email_via_crontab's Introduction

Setting ssmtp for sending email via crontab

ssmtp

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install ssmtp

Making a backup copy and editing

sudo cp /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf-0 sudo nano /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf

Edit it to the following state

[email protected]
[email protected]
AuthPass=pass
FromLineOverride=YES
mailhub=smtp.gmail.com:587
UseSTARTTLS=YES

Check

Next, if google mail will be used, you must go to https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps and allow the use of insecure applications:

mutt

Install the mail client on your ubuntu server: sudo apt-get install mutt

Send e-mail

After the installation is finished, try to send the mail:

mutt -s "test mail" [email protected] < /dev/null

And check the mail you sent the letter to? It should already be there.

Open the file /etc/ssmtp/revaliases

and add the line:

[yourPCUsername]:[[email protected]]:smtp.mail.yahoo.com:587

That's it, you're good to go! To test, the easiest way (IMO) is to create a file with the following in it:

and add the line:

To: [email protected]
From: "whateverYaWant" <[email protected]>
Subject: Some Notifying Email
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain

Body of your email goes here! Hello world!

Finally, run

cat fileWithEmailInIt.txt | sendmail -i -t

then wait a few seconds (10-30) and check your email!

crontab -e

[email protected]
00 16 * * 1,2,3,4,5 /home/scripts/loop_off_servers.sh
00 6 * * 1,2,3,4,5 /home/scripts/loop_on_servers.sh

If have some problem...

Sending mail via commandline worked fine, but no mail was sent through crontab. Fixed it by changing FromLineOverride to NO in /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf. During debugging, it was also helpful to add Debug=YES to ssmtp.conf - it resulted in more detailed information being logged to /var/log/mail.log.

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