“no mail for admin”, trying to send mail from command-line

Question

I reinstalled Postfix, reconfigured it, and yet I'm getting this message when I use the mail program to start sending a new email.

admin@mail:~$ mail
No mail for admin

Any tip what I should look for?

Thanks!

jtimberman · Accepted Answer · 2009-08-26 17:04:52Z

up vote 1 down vote accepted

To send mail via the commandline, use mail:

$ mail -s "Some Subject" admin
Type some stuff
.

The dot tells mail the message is finished. You can also redirect program output to mail, or send a file's contents.

$ cat /etc/motd | mail -s "Message of the day" admin
$ mail -s "Message of the day" admin < /etc/motd

Will both send the contents of /etc/motd to the admin user on the local system. You can send mail out to the internet as well.

$ tail -10 /var/log/mail.info | mail -s "Some mail logs for you" admin@example.com

edited Aug 26 '09 at 17:04

answered Aug 26 '09 at 16:54

jtimberman
11.2k54164

	Dang that was fast, you really like to earn points dont cha? ;) Anyway, i'll check it and give you my feedback. – Gabriel A. Zorrilla Aug 26 '09 at 16:55
	My superuser bookmark goes to the "Questions -> Newest", I happened to open it to check something else and saw this question :-). – jtimberman Aug 26 '09 at 16:59
	Sorry, perhaps I misguided you. I don't want to check for mail, just SEND mail. With the mail command a send mail CLI interface should emerge, backed by postfix. – Gabriel A. Zorrilla Aug 26 '09 at 17:00
	Sorry, forgot to write the mail, n00b mistake, my bad. – Gabriel A. Zorrilla Aug 26 '09 at 17:01
	So, SOLUTION: If you want to write some mail in the CLI, do this: mail destination@address.com Just typing mail checks your mail. :) – Gabriel A. Zorrilla Aug 26 '09 at 17:02

1 Answer