In the default sendmail mode, msmtp reads a mail from standard
input and sends it to an SMTP server for delivery.
In server information mode, msmtp prints information about an SMTP server.
In Remote Message Queue Starting mode, msmtp sends a Remote Message Queue
Starting request for a host, domain, or queue to an SMTP server.
The standard sendmail exit status codes are used, as defined in
sysexits.h.
Options override configuration file settings.
They are compatible with sendmail where appropriate.
- General
options
- --version
- Print version information, including information about the libraries
used.
- --help
- Print help.
- -P, --pretend
- Print the configuration settings that would be used, but do not take
further action. An asterisk (`*') will be printed instead of your
password.
- -v, -d, --debug
- Print lots of debugging information, including the whole conversation with
the SMTP server. Be careful with this option: the (potentially dangerous)
output will not be sanitized, and your password may get printed in an
easily decodable format!
- Changing the mode
of operation
- --configure=mailaddress
- Generate a configuration for the given mail address and print it. This can
be modified or copied unchanged to the configuration file. Note that this
only works for mail domains that publish appropriate SRV records; see RFC
8314.
- -S, --serverinfo
- Print information about the SMTP server and exit. This includes
information about supported features (mail size limit, authentication,
TLS, DSN, ...) and about the TLS certificate (if TLS is active).
- --rmqs=(host|@domain|#queue)
- Send a Remote Message Queue Starting request for the given host, domain,
or queue to the SMTP server and exit.
- Configuration
options
- Options specific to
sendmail mode
- -f, --from=address
- Set the envelope-from address.
If no account was chosen yet (with --account or --host), this
option will choose the first account that has the given envelope-from
address (set with the from command). If no such account is found,
"default" is used.
See the from command for substitution patterns supported in
address.
- -N,
--dsn-notify=(off|cond)
- Set or unset DSN notification conditions. See the dsn_notify
command.
- -R,
--dsn-return=(off|ret)
- Set or unset the DSN notification amount. See the dsn_return
command. Note that hdrs is accepted as an alias for headers
to be compatible with sendmail.
- --set-from-header[=(auto|on|off)]
- Set From header handling. See the set_from_header command.
- --set-date-header[=(auto|off)]
- Set Date header handling. See the set_date_header command.
- --remove-bcc-headers[=(on|off)]
- Enable or disable the removal of Bcc headers. See the
remove_bcc_headers command.
- --undisclosed-recipients[=(on|off)]
- Enable or disable the replacement of To/Cc/Bcc with "To:
undisclosed-recipients:;". See the undisclosed_recipients
command.
- -X,
--logfile=[file]
- Set or unset the log file. See the logfile command.
- --logfile-time-format=[fmt]
- Set or unset the log file time format. See the logfile_time_format
command.
- --syslog[=(on|off|facility)]
- Enable or disable syslog logging. See the syslog command.
- -t, --read-recipients
- Read recipient addresses from the To, Cc, and Bcc headers of the mail in
addition to the recipients given on the command line. If any Resent-
headers are present, then the addresses from any Resent-To, Resent-Cc, and
Resent-Bcc headers in the first block of Resent- headers are used
instead.
- --read-envelope-from
- Read the envelope from address from the From header of the mail.
- --aliases=[file]
- Set or unset an aliases file. See the aliases command.
- -Fname
- Msmtp adds a From header to mails that lack it, using the envelope from
address. This option allows one to set a full name to be used in that
header.
- --auto-from[=(on|off)]
- Obsolete. See the auto_from command.
- --maildomain=[domain]
- Obsolete. See the maildomain command.
- --
- This marks the end of options. All following arguments will be treated as
recipient addresses, even if they start with a `-'.
The following options are accepted but ignored for sendmail
compatibility:
-Btype, -bm, -G, -hN, -i, -L tag, -m, -n, -O
option=value, -ox value
A suggestion for a suitable configuration file can be generated
using the --configure option. Normally, a system wide configuration file
and/or a user configuration file contain information about which SMTP server
to use and how to use it, but all settings can also be configured on the
command line.
The information about SMTP servers is organized in accounts. Each account
describes one SMTP server: host name, authentication settings, TLS settings,
and so on. Each configuration file can define multiple accounts.
The user can choose which account to use in one of three ways:
- --account=id
- Use the given account. Command line settings override configuration file
settings.
- --host=hostname
- Use only the settings from the command line; do not use any configuration
file data.
- --from=address or
--read-envelope-from
- Choose the first account from the system or user configuration file that
has a matching envelope-from address as specified by a from
command. This works only when neither --account nor --host
is used.
If none of the above options is used (or if no account has a
matching from command), then the account "default" is
used.
Msmtp transmits mails unaltered to the SMTP server, with the
following exceptions:
- The Bcc header(s) will be removed. This behavior can be changed with the
remove_bcc_headers command and --remove-bcc-headers option.
- A From header will be added if the mail does not have one. This can be
changed with the set_from_header command and --set-from-header
option. The header will use the envelope from address and optionally a full
name set with the -F option.
- A Date header will be added if the mail does not have one. This can be
changed with the set_date_header command and --set-date-header
option.
- When undisclosed_recipients is set, the original To, Cc, and Bcc
headers are removed and replaced with "To:
undisclosed-recipients:;".
Skip to the EXAMPLES section for a quick start.
If it exists and is readable, a system wide configuration file
SYSCONFDIR/msmtprc will be loaded, where SYSCONFDIR depends on your
platform. Use --version to find out which directory is used.
If it exists and is readable, a user configuration file will be loaded
(~/.msmtprc will be tried first followed by $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/msmtp/config by
default, but see --version). Accounts defined in the user
configuration file override accounts from the system configuration file.
Configuration data from either file can be changed by command line
options.
A configuration file is a simple text file. Empty lines and
comment lines (whose first non-blank character is `#') are ignored.
Every other line must contain a command and may contain an argument to that
command.
The argument may be enclosed in double quotes ("), for example if its
first or last character is a blank.
If a file name starts with the tilde (~), this tilde will be replaced by
$HOME. If a command accepts the argument on, it also accepts an empty
argument and treats that as if it was on.
Commands are organized in accounts. Each account starts with the
account command and defines the settings for one SMTP account.
Skip to the EXAMPLES section for a quick start.
Commands are as follows:
- defaults
- Set defaults. The following configuration commands will set default values
for all following account definitions in the current configuration
file.
- account name
[:account[,...]]
- Start a new account definition with the given name. The current default
values are filled in.
If a colon and a list of previously defined accounts is given after the
account name, the new account, with the filled in default values, will
inherit all settings from the accounts in the list.
- host hostname
- The SMTP server to send the mail to. The argument may be a host name or a
network address. Every account definition must contain this command.
- port number
- The port that the SMTP server listens on. The default is 25
("smtp"), unless TLS without STARTTLS is used, in which case it
is 465 ("smtps").
- source_ip
[IP]
- Set a source IP address to bind the outgoing connection to. Useful only in
special cases on multi-home systems. An empty argument disables this.
- proxy_host
[IP|hostname]
- Use a SOCKS proxy. All network traffic will go through this proxy host,
including DNS queries, except for a DNS query that might be necessary to
resolve the proxy host name itself (this can be avoided by using an IP
address as proxy host name). An empty hostname argument disables
proxy usage. The supported SOCKS protocol version is 5. If you want to use
this with Tor, see also "Using msmtp with Tor" below.
- proxy_port
[number]
- Set the port number for the proxy host. An empty number argument
resets this to the default port.
- socket
socketname
- Set the file name of a unix domain socket to connect to. This overrides
both host/port and proxy_host/proxy_port.
- timeout
(off|seconds)
- Set or unset a network timeout, in seconds. The argument off means
that no timeout will be set, which means that the operating system default
will be used.
- protocol
(smtp|lmtp)
- Set the protocol to use. Currently only SMTP and LMTP are supported. SMTP
is the default. See the port command above for default ports.
- domain
argument
- Use this command to set the argument of the SMTP EHLO (or LMTP LHLO)
command. The default is localhost, which is stupid but usually
works. Try to change the default if mails get rejected due to anti-SPAM
measures. Possible choices are the domain part of your mail address
(provider.example for joe@provider.example) or the fully qualified domain
name of your host (if available).
- auth
[(on|off|method)]
- Enable or disable authentication and optionally choose a method to use.
The argument on chooses a method automatically.
Usually a user name and a password are used for authentication. The user
name is specified in the configuration file with the user command.
There are five different methods to specify the password:
1. Add the password to the system key ring. Currently supported key rings
are the Gnome key ring and the Mac OS X Keychain. For the Gnome key ring,
use the command secret-tool (part of Gnome's libsecret) to store
passwords: secret-tool store --label=msmtp host mail.freemail.example
service smtp user joe.smith. On Mac OS X, use the following command:
security add-internet-password -s mail.freemail.example -r smtp -a
joe.smith -w. In both examples, replace mail.freemail.example with the
SMTP server name, and joe.smith with your user name.
2. Store the password in an encrypted files, and use passwordeval to
specify a command to decrypt that file, e.g. using GnuPG. See EXAMPLES.
3. Store the password in the configuration file using the password
command. (Usually it is not considered a good idea to store passwords in
cleartext files. If you do it anyway, you must make sure that the file can
only be read by yourself.)
4. Store the password in ~/.netrc. This method is probably obsolete.
5. Type the password into the terminal when it is required.
It is recommended to use method 1 or 2.
Multiple authentication methods exist. Most servers support only some of
them. Historically, sophisticated methods were developed to protect
passwords from being sent unencrypted to the server, but nowadays
everybody needs TLS anyway, so the simple methods suffice since the whole
session is protected. A suitable authentication method is chosen
automatically, and when TLS is disabled for some reason, only methods that
avoid sending cleartext passwords are considered.
The following user / password methods are supported: plain (a simple
cleartext method, with base64 encoding, supported by almost all servers),
scram-sha-1 (a method that avoids cleartext passwords),
cram-md5 (an obsolete method that avoids cleartext passwords, but
is not considered secure anymore), digest-md5 (an overcomplicated
obsolete method that avoids cleartext passwords, but is not considered
secure anymore), login (a non-standard cleartext method similar to
but worse than the plain method), ntlm (an obscure non-standard
method that is now considered broken; it sometimes requires a special
domain parameter passed via ntlmdomain).
There are currently three authentication methods that are not based on user
/ password information and have to be chosen manually: oauthbearer
(an OAuth2 token from the mail provider is used as the password. See the
documentation of your mail provider for details on how to get this token.
The passwordeval command can be used to pass the regularly changing
tokens into msmtp from a script or an environment variable),
external (the authentication happens outside of the protocol,
typically by sending a TLS client certificate, and the method merely
confirms that this authentication succeeded), and gssapi (the
Kerberos framework takes care of secure authentication, only a user name
is required).
It depends on the underlying authentication library and its version whether
a particular method is supported or not. Use --version to find out
which methods are supported.
- user login
- Set the user name for authentication. An empty argument unsets the user
name.
- password
secret
- Set the password for authentication. An empty argument unsets the
password. Consider using the passwordeval command or a key ring
instead of this command, to avoid storing cleartext passwords in the
configuration file.
- passwordeval
[eval]
- Set the password for authentication to the output (stdout) of the command
eval. This can be used e.g. to decrypt password files on the fly or
to query key rings, and thus to avoid storing cleartext passwords.
Note that the eval command must not mess with standard input (stdin)
because that is where msmtp reads the mail from. If in doubt, append
</dev/null to eval.
- ntlmdomain
[domain]
- Set a domain for the ntlm authentication method. This is
obsolete.
- tls
[(on|off)]
- Enable or disable TLS (also known as SSL) for secured connections.
Transport Layer Security (TLS) "... provides communications privacy
over the Internet. The protocol allows client/server applications to
communicate in a way that is designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering,
or message forgery" (quote from RFC2246).
A server can use TLS in one of two modes: via a STARTTLS command (the
session starts with the normal protocol initialization, and TLS is then
started using the protocol's STARTTLS command), or immediately (TLS is
initialized before the normal protocol initialization; this requires a
separate port). The first mode is the default, but you can switch to the
second mode by disabling tls_starttls.
When TLS is started, the server sends a certificate to identify itself. To
verify the server identity, a client program is expected to check that the
certificate is formally correct and that it was issued by a Certificate
Authority (CA) that the user trusts. (There can also be certificate chains
with intermediate CAs.)
The list of trusted CAs is specified using the tls_trust_file
command. The default value ist "system" and chooses the
system-wide default, but you can also choose the trusted CAs yourself.
One practical problem with this approach is that the client program should
also check if the server certificate has been revoked for some reason,
using a Certificate Revocation List (CRL). A CRL file can be specified
using the tls_crl_file command, but getting the relevant CRL files
and keeping them up to date is not straightforward. You are basically on
your own.
A much more serious and fundamental problem is that you need to trust CAs.
Like any other organization, a CA can be incompetent, malicious, subverted
by bad people, or forced by government agencies to compromise end users
without telling them. All of these things happened and continue to happen
worldwide. The idea to have central organizations that have to be trusted
for your communication to be secure is fundamentally broken.
Instead of putting trust in a CA, you can choose to trust only a single
certificate for the server you want to connect to. For that purpose,
specify the certificate fingerprint with tls_fingerprint. This
makes sure that no man-in-the-middle can fake the identity of the server
by presenting you a fraudulent certificate issued by some CA that happens
to be in your trust list. However, you have to update the fingerprint
whenever the server certificate changes, and you have to make sure that
the change is legitimate each time, e.g. when the old certificate expired.
This is inconvenient, but it's the price to pay.
Information about a server certificate can be obtained with
--serverinfo --tls --tls-certcheck=off. This includes the
issuer CA of the certificate (so you can trust that CA via
tls_trust_file), and the fingerprint of the certificate (so you can
trust that particular certificate via tls_fingerprint).
TLS also allows the server to verify the identity of the client. For this
purpose, the client has to present a certificate issued by a CA that the
server trusts. To present that certificate, the client also needs the
matching key file. You can set the certificate and key files using
tls_cert_file and tls_key_file. This mechanism can also be
used to authenticate users, so that traditional user / password
authentication is not necessary anymore. See the external mechanism
in auth.
You can also use client certificates stored on some external authentication
device by specifying GnuTLS device URIs in tls_cert_file and
tls_key_file. You can find the correct URIs using p11tool
--list-privkeys --login (p11tool is bundled with GnuTLS). If your
device requires a PIN to access the data, you can specify that using one
of the password mechanisms (e.g. passwordeval,
password).
- tls_starttls
[(on|off)]
- Choose the TLS variant: start TLS from within the session (on,
default), or tunnel the session through TLS (off).
- tls_trust_file
file
- Activate server certificate verification using a list of trusted
Certification Authorities (CAs). The default is the special value
"system", which selects the system default. An empty argument
disables trust in CAs. If you select a file, it must be in PEM format, and
you should also use tls_crl_file.
- tls_crl_file
[file]
- Set a certificate revocation list (CRL) file for TLS, to check for revoked
certificates. An empty argument disables this.
- tls_fingerprint
[fingerprint]
- Set the fingerprint of a single certificate to accept for TLS. This
certificate will be trusted regardless of its contents (this overrides
tls_trust_file). The fingerprint should be of type SHA256, but can
for backwards compatibility also be of type SHA1 or MD5 (please avoid
this). The format should be 01:23:45:67:.... Use --serverinfo --tls
--tls-certcheck=off --tls-fingerprint= to get the server certificate
fingerprint.
- tls_key_file
file
- Send a client certificate to the server (use this together with
tls_cert_file}). The file must contain the private key of a
certificate in PEM format. An empty argument disables this feature.
- tls_cert_file
file
- Send a client certificate to the server (use this together with
tls_key_file). The file must contain a certificate in PEM format.
An empty argument disables this feature.
- tls_certcheck
[(on|off)]
- Enable or disable checks of the server certificate. They are enabled by
default. Disabling them will override tls_trust_file and
tls_fingerprint. WARNING: When the checks are disabled, TLS
sessions will not be secure!
- tls_min_dh_prime_bits
[bits]
- Set or unset the minimum number of Diffie-Hellman (DH) prime bits that
mpop will accept for TLS sessions. The default is set by the TLS library
and can be selected by using an empty argument to this command. Only lower
the default (for example to 512 bits) if there is no other way to make TLS
work with the remote server.
- tls_priorities
[priorities]
- Set the priorities for TLS sessions. The default is set by the TLS library
and can be selected by using an empty argument to this command. See the
GnuTLS documentation of the gnutls_priority_init function for a
description of the priorities string.
- tls_host_override
[host]
- By default, TLS host verification uses the host name given by the
host command. This command allows one to use a different host name
for verification. This is only useful in special cases.
- from
envelope_from
- Set the envelope-from address. The following substitution patterns are
supported:
%U will be replaced by $USER, or if that fails by $LOGNAME, or if that fails
by the login name of the user running msmtp.
%H will be replaced by $HOSTNAME, or if that fails by the host name of the
system.
%C will be replaced by the canonical name of %H.
%M will be replaced by the contents of /etc/mailname (potentially a
different directory is used depending on the build configuration; see the
output of msmtp --version and look for the location of the system
configuration file).
Note that the obsolete auto_from command replaces this envelope-from
address.
- dsn_notify
(off|condition)
- This command sets the condition(s) under which the mail system should send
DSN (Delivery Status Notification) messages. The argument off
disables explicit DSN requests, which means the mail system decides when
to send DSN messages. This is the default. The condition must be
never, to never request notification, or a comma separated list (no
spaces!) of one or more of the following: failure, to request
notification on transmission failure, delay, to be notified of
message delays, success, to be notified of successful transmission.
The SMTP server must support the DSN extension.
- dsn_return
(off|amount)
- This command controls how much of a mail should be returned in DSN
(Delivery Status Notification) messages. The argument off disables
explicit DSN requests, which means the mail system decides how much of a
mail it returns in DSN messages. This is the default. The amount
must be headers, to just return the message headers, or
full, to return the full mail. The SMTP server must support the DSN
extension.
- When to set a From header: auto adds a From header if the mail does
not have one (this is the default), on always sets a From header
and overrides any existing one, and off never sets a From header.
If the mail server rejects the mail because its From header does not match
the envelope from address (a common anti-spam measure), then you might
want to set this option to on.
For compatibility with older versions, add_missing_from_header
[(on|off)] is still supported and corresponds to the
auto and off settings.
- When to set a Date header: auto adds a Date header if the mail does
not have one (this is the default), and off never sets a Date
header.
For compatibility with older versions, add_missing_date_header
[(on|off)] is still supported and corresponds to the
auto and off settings.
- This command controls whether to remove Bcc headers. The default is to
remove them.
- undisclosed_recipients
[(on|off)]
- When set, the original To, Cc, and Bcc headers of the mail are removed and
a single new header line "To: undisclosed-recipients:;" is
added. The default setting is off.
- logfile
[file]
- An empty argument disables logging (this is the default).
When logging is enabled by choosing a log file, msmtp will append one line
to the log file for each mail it tries to send via the account that this
log file was chosen for.
The line will include the following information: date and time in the format
specified by logfile_time_format, host name of the SMTP server,
whether TLS was used, whether authentication was used, authentication user
name (only if authentication is used), envelope-from address, recipient
addresses, size of the mail as transferred to the server (only if the
delivery succeeded), SMTP status code and SMTP error message (only in case
of failure and only if available), error message (only in case of failure
and only if available), exit code (from sysexits.h; EX_OK indicates
success).
If the filename is a dash (-), msmtp prints the log line to the standard
output.
- logfile_time_format
[fmt]
- Set or unset the log file time format. This will be used as the format
string for the strftime() function. An empty argument chooses the default
("%b %d %H:%M:%S").
- syslog
[(on|off|facility)]
- Enable or disable syslog logging. The facility can be one of LOG_USER,
LOG_MAIL, LOG_LOCAL0, ..., LOG_LOCAL7. The default is LOG_USER.
Each time msmtp tries to send a mail via the account that contains this
syslog command, it will log one entry to the syslog service with the
chosen facility.
The line will include the following information: host name of the SMTP
server, whether TLS was used, whether authentication was used,
envelope-from address, recipient addresses, size of the mail as
transferred to the server (only if the delivery succeeded), SMTP status
code and SMTP error message (only in case of failure and only if
available), error message (only in case of failure and only if available),
exit code (from sysexits.h; EX_OK indicates success).
- aliases
[file]
- Replace local recipients with addresses in the aliases file. The aliases
file is a cleartext file containing mappings between a local address and a
list of replacement addresses. The mappings are of the form:
local: someone@example.com, person@domain.example
Multiple replacement addresses are separated with commas. Comments start
with `#' and continue to the end of the line.
The local address default has special significance and is matched if
the local address is not found in the aliases file. If no default
alias is found, then the local address is left as is.
An empty argument to the aliases command disables the replacement of local
addresses. This is the default.
- auto_from
[(on|off)]
- Obsolete; you can achieve the same and more using the substitution
patterns of the from command.
Enable or disable automatic envelope-from addresses. The default is off.
When enabled, an envelope-from address of the form user@domain will be
generated. The local part will be set to USER or, if that fails, to
LOGNAME or, if that fails, to the login name of the current user.
The domain part can be set with the maildomain command. If the
maildomain is empty, the envelope-from address will only consist of the
user name and not have a domain part. When auto_from is disabled, the
envelope-from address must be set explicitly.
- maildomain
[domain]
- Obsolete; you can achieve the same and more using the substitution
patterns of the from command.
Set a domain part for the generation of an envelope-from address. This is
only used when auto_from is on. The domain may be empty.
Configuration file
# Example for a user configuration file ~/.msmtprc
#
# This file focusses on TLS and authentication. Features not used here include
# logging, timeouts, SOCKS proxies, TLS parameters, Delivery Status
Notification
# (DSN) settings, and more.
# Set default values for all following accounts.
defaults
# Use the mail submission port 587 instead of the SMTP port 25.
port 587
# Always use TLS.
tls on
# Set a list of trusted CAs for TLS. The default is to use system
settings, but
# you can select your own file.
#tls_trust_file /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
# If you select your own file, you should also use the
tls_crl_file command to
# check for revoked certificates, but unfortunately getting revocation lists
and
# keeping them up to date is not straightforward.
#tls_crl_file ~/.tls-crls
# A freemail service
account freemail
# Host name of the SMTP server
host smtp.freemail.example
# As an alternative to tls_trust_file/tls_crl_file, you can use
tls_fingerprint
# to pin a single certificate. You have to update the fingerprint when the
# server certificate changes, but an attacker cannot trick you into accepting
# a fraudulent certificate. Get the fingerprint with
# $ msmtp --serverinfo --tls --tls-certcheck=off --host=smtp.freemail.example
#tls_fingerprint
00:11:22:33:44:55:66:77:88:99:AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF:00:11:22:33
# Envelope-from address
from joe_smith@freemail.example
# Authentication. The password is given using one of five methods,
see below.
auth on
user joe.smith
# Password method 1: Add the password to the system keyring, and
let msmtp get
# it automatically. To set the keyring password using Gnome's libsecret:
# $ secret-tool store --label=msmtp \
# host smtp.freemail.example \
# service smtp \
# user joe.smith
# Password method 2: Store the password in an encrypted file, and
tell msmtp
# which command to use to decrypt it. This is usually used with GnuPG, as in
# this example. Usually gpg-agent will ask once for the decryption password.
passwordeval gpg2 --no-tty -q -d ~/.msmtp-password.gpg
# Password method 3: Store the password directly in this file.
Usually it is not
# a good idea to store passwords in cleartext files. If you do it anyway, at
# least make sure that this file can only be read by yourself.
#password secret123
# Password method 4: Store the password in ~/.netrc. This method
is probably not
# relevant anymore.
# Password method 5: Do not specify a password. Msmtp will then
prompt you for
# it. This means you need to be able to type into a terminal when msmtp
runs.
# A second mail address at the same freemail service
account freemail2 : freemail
from joey@freemail.example
# The SMTP server of your ISP
account isp
host mail.isp.example
from smithjoe@isp.example
auth on
user 12345
# Set a default account
account default : freemail
Using msmtp with Mutt
Create a configuration file for msmtp and add the following lines
to your Mutt configuration file:
set sendmail="/path/to/msmtp"
set use_from=yes
set realname="Your Name"
set from=you@example.com
set envelope_from=yes
The envelope_from=yes option lets Mutt use the -f option of msmtp.
Therefore msmtp chooses the first account that matches the from address
you@example.com.
Alternatively, you can use the -a option:
set sendmail="/path/to/msmtp -a my-account"
Or set everything from the command line (but note that you cannot set a
password this way):
set sendmail="/path/to/msmtp --host=mailhub -f me@example.com
--tls --tls-trust-file=trust.crt"
If you have multiple mail accounts in your msmtp configuration
file and let Mutt use the -f option to choose the right one, you can
easily switch accounts in Mutt with the following Mutt configuration lines:
macro generic "<esc>1" ":set
from=you@example.com"
macro generic "<esc>2" ":set
from=you@your-employer.example"
macro generic "<esc>3" ":set
from=you@some-other-provider.example"
Using msmtp with mail
Define a default account, and put the following in your ~/.mailrc:
set sendmail="/path/to/msmtp"
Using msmtp with Tor
Use the following settings:
proxy_host 127.0.0.1
proxy_port 9050
tls on
Use an IP address as proxy host name, so that msmtp does not leak a DNS query
when resolving it.
TLS is required to prevent exit hosts from reading your SMTP session.
Do not set domain to something that you do not want to reveal (do not
set it at all if possible).
Aliases file
# Example aliases file
# Send root to Joe and Jane
root: joe_smith@example.com, jane_chang@example.com
# Send cron to Mark
cron: mark_jones@example.com
# Send everything else to admin
default: admin@domain.example
- SYSCONFDIR/msmtprc
- System configuration file. Use --version to find out what
SYSCONFDIR is on your platform.
- ~/.msmtprc or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/msmtp/config
- User configuration file.
- ~/.netrc and SYSCONFDIR/netrc
- The netrc file contains login information. Before prompting for a
password, msmtp will search it in ~/.netrc and SYSCONFDIR/netrc.
- USER, LOGNAME
- These variables override the user's login name when constructing an
envelope-from address. LOGNAME is only used if USER is unset.
- TMPDIR
- Directory to create temporary files in. If this is unset, a system
specific default directory is used.
A temporary file is only created when the -t/--read-recipients or
--read-envelope-from option is used. The file is then used to
buffer the headers of the mail (but not the body, so the file won't get
very large).
- EMAIL, SMTPSERVER
- These environment variables are used only if neither --host nor
--account is used and there is no default account defined in the
configuration files. In this case, the host name is taken from SMTPSERVER,
and the envelope from address is taken from EMAIL, unless overridden by
--from or --read-envelope-from. Currently SMTPSERVER must
contain a plain host name (no URL), and EMAIL must contain a plain address
(no names or additional information).
msmtp was written by Martin Lambers <marlam@marlam.de>.
Other authors are listed in the AUTHORS file in the source distribution.