Re: How do I make mail authenticate?

[Sergey Poznyakoff]

> Actually I see 2 more issues. The first one is minor and I'm not sure
> if it should be fixed. When I just started my "experiments" (trying to
> send an email), it tried to run sendmail and the first solution I
> thought I found was to specify a mailer in the config. But it
> apparently didn't help.

The "mail" utility is mostly POSIX-conformant and, as required by POSIX, it
is configured using two configuration files: system-wide $sysconfdir/mail.rc
(where $sysconfdir is set when configuring the package) and per-user
~/.mailrc [1].

To configure mailer, set the "sendmail" variable [2] in either of them.

> The second one is graver. I see no way to pass the From header. When I
> do `echo $'From: ...\r\n\r\nbody'`,

Use the -a (--apend) command line option [3]:

  $ mail --help | grep header
  -a, --append=HEADER: VALUE append given header to the message being sent
  ...

Regards,
Sergey  

[1] https://mailutils.org/manual/html_node/Mail-Configuration-Files.html
[2] https://mailutils.org/manual/html_node/Mail-Variables.html#index-sendmail
[3] https://mailutils.org/manual/html_node/Invoking-Mail.html