How to mail using cron

To send an email using cron, you can use the mail command or a more advanced email client like sendmail or ssmtp. Here are some examples:

Using the mail command:

1. Open your crontab editor by running crontab -e in your terminal.
2. Add the following line to schedule a job to run at a specific time or interval:

   */5 * * * * mail -s "Subject" [email protected] < /path/to/email/body.txt

   This will send an email with the subject "Subject" to [email protected] every 5 minutes. The email body will be read from the file /path/to/email/body.txt.

Using sendmail:

1. Install sendmail if it's not already installed on your system.
2. Open your crontab editor by running crontab -e in your terminal.
3. Add the following line to schedule a job to run at a specific time or interval:

   */5 * * * * sendmail -t -i -f [email protected] < /path/to/email/body.txt

   This will send an email with the contents of /path/to/email/body.txt to [email protected] every 5 minutes.

Using ssmtp:

1. Install ssmtp if it's not already installed on your system.
2. Open your crontab editor by running crontab -e in your terminal.
3. Add the following line to schedule a job to run at a specific time or interval:

   */5 * * * * ssmtp -t -i -f [email protected] < /path/to/email/body.txt

   This will send an email with the contents of /path/to/email/body.txt to [email protected] every 5 minutes.

Tips and Variations:

• Make sure to replace [email protected] with the actual email address you want to send the email to.
• Replace /path/to/email/body.txt with the actual path to the file containing the email body.
• You can customize the email subject and body by modifying the mail command or using a more advanced email client like sendmail or ssmtp.
• You can also use environment variables or shell variables to customize the email content.
• If you're using a Linux system, you may need to use the echo command to format the email body as a string, like this:

  */5 * * * * echo "Subject: My Email" | mail -s "My Email" [email protected]

  This will send an email with the subject "My Email" and a blank body.

Remember to test your email sending configuration before scheduling the job to run automatically using cron.