Help with sendemail

Ask Fedora
1

I’m new to Fedora Gnome 41. Transferring from Ubuntu Gnome. New build trying to get my back ups working that include email notification. Just tested the following cammand on two different Fedora 41. Does not work.

sendEmail
-o tls=Yes
-f MYACCOUNTNAME@gmail.com
-t RECEIVINGACCOUNT@gmail.com
-s smtp.gmail.com:587
-xu MYACCOUNTNAME@gmail.com
-xp “APPSPECIFICPW”
-u “Hello World”
-m “This is an E-Mail text.”

error on both boxes is:

Nov 21 12:33:48 sendEmail[82031]: ERROR => Received: 501-5.5.4 HELO/EHLO argument “” invalid, closing connection., 501 5.5.4 HELO/EHLO email error - Gmail Help 5b1f17b1804b1-433b45d4288sm54814025e9.23 - gsmtp
Nov 21 12:33:48 sendEmail[82031]: NOTICE => EHLO command failed, attempting HELO instead
Nov 21 12:33:48 sendEmail[82031]: ERROR => smtp.gmail.com:587 returned a zero byte response to our query.

Ran a test on another laptop running Mint XFCE. Works fine.

I switched the firewall off the Fedora but no help. What wrong with Fedora setting?

2

If I’m reading it right, there appears to be a downstream patch on that package that is reducing the encryption from the newer and stronger TLS to the older SSL protocol: Tree - rpms/sendemail - src.fedoraproject.org

Can you use a different program (e.g. mailx)?

3

Thank you for that idea.

I am not a programmer so converting the script I have using mailx and referring to its online manual is beyond me. If I can find some online examples of how to use mailx to use my simple one line of code that I have used now for 10+ years based on a backup script I found on-line, I will make the switch to mailx.

It is all frustrating. I had used until a few weeks ago Microsoft’s gateway. But MS changed its security and I found a suggestion to use Gmail with “-o tls=Yes”. That is still working on the family’s Debian based OS.

So far I’m hitting a lot of minor issues on my experimental switch to Fedora. I do not want to throw in the towel so I will carry on trying to solve this bug. I’m also struggling with Samba and my network shares since rebuilding my PC with Fedora. Thanks again.

4

The following mailx version of your command worked for me just now in a test:

echo "This is an E-Mail text." | mailx \
-S v15-compat \
-S ttycharset=utf8 \
-S mta=smtps://MYACCOUNTNAME:APPSPECIFICPW@smtp.gmail.com:465 \
-S from=MYACCOUNTNAME@gmail.com \
-s "Hello World" RECEIVINGACCOUNT@gmail.com

I would recommend configuring Postfix on your system rather than passing your password on the command line every time you need to send an email.

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