Using curl to send email

Question

How can I use the curl command line program to send an email from a gmail account?

I have tried the following:

curl -n --ssl-reqd --mail-from "<[email protected]>" --mail-rcpt "<[email protected]>" --url smtps://smtp.gmail.com:465 -T file.txt

With file.txt being the email's contents, however, when I run this command I get the following error:

curl: (67) Access denied: 530

Is it possible to send an email from an account that is hosted by a personal server, still using curl? Does that make the authentication process easier?

Answer 1

curl --ssl-reqd \
  --url 'smtps://smtp.gmail.com:465' \
  --user '[email protected]:password' \
  --mail-from '[email protected]' \
  --mail-rcpt '[email protected]' \
  --upload-file mail.txt

mail.txt file contents:

From: "User Name" <[email protected]>
To: "John Smith" <[email protected]>
Subject: This is a test

Hi John,
I’m sending this mail with curl thru my gmail account.
Bye!

Additional info:

1. I’m using curl version 7.21.6 with SSL support.

2. You don't need to use the --insecure switch, which prevents curl from performing SSL connection verification. See this online resource for further details.

3. It’s considered a bad security practice to pass account credentials thru command line arguments. Use --netrc-file. See the documentation.

4. You must turn on access for less secure apps or the newer App passwords.