✉️ Sending mails from scripts failed? – How to fix it with mutt

Matthias Klein

Matthias Klein

— 1 min read
✉️ Sending mails from scripts failed? – How to fix it with mutt

If you've ever tried to send emails from a shell script, you've likely run into tools like mail, mailx, or even sendmail. They seem easy at first glance – but quickly become frustrating: strange formatting, attachment issues, encoding errors, and cryptic failure messages.

💨 Common Issues with mailx

  • Different implementations across distros (BSD vs. Heirloom vs. GNU)
  • Inconsistent or broken attachment support via -a
  • Poor handling of UTF-8 content
  • No built-in HTML mail support
  • Lack of clear error messages or logs

✅ A Better Way: Using mutt

mutt is primarily a full-featured email client, but it also works reliably in scripts. Here's why it's a great choice:

  • Reliable attachment support using -a
  • Handles UTF-8 and HTML content without hacks
  • Consistent behavior across environments
  • Easy to debug with verbose logging if needed

🛠️ Example: Send HTML Mail with Markdown Attachment

mutt -e "set from=watchdog@example.com" \
     -s "📦 LXC Docker Update Report" \
     -a "/path/to/attachment.md" -- admin@example.com \
     < /path/to/email-body.html

⚙️ Setting up msmtp as SMTP Relay for mutt

To send mail, mutt needs a mail transport agent. msmtp is a lightweight and easy-to-use solution:

# ~/.msmtprc
defaults
auth           on
tls            on
tls_trust_file /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
logfile        ~/.msmtp.log

account        default
host           mail.example.com
port           465
from           watchdog@example.com
user           watchdog@example.com
passwordeval   "gpg --quiet --for-your-eyes-only --no-tty --decrypt ~/.msmtp-password.gpg"

Make sure the config file is secure:

chmod 600 ~/.msmtprc

And configure mutt to use msmtp:

# ~/.muttrc
set sendmail="/usr/bin/msmtp"
set use_from=yes
set realname="LXC Docker Watchdog"
set from="watchdog@example.com"

📋 Summary

If you care about sending reliable emails from scripts – especially with attachments or HTML formatting – then mutt is your friend. Once set up with msmtp, it just works.

No more weird encodings, no more broken attachments, no more surprises.

Just clean, structured, script-friendly email.

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