“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!

Answer 1

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