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msmtp - about

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Original source (marlam.de)
Tags: monitoring linux email smtp msmtp notifications marlam.de
Clipped on: 2025-02-16

About msmtp

msmtp is an SMTP client.

In the default mode, it transmits a mail to an SMTP server which takes care of further delivery.
To use this program with your mail user agent (MUA), create a configuration file with your mail account(s) and tell your MUA to call msmtp instead of /usr/sbin/sendmail.

Features include:

  • Sendmail compatible interface (command line options and exit codes)
  • Support for multiple accounts
  • TLS/SSL support including client certificates
  • Support for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)
  • Many authentication methods
  • Fast SMTP implementation using command pipelining
  • DSN (Delivery Status Notification) support
  • SOCKS proxy support

msmtp runs on a wide variety of platforms. It needs little more than an ANSI C compiler and Berkeley-style sockets. It does not require any additional libraries, but it can use the following to enhance its feature set:

  • GnuTLS
    The GnuTLS library provides TLS support. Alternatively, libtls from the LibreSSL project can be used.
  • GNU SASL
    Using the GNU SASL library adds support for some additional authentication methods. You only need it for SCRAM-SHA-* and GSSAPI.
  • GNU libidn2
    On modern Linux systems with recent glibc and GnuTLS libraries, msmtp has automatic support for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN). On other systems, IDN support is available via libidn2.

msmtp is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.