ssmtp to email cron output

Cron output in Ubuntu gets discarded. The default install of Ubuntu does not install a Mail Transport Agent (MTA), so cron cannot mail you the output.

You can install an MTA -several are easily available in the Ubuntu repositories- but configuration is not trivial. MTAs date from before the IMAP- and SMTP-based e-mail systems we use today, which makes them highly flexible and configurable...but not necessarily the easiest solution.

ssmtp is a limited-purpose MTA intended to replace the 'mail' command and send all output to an SMTP mailserver. ssmtp is provided by the 'ssmtp' package.

Install

sudo apt-get install ssmtp

Configuration file #1: /etc/ssmtp/ssmpt.conf

This tells ssmtp how to send email to my account.
It's not the best idea to store your e-mail password in world-readable plain text. See how to protect the password properly.

# Config file for sSMTP sendmail
#
# The person who gets all mail for userids < 1000
# Make this empty to disable rewriting.
root=me@example.com

# The place where the mail goes. The actual machine name is required no
# MX records are consulted. Commonly mailhosts are named mail.domain.com
mailhub=my_mail_server.net:465
AuthUser=me@example.com
AuthPass=my_email_password
UseTLS=Yes

# Where will the mail seem to come from?
rewriteDomain=example.com

# The full hostname
hostname=hey_its_my_computer

# Are users allowed to set their own From: address?
# YES - Allow the user to specify their own From: address
# NO - Use the system generated From: address
FromLineOverride=YES

Configuration File #2: /etc/ssmtp/

This directs root mail to my account.

# sSMTP aliases
#
# Format:       local_account:outgoing_address:mailhub
#
# Example: root:your_login@your.domain:mailhub.your.domain[:port]
# where [:port] is an optional port number that defaults to 25.
root:me@example.com:my_mail_server.net:465

And now cron output lands in my normal inbox.

Pre-filling an Outlook Express mail in Windows XP

I want a Python3 script to open a pre-filled Outlook Express (OE) new-mail window. A human should read, edit, and approve the e-mail before sending. If I wanted a completely automatic e-mail, I would use Python's smtp module.

The problem is that OE has no COM server, and the Simple-MAPI support is in C++.

---

Command Line

There is an easy way from the Windows command line:

C:>"C:\Program Files\Outlook Express\msimn" /mailurl:mailto:"name%40example.com?cc=cc1%40example.com&bcc=bcc1@example.com&subject=The%20Subject%20Line&body=The%20first%20paragraph.%0A%0AThe%20second%20paragraph.%0A%0AThanks%2C%0AName

This launches OE with a single argument. That argument is a mailto: URL. The URL includes to:, cc:, bcc:, subject:, and the body.

• "C:\Program Files\Outlook Express\msimn" launches OE
• /mailurl:mailto:" defines the mailto: URL. The quote(") is required on the command line, though not in the python version.
• name%40example.com? is the To: line. The To: line ends with the question-mark (?)
• cc=cc1%40example.com& the rest of the fields are defined (cc=) and separated with the ampersand (&).
• Don't use spaces or commas or returns - just text.
  

  space	%20
  ,	%2C
  return	%0A
  @	%40

• I have not figured out a way to include more than one e-mail address on each line.
• Files cannot be attached using this method.

---

Python

Since OE does not have any COM or other programmatic way to do it, we will fall back on subprocess, and have Python simply create a mailto: URL and use the command line.

This simple Python3 script creates a pre-filled Outlook Express window using subprocess:

import subprocess

# The header and body
to      = "name1%40example.com"
cc      = "cc1%40example.com"     # or leave blank: cc = ""
bcc     = "bcc1%40example.com"    # or leave blank: bcc = ""
subject = "The%20Subject"
body    = "The%20first%20paragraph.%0A%0AThe%20second%20paragraph.%0A%0AThanks%2C%0AName"

oe = "C:\Program Files\Outlook Express\msimn"
mailto_url = ('/mailurl:mailto:' + to      + '?' +   # No lone quote (") after colon (:)
              'cc='              + cc      + '&' +
              'bcc='             + bcc     + '&' +
              'subject='         + subject + '&' +
              'body='            + body )            # No ending ampersand (&) 

subprocess.call([oe, mailto_url])

Reinstalling Xubuntu 9.04

About a month ago, audio suddenly stopped working. Rather than troubleshoot, I decided to reinstall...it might be faster. Unlike last time, this time was a complete reinstall to get rid of certain dependency problems that had also cropped up.

• Wireless networking worked immediately.
• Oops. I didn't backup any of my *hidden* files - suddenly all of my e-mail and web caches are...gone. Lesson - keep older backups. Lesson - copy hidden files, too.
• I tried using Jablicator to save my package list, but hit a failure - it couldn't resolve libdvdcss2 because it didn't come from the Ubuntu repositories.
• Audio works in the Listen player - except wma files. Totem plays the wma, so it's not a codec or dependency issue. Streaming .pls works.
• Video works. Added Flash, and YouTube and Hulu work. DVD read works after just a bit of tweaking

The Evolution plugin for Mail Notification doesn't work/exist (LP#355209)

In mail-notification 5.4 in Ubuntu Jaunty (9.04), the following files are installed to /usr/lib/evolution/2.24/plugins/ instead of /usr/lib/evolution/2.26/plugins/:
liborg-jylefort-mail-notification.so
org-jylefort-mail-notification.eplug

A simple workaround:
1. Copy or link the files to the correct directory:
   

   sudo ln -s /usr/lib/evolution/2.24/plugins/org-jylefort-mail-notification.eplug /usr/lib/evolution/2.26/plugins/
   sudo ln -s /usr/lib/evolution/2.24/plugins/liborg-jylefort-mail-notification.so /usr/lib/evolution/2.26/plugins/

2. Restart evolution and go to Edit -> Plugins -> Jean-Yves Lefort's Mail Notification. Check the box.
3. Right-click on the Mail-Notification icon -> Properties. Add your evolution e-mailbox.

Creating an Evolution e-mail from the command line and python

Evolution is intended as a GUI e-mail client, so the scripting options are limited. Also, it looks like you cannot autosend e-mail from a script, there's so script command equivalent to the 'send' button.

But that's a good thing; I can autosend from nail when I want to. So a script will compose the e-mail, which will sit on my desktop until I review it and click to send it. Nice.

shell command source

This command creates a window with To:, From:, Subject:, and Body filled in. 'From:' is already known by Evolution, the rest is parsed from the following command:

evolution mailto:person@example.com?subject=Test\&body=Some%20crazy%20story%20stuff%0D%0Acolumn1%09%09column2%09%09column3%0D%0A%0D%0ASincerely,%0D%0A%0D%0AMe

Another (easier) way:

evolution mailto:person@example.com?cc="second_person@example.com"\&subject="This Is The Subject"\&body="This is the body of the message"\&attach=Desktop/test_file.xml

• evolution mailto:person@example.com - Launches Evolution's e-mail composer and To: line
• ?cc="Person@example.com" - CC: Line
• \&subject="Subject" or ?subject="Subject" - Subject line
• \&body="Body" - Body of the e-mail is everything after this line
• \&attach=/path/file - Files to attach
• %20 - Space
• %0D%0A - CR/LF (new line)
• %09 - Tab

python command

Python 2.x has it's own smtp module for creating e-mail, it's far more useful in most circumstances. But in this case, we want the composed evolution window.

import os
body_string = 'This is the body of the e-mail message'
body_string = body_string.replace(' ','%20')
os.popen('evolution mailto:person@example.com?subject=Test\&body=' + body_string)

• import os - Use python's os module
• body_string = 'This is the body of the e-mail message' - The body in normal text
• body_string = body_string.replace(' ','%20') - Encode the spaces (evolution will decode them). Tabs, newlines, and other reserved strings need to be encoded.
• os.popen('evolution mailto:person@example.com?subject=Test\&body=' + body_string) - The 'os.popen(cmd)' executes shell cmd. Note that cmd is just a python string, and you can use all the string tools on it, like adding body_string.

>>> import os
>>> to = 'person@example.com'
>>> cc = '"second_person@example.com"'
>>> subject = '"This is the subject"'
>>> body = '"This is the body"'
>>> attachment = 'Desktop/rss_test.xml'
>>> os.popen('evolution mailto:'+to+'?cc='+cc+'\&subject='+subject+'\&body='+body+'\&attachment='+attachment)