Sending an email from command line in Ubuntu 12.04

mail is a utility that can sends an email from command line. In Ubuntu 12.04, the following command sends an email to to@domain.com with empty body.

$ mail -s "mail test" -S replyto="replyto@domain.com" to@domain.com < /dev/null

• -s: specify subject on command line.
• -S: set variable. In this case, a variable replyto is set to replyto@domain.com. When a recipient of this email clicks ‘Reply to’ button on their client, the client will set To address to replyto@domain.com, instead of From address from the original mail.

(Note: options vary depending on the version of Ubuntu distribution.)

mail reads its body from standard input. An email sent by this command has empty body because /dev/null is used as body.