How to send email with my CentOS server?

Question

I just built a modest home server using CentOS 5.5. I want the server to be able to send emails to my Gmail account or other email accounts for various things like cron jobs. Also it would be nice to be able to send email via PHP applications that I run/develop on the server as well. Or even be able for the server to send emails via the mail command.

I know there are a million Google search results about setting up your Linux server as an email server or configuring sendmail etc. But they don't seem to be what I'm looking for... at least I don't think so. I'm not trying to setup some corporate server that other clients can connect to send out emails or anything complicated like that.

I just want my server to send me emails about stuff. Seems like it should be simple... Can anyone point me in the right direction?

UPDATE

Per a users request below, I tried this command:

/bin/mail -s "My Subject" "myaddress@gmail.com" < /home/john/test

No errors or anything. But the email never showed up in my inbox. Here is my maillog

Oct 27 00:52:19 localhost sendmail[13702]: o9R6qJhU013702: from=root, size=10906, class=0, nrcpts=1, msgid=<201010270652.o9R6qJhU013702@localhost.localdomain>, relay=root@localhost
Oct 27 00:52:19 localhost sendmail[13703]: o9R6qJOd013703: from=<root@localhost.localdomain>, size=11209, class=0, nrcpts=1, msgid=<201010270652.o9R6qJhU013702@localhost.localdomain>, proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA, relay=localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]
Oct 27 00:52:19 localhost sendmail[13702]: o9R6qJhU013702: to=myaddress@gmail.com, ctladdr=root (0/0), delay=00:00:00, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=relay, pri=40906, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent (o9R6qJOd013703 Message accepted for delivery)

Any clues?

Answer 1

/bin/mail -s "Enter Subject Line here" -a /home/.../whateverFileYouWantAttached "you@YourEmailAddress" < /home/me/textBody.letter

try above command :)

Answer 2

Simple answer:

Set up sendmail. It will depend on your distribution but this isn't difficult at all. If you have any specific questions, ask away.

Complicated answer:

If you're asking this, you probably should not just jump the gun and setup sendmail justtt yet.

You'll need to take a few things into consideration:

1. Does your ISP allow you to send e-mail? You might be on non-server IP range and therefore, many e-mail providers will block your outright.

2. What address will you use as your from address? Are you authorized to send from this address (SPF, DomainKeys, etc)? If not, you're messages might be detected as spam by e-mail providers---and rightfully so.

3. Last, but certainly not least: Do you really need to use your own SMTP service? Any reason why using your ISP's is not good enough?

Back in the old days, setting up SMTP was no big deal. Now, it's even easier to set up; setting it up so that it actually gets e-mail to people's mailboxes, however, isn't simple at all.

Answer 3

Jakobud you need to do the following,

1. sudo yum install postfix telnet mailx
2. sudo /etc/init.d/postfix start
3. sudo vi /etc/postfix/main.cf
4. change mydestination = mydomain.com, localhost.mydomain.com, localhost

to

1. mydestination = localhost.mydomain.com, localhost

test using the following from the command line

1. mail address@example.com Subject:
2. Test email from demoslice.com Test
3. body of the email.
4. .

No 4 there is just a full stop to complete the body of the email. you now should have mail.......

The above will get you a working MTA (Mail transfer Agent) some resources which will help you with a more advanced setup can be found at slicehost's articles on email setup for centos (scroll down to the CentOS and Email section), you should really consider setting the following correctly, hostname, RDNS(Reverse DNS) and spf(Sender Policy Framework) records with your DNS provider.

Answer 4

Have you modified your /etc/mail.rc to set the smtp address?

Answer 5

Try installing postfix & set the mydestination in configuration file even it should work with sendmail.