose.) Because the -r option is also interpreted as just another address to send to, you get one copy (like a Bcc:) of the outgoing message in the mailbox you tried to specify in the $FROM_ADDRESS.
The fix, of course, is easy:
#!/bin/bash
TO_ADDRESS="to.person#domain.com"
FROM_ADDRESS="from.me#domain.com"
SUBJECT="Test mail"
BODY="hai friend, this mail is automated from shell script for Release automation."
echo "${BODY}" | mail -s "${SUBJECT}" "${TO_ADDRESS}" # -- -r "${FROM_ADDRESS}"
(The curlies aren't really necessary here, but I kept them since you had them in your code.)
E.g. this recent answer has guidance for when and how exactly you need to quote.
The mail program is really a rather thin wrapper; you could do something like this instead;
/usr/lib/sendmail -oi -t -f "$FROM_ADDRESS" <<____HERE
From: My Name <$FROM_ADDRESS>
To: Your Name <$TO_ADDRESS>
Subject: $SUBJECT
$BODY
____HERE
... where the path to /usr/lib/sendmail is likely to be something else on many systems.
(For bonus k00lness points, add X-Mailer: Look, I can put anything I like here!)
I'm guessing here that you meant sendmail -f "$FROM_ADDRESS" which sets the envelope sender address (not -r which I cannot find documented anywhere).

Really strange Net::SMTP error for certain email

Why this email adress desp#mariacamorales.com is generating an exception.
`check_response': 550 5.1.1 <desp#mariacamorales.com>... User unknown (Net::SMTPFatalError)
The original script is
# encoding: utf-8
require 'mail'
require 'active_support/time'
today = Date.today
year, month, day = today.to_s.split("-")
subject = "Backup base de datos #{ today }"
to = ["desp#mariacamorales.com"]
mail = Mail.new(subject: subject, body: subject, from: "backup#mydomain.com", to: to)
mail.add_file "/home/project/backups/data/#{ year }/#{ month }/#{ today }-sada.bz2"
mail.deliver!
The script works fine with other emails adresses.
The 550 error is a response from the SMTP server you are connecting to. The server must have the mariacamorales.com domain configured as local and the user desp does not exist there.
mail defaults to sending via localhost so you will probably have a qmail, postfix, sendmail or exim process dealing with SMTP. These would normally default to the hosting email the suffix of the hostname of the machine (host.domain.com). Each can have domains configured independently of the hostname of the machine.
If you are not sure where to start, sudo grep -ir mariacamorales.com /etc might point to what you need.

Sending an email from R using the sendmailR package

I am trying to send an email from R, using the sendmailR package. The code below works fine when I run it on my PC, and I recieve the email. However, when I run it with my macbook pro, it fails with the following error:
library(sendmailR)
from <- sprintf("<sendmailR#%s>", Sys.info()[4])
to <- "<myemail#gmail.com>"
subject <- "TEST"
sendmail(from, to, subject, body,
control=list(smtpServer="ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM"))
Error in socketConnection(host = server, port = port, blocking = TRUE) :
cannot open the connection
In addition: Warning message:
In socketConnection(host = server, port = port, blocking = TRUE) :
ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM:25 cannot be opened
Any ideas as to why this would work on a PC, but not a mac? I turned the firewall off on both machines.
Are you able to send email via the command-line?
So, first of all, fire up a Terminal and then
$ echo “Test 123” | mail -s “Test” user#domain.com
Look into /var/log/mail.log, or better use
$ tail -f /var/log/mail.log
in a different window while you send your email. If you see something like
... setting up TLS connection to smtp.gmail.com[xxx.xx.xxx.xxx]:587
... Trusted TLS connection established to smtp.gmail.com[xxx.xx.xxx.xxx]:587:\
TLSv1 with cipher RC4-MD5 (128/128 bits)
then you succeeded. Otherwise, it means you have to configure you mailing system. I use postfix with Gmail for two years now, and I never had have problem with it. Basically, you need to grab the Equifax certificates, Equifax_Secure_CA.pem from here: http://www.geotrust.com/resources/root-certificates/. (They were using Thawtee certificates before but they changed last year.) Then, assuming you used Gmail,
Create relay_password in /etc/postfix and put a single line like this (with your correct login and password):
smtp.gmail.com login#gmail.com:password
then in a Terminal,
$ sudo postmap /etc/postfix/relay_password
to update Postfix lookup table.
Add the certificates in /etc/postfix/certs, or any folder you like, then
$ sudo c_rehash /etc/postfix/certs/
(i.e., rehash the certificates with Openssl).
Edit /etc/postfix/main.cf so that it includes the following lines (adjust the paths if needed):
relayhost = smtp.gmail.com:587
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/relay_password
smtp_sasl_security_options = noanonymous
smtp_tls_security_level = may
smtp_tls_CApath = /etc/postfix/certs
smtp_tls_session_cache_database = btree:/etc/postfix/smtp_scache
smtp_tls_session_cache_timeout = 3600s
smtp_tls_loglevel = 1
tls_random_source = dev:/dev/urandom
Finally, just reload the Postfix process, with e.g.
$ sudo postfix reload
(a combination of start/stop works too).
You can choose a different port for the SMTP, e.g. 465.
It’s still possible to use SASL without TLS (the above steps are basically the same), but in both case the main problem is that your login informations are available in a plan text file... Also, should you want to use your MobileMe account, just replace the Gmail SMTP server with smtp.me.com.

Sending mail from a Bash shell script

I am writing a Bash shell script for Mac that sends an email notification by opening an automator application that sends email out with the default mail account in Mail.app. The automator application also attaches a text file that the script has written to. The problems with this solution are
It is visible in the GUI when sending
It steals focus if Mail is not the current application
It is dependent on Mail.app's account setup being valid in the future
I figure to get around those shortcomings I should send the mail directly from the script by entering SMTP settings, address to send to, etc. directly in the script. The catch is I would like to deploy this script on multiple computers (10.5 and 10.6) without enabling Postfix on the computer. Is it possible to do this in the script so it will run on a base Mac OS X install of 10.5. and 10.6?
Update: I've found the -bs option for Sendmail which seems to be what I need, but I'm at a loss of how to specify settings.
Also, to clarify, the reason I'd like to specify SMTP settings is that mails from localhost on port 25 sent out via Postfix would be blocked by most corporate firewalls, but if I specify the server and an alternate port I won't run into that problem.
Since Mac OS X includes Python, consider using a Python script instead of a Bash script. I haven't tested the sending portion, but it follows the standard example.
Python script
# Settings
SMTP_SERVER = 'mail.myisp.com'
SMTP_PORT = 25
SMTP_USERNAME = 'myusername'
SMTP_PASSWORD = '$uper$ecret'
SMTP_FROM = 'sender#example.com'
SMTP_TO = 'recipient#example.com'
TEXT_FILENAME = '/script/output/my_attachment.txt'
MESSAGE = """This is the message
to be sent to the client.
"""
# Now construct the message
import smtplib, email
from email import encoders
import os
msg = email.MIMEMultipart.MIMEMultipart()
body = email.MIMEText.MIMEText(MESSAGE)
attachment = email.MIMEBase.MIMEBase('text', 'plain')
attachment.set_payload(open(TEXT_FILENAME).read())
attachment.add_header('Content-Disposition', 'attachment', filename=os.path.basename(TEXT_FILENAME))
encoders.encode_base64(attachment)
msg.attach(body)
msg.attach(attachment)
msg.add_header('From', SMTP_FROM)
msg.add_header('To', SMTP_TO)
# Now send the message
mailer = smtplib.SMTP(SMTP_SERVER, SMTP_PORT)
# EDIT: mailer is already connected
# mailer.connect()
mailer.login(SMTP_USERNAME, SMTP_PASSWORD)
mailer.sendmail(SMTP_FROM, [SMTP_TO], msg.as_string())
mailer.close()
I hope this helps.
Actually, "mail" works just as well.
mail -s "subject line" name#address.ext < filename
works perfectly fine, as long as you have SMTP set up on your machine. I think that most Macs do, by default.
If you don't have SMTP, then the only thing you're going to be able to do is go through Mail.app. An ALTERNATIVE way to go through mail.app is via AppleScript. When you tell Mail.app to send mail via AppleScript you can tell it to not pop up any windows... (this does still require Mail.app to be configured).
Introduction to Scripting Mail has a good description of how to work with mail in AppleScript.
There is a program called Sendmail.
You probably don't want to use the -bs command unless you are sending it as raw SMTP like Martin's example. -bs is for running an SMTP server as a deamon. Sendmail will send directly to the receiving mail server (on port 25) unless you override it in the configuration file. You can specify the configuration file by the -C paramter.
In the configuration, you can specify a relay server (any mail server or sendmail running -bs on another machine)
Using a properly configured relay server is good idea because when IT manages mail servers they implement SPF and domain keys. That keeps your mail out of the junk bin.
If port 25 is blocked you are left with two options.
Use the corporate SMTP server.
Run sendmail -bd on a machine outside of
the corporate firewall that listens
on a port other than 25.
I believe you can add configuration parameters on the command line. What you want is the SMART_HOST option. So call Sendmail like sendmail -OSMART_HOST=nameofhost.com.
Probably the only way you could do this, while keeping the program self-sufficient, is if you have direct access to an SMTP server from the clients.
If you do have direct access to an SMTP server you can use the SMTP example from wikipedia and turn it into something like this:
#!/bin/bash
telnet smtp.example.org 25 <<_EOF
HELO relay.example.org
MAIL FROM:<joe#example.org>
RCPT TO:<jane#example.org>
DATA
From: Joe <joe#example.org>
To: Jane <jane#example.org>
Subject: Hello
Hello, world!
.
QUIT
_EOF
To handle errors I would redirect the output from telnet to a file and then grep that for a "success message" later. I am not sure what format the message should be, but I see something like "250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as D86A226C574" in the output from my SMTP server. This would make me grep for "^250.*queued as".
Send mail from Bash with one line:
echo "your mail body" | mail -s "your subject" yourmail#yourdomain.com -a "From: sender#senderdomain.com"
sendEmail is a script that you can use to send email from the command line using more complicated settings, including connecting to a remote smtp server:
http://caspian.dotconf.net/menu/Software/SendEmail/
On OSX it is easily installable via macports:
http://sendemail.darwinports.com/
Below is the help page for the command, take note of the -s, -xu, -xp flags:
Synopsis: sendEmail -f ADDRESS [options]
Required:
-f ADDRESS from (sender) email address
* At least one recipient required via -t, -cc, or -bcc
* Message body required via -m, STDIN, or -o message-file=FILE
Common:
-t ADDRESS [ADDR ...] to email address(es)
-u SUBJECT message subject
-m MESSAGE message body
-s SERVER[:PORT] smtp mail relay, default is localhost:25
Optional:
-a FILE [FILE ...] file attachment(s)
-cc ADDRESS [ADDR ...] cc email address(es)
-bcc ADDRESS [ADDR ...] bcc email address(es)
Paranormal:
-xu USERNAME authentication user (for SMTP authentication)
-xp PASSWORD authentication password (for SMTP authentication)
-l LOGFILE log to the specified file
-v verbosity, use multiple times for greater effect
-q be quiet (no stdout output)
-o NAME=VALUE see extended help topic "misc" for details
Help:
--help TOPIC The following extended help topics are available:
addressing explain addressing and related options
message explain message body input and related options
misc explain -xu, -xp, and others
networking explain -s, etc
output explain logging and other output options
I whipped this up for the challenge. If you remove the call to 'dig' to obtain the mail relay, it is a 100% native Bash script.
#!/bin/bash
MAIL_FROM="sfinktah#bash.spamtrak.org"
RCPT_TO="sfinktah#bash.spamtrak.org"
MESSAGE=message.txt
SMTP_PORT=25
SMTP_DOMAIN=${RCPT_TO##*#}
index=1
while read PRIORITY RELAY
do
RELAY[$index]=$RELAY
((index++))
done < <( dig +short MX $SMTP_DOMAIN )
RELAY_COUNT=${#RELAY[#]}
SMTP_COMMANDS=( "HELO $HOSTNAME" "MAIL FROM: <$MAIL_FROM>" "RCPT TO: <$RCPT_TO>" "DATA" "." "QUIT" )
SMTP_REPLY=([25]=OK [50]=FAIL [51]=FAIL [52]=FAIL [53]=FAIL [54]=FAIL [55]=FAIL [45]=WAIT [35]=DATA [22]=SENT)
for (( i = 1 ; i < RELAY_COUNT ; i++ ))
do
SMTP_HOST="${RELAY[$i]}"
echo "Trying relay [$i]: $SMTP_HOST..."
exec 5<>/dev/tcp/$SMTP_HOST/$SMTP_PORT
read HELO <&5
echo GOT: $HELO
for COMMAND_ORDER in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
do
OUT=${SMTP_COMMANDS[COMMAND_ORDER]}
echo SENDING: $OUT
echo -e "$OUT\r" >&5
read -r REPLY <&5
echo REPLY: $REPLY
# CODE=($REPLY)
CODE=${REPLY:0:2}
ACTION=${SMTP_REPLY[CODE]}
case $ACTION in
WAIT ) echo Temporarily Fail
break
;;
FAIL ) echo Failed
break
;;
OK ) ;;
SENT ) exit 0
;;
DATA ) echo Sending Message: $MESSAGE
cat $MESSAGE >&5
echo -e "\r" >&5
;;
* ) echo Unknown SMTP code $CODE
exit 2
esac
done
done
Here is a simple Ruby script to do this. Ruby ships on the Mac OS X versions you mentioned.
Replace all the bits marked 'replace'. If it fails, it returns a non-zero exit code and a Ruby back trace.
require 'net/smtp'
SMTPHOST = 'replace.yoursmtpserver.example.com'
FROM = '"Your Email" <youremail#replace.example.com>'
def send(to, subject, message)
body = <<EOF
From: #{FROM}
To: #{to}
Subject: #{subject}
#{message}
EOF
Net::SMTP.start(SMTPHOST) do |smtp|
smtp.send_message body, FROM, to
end
end
send('someemail#replace.example.com', 'testing', 'This is a message!')
You can embed this in a Bash script like so:
ruby << EOF
... script here ...
EOF
For some other ways to send Ruby emails, see Stack Overflow question How do I send mail from a Ruby program?.
You can use other languages that ship with Mac OS X as well:
How do I send email with Perl?
Sending HTML email using Python
1) Why not configure postfix to handle outbound mail only and relay it via a mail gateway? Its biggest advantage is that it is already installed on OS X clients.
2) Install and configure one of the lightweight MTAs that handle only outbound mail, like nullmailer or ssmtp (available via MacPorts).
In both cases use mailx(1) (or mutt if you want to get fancy) to send the mails from a shell script.
There are several questions on Server Fault that go into the details.
sendmail and even postfix may be too big to install if all you want to do is to send a few emails from your scripts.
If you have a Gmail account for example, you can use Google's servers to send email using SMTP. If you don't want to use gGoogle's server, as long as you have access to some SMTP server, it should work.
A very lightweight program that makes it easy to do so is msmtp. They have examples of configuration files in their documentation.
The easiest way to do it would be to set up a system-wide default:
account default
host smtp.gmail.com
from john.doe#gmail.com
user john.doe#gmail.com
password XXX
port 587
msmtp should be very easy to install. In fact, there is a port for it, so it could be as easy as port install msmtp.
After installing and configuring msmtp, you can send email to john.doe#gmail.com using:
mail -s <subject> john.doe#gmail.com <<EOF
<mail text, as many lines as you want. Shell variables will be expanded>.
EOF
You can put the above in a script. See man mail for details.
Here's a modified shells script snip I've used on various UNIX systems...
(echo "${MESSAGE}" | ${uuencode} ${ATTACHMENT}$basename ${ATTACHMENT}) | ${mailx} -s "${SUBJECT}" "${TO_LIST}"
uuencode and mailx are set to the executables. The other variables are from user input parsed using getopts.
This does work but I have to admit more often than not I use a simple Java program to send console emails.
Try mtcmail. Its a fairly complete email sender, completely standalone.

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