It’s useful to be able to send email from a Linux webserver. I do it to get MediaWiki page change notifications and other automated status updates. I wanted something that supported two-factor authentication, and this does.

This guide is for you, if:

• You don’t want to run a mail server
• You want to send email, and you don’t care about receiving it
• You want people to receive the emails that your server sends

I’ve used this method with Linode, and it works perfectly.

Install mailutils

~ sudo apt-get install mailutils

When the setup wizard launches, choose the unconfigured option. You don’t need to do any special configuration to get this to work.

Install and configure sstmp

1. ~ sudo apt-get install ssmtp
2. ~ sudo vim /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf
3. Hit “i” to enter Insert mode.
4. Uncomment FromLineOverride=YES by deleting the #
5. Add the following to the file:

    
   AuthUser=<user>@gmail.com
AuthPass=Your-Gmail-Password
mailhub=smtp.gmail.com:587
UseSTARTTLS=YES

6. Save and close the file:
1. Hit Escape
2. Type :wq
3. Hit Enter

If you’re using two-factor authentication
Create a new application-specific password to use in the config file above. (If you’re using Gmail, you can manage those passwords here.)

Test it out
~ echo "This is a test" | mail -s "Test" <user>@<email>.com

Using a webmail service other than Gmail
You can follow the same pattern that I used above. You’ll need to:

1. Subsitute the SMTP address and port for your email service (e.g. Yahoo!) where it says smtp.gmail.com:587. (587 is the port number.)
2. Set up an application-specific password if your webmail provider allows it, and paste that into the password line, the way I did with Gmail. (Yahoo! appears to have something similar.)