[HOW TO] Use msmtp to send email

[Mechano]

Here a small how to for sending email both from shell and from PHP using the smtp client msmtp.
It's for ADM <= v2.1.

At first you have to install from App Center the Optware ipkg.
After, enter the shell with root user and give the command:

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ipkg install msmtp

Configuring msmtp for use with Gmail and Yahoo

Create or edit the msmtp configuration file in the user’s home directory.
Remember that every user needs to send email must have it's own .msmtprc
Use vi editor:

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vi ~/.msmtprc

With the following lines you configure msmtp for both Gmail and Yahoo:

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account yahoo
tls on
tls_starttls off
auth on
host smtp.mail.yahoo.com
user user
from user@yahoo.com
password ******
tls_trust_file /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

account gmail
tls on
auth on
host smtp.gmail.com
port 587
user user@gmail.com
from user@gmail.com
password ******
tls_trust_file /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

It's important the line tls_trust_file, the Asustor NAS have already this file and there are already some certificates for the main services.
If you're going to use a not listed provider, you've to find the authority certificate and add into the file /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
or another file to specify into the option tls_trust_file.

To protect passwords give read access only to the owner:

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chmod 600 ~/.msmtprc

Now we can create the mail body message:

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vi test_email

and fill with:

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From: Bob <bob@example.com>
To: Jane <jane@domain.com>
Subject: Hello Jane
Test email sent with msmtp

Now we can test email sending with the command:

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cat test_email | msmtp -a yahoo jane@domain.com

It's useful to send email from shell scripts when we want to automate certain process into cron and we need to send a feedback.

Now let's configure for use with PHP Mail() function.

Use vi to create the file:

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vi /volume0/usr/builtin/etc/php5/apache2/msmtprc

And fill it like in the previous example.
Protect with right access:

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chmod 600 msmtprc

and change the owner in accord with the ones that runs the process apache2
find with:

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ps -ef | grep apache2

 9916 root      0:00 /usr/builtin/sbin/apache2 -k start
 9918 admin      0:00 /usr/builtin/sbin/apache2 -k start

there're different instances of apache with root and admin, but you use admin user only if it doesn't work change to root:

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chown admin msmtprc

now edit the file php.ini:

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vi /volume0/usr/builtin/etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

and find sendmail_path option to change like this (change yahoo with gmail or whatever in accord with the account name into msmtprc file:

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sendmail_path = "/usr/bin/msmtp -C /etc/msmtprc -a yahoo -t"

Finally you can try your php code:

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<?php
   mail("jane@domain.com","Hello World","Email sent using PHP via msmtp");
?>

If you are hosting a CMS like Joomla! or Wordpress they have their builtin function for GMail or Yahoo! smtp server, check CMS documentation for how to set.

[orion]

Great! Thanks for sharing.