batch mode to send an email

batch mode to send an email

[ken]

Trying to get emacs to send an email.  I've heard other people have
gotten this to work and have even been using it.  So I'm hoping I won't
have to upgrade anything to accomplish this.

I've read a lot of documentation on sending email with emacs.  But what
has been hinted at there hasn't yet worked for me (in many years).
(Yeah, I used to use gnus, but switched long ago... another story,
irrelevant here.)

To eliminate the possibility of misconfiguration in ~/.emacs, I'm
calling the elisp file from a tiny bash script.  I.e., if the
documentation on using emacs in batch mode is correct, ~/.emacs is not
read when emacs is called in batch mode.

To lower the bar for emacs as far as possible, at this point in
development I'm only asking the elisp script to send something--
anything at all, even garbage-- to port 25 on a server we'll call
mail.server.tld.  That is, at this point it doesn't have to (though it
may and eventually must) specify a local user, a destination email
address, subject line and other headers, body of the email.  In order to
eliminate as much as possible any misconfiguration which would cause the
entire elisp script not to work, at this point I'm only trying to get
emacs to do the very first, very smallest step in sending an email in
batch mode.  If emacs needs to do more than this in order to function at
all, that's fine.  I'm just trying to keep things as absolutely simple
as possible.  I'll be delighted if emacs does something that even
remotely looks like sending an email.


Thanks very much for your assistance.

Re: batch mode to send an email

[Kevin Rodgers]

ken wrote:
> Trying to get emacs to send an email.  I've heard other people have
> gotten this to work and have even been using it.  So I'm hoping I won't
> have to upgrade anything to accomplish this.
> 
> I've read a lot of documentation on sending email with emacs.  But what
> has been hinted at there hasn't yet worked for me (in many years).
> (Yeah, I used to use gnus, but switched long ago... another story,
> irrelevant here.)
> 
> To eliminate the possibility of misconfiguration in ~/.emacs, I'm
> calling the elisp file from a tiny bash script.  I.e., if the
> documentation on using emacs in batch mode is correct, ~/.emacs is not
> read when emacs is called in batch mode.

That is correct.

> To lower the bar for emacs as far as possible, at this point in
> development I'm only asking the elisp script to send something--
> anything at all, even garbage-- to port 25 on a server we'll call
> mail.server.tld.  That is, at this point it doesn't have to (though it
> may and eventually must) specify a local user, a destination email
> address, subject line and other headers, body of the email.  In order to
> eliminate as much as possible any misconfiguration which would cause the
> entire elisp script not to work, at this point I'm only trying to get
> emacs to do the very first, very smallest step in sending an email in
> batch mode.  If emacs needs to do more than this in order to function at
> all, that's fine.  I'm just trying to keep things as absolutely simple
> as possible.  I'll be delighted if emacs does something that even
> remotely looks like sending an email.

(setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it
       smtpmail-smtp-server "mail.server.tld")

(setq mail-default-headers
       "X-RTFM: Sending Mail; Mail Sending; (smtpmail)Emacs Speaks SMTP\n")

(mail nil "someuser@somewhere.somedomain" "my favorite subject")

(insert "Blah, blah, blah.\n")

(mail-send-and-exit)

-- 
Kevin

Re: batch mode to send an email

[ken]

Kevin Rodgers wrote:
> ken wrote:
>> Trying to get emacs to send an email.  I've heard other people have
>> gotten this to work and have even been using it.  So I'm hoping I won't
>> have to upgrade anything to accomplish this.
>>
>> I've read a lot of documentation on sending email with emacs.  But what
>> has been hinted at there hasn't yet worked for me (in many years).
>> (Yeah, I used to use gnus, but switched long ago... another story,
>> irrelevant here.)
>>
>> To eliminate the possibility of misconfiguration in ~/.emacs, I'm
>> calling the elisp file from a tiny bash script.  I.e., if the
>> documentation on using emacs in batch mode is correct, ~/.emacs is not
>> read when emacs is called in batch mode.
> 
> That is correct.
> 
>> To lower the bar for emacs as far as possible, at this point in
>> development I'm only asking the elisp script to send something--
>> anything at all, even garbage-- to port 25 on a server we'll call
>> mail.server.tld.  That is, at this point it doesn't have to (though it
>> may and eventually must) specify a local user, a destination email
>> address, subject line and other headers, body of the email.  In order to
>> eliminate as much as possible any misconfiguration which would cause the
>> entire elisp script not to work, at this point I'm only trying to get
>> emacs to do the very first, very smallest step in sending an email in
>> batch mode.  If emacs needs to do more than this in order to function at
>> all, that's fine.  I'm just trying to keep things as absolutely simple
>> as possible.  I'll be delighted if emacs does something that even
>> remotely looks like sending an email.
> 
> (setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it
>       smtpmail-smtp-server "mail.server.tld")
> 
> (setq mail-default-headers
>       "X-RTFM: Sending Mail; Mail Sending; (smtpmail)Emacs Speaks SMTP\n")
> 
> (mail nil "someuser@somewhere.somedomain" "my favorite subject")
> 
> (insert "Blah, blah, blah.\n")
> 
> (mail-send-and-exit)
> 

Kevin,

Thanks very much for your reply.  But it didn't work.  All I did was
change the destination email address and the mail server to actual,
existing values.

The error I got was:

Wrong number of arguments: #[(arg)
("/usr/share/emacs/21.3/lisp/mail/sendmail.elc" . 21146) nil 2
("/usr/share/emacs/21.3/lisp/mail/sendmail.elc" . 20985) "P"], 0

(all on one line, of course.  My mail client autowraps.)

I commented out ''(mail nil ....)'' and the error went away.

"C-h f mail" says there can be more args, but doesn't say it must.  I'm
not certain how to fix this line.

Re: batch mode to send an email

[Kevin Rodgers]

ken wrote:
> Kevin Rodgers wrote:
>> 
>> (setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it
>>       smtpmail-smtp-server "mail.server.tld")
>>
>> (setq mail-default-headers
>>       "X-RTFM: Sending Mail; Mail Sending; (smtpmail)Emacs Speaks SMTP\n")
>>
>> (mail nil "someuser@somewhere.somedomain" "my favorite subject")
>>
>> (insert "Blah, blah, blah.\n")
>>
>> (mail-send-and-exit)
>>
> 
> Kevin,
> 
> Thanks very much for your reply.  But it didn't work.  All I did was
> change the destination email address and the mail server to actual,
> existing values.
> 
> The error I got was:
> 
> Wrong number of arguments: #[(arg)
> ("/usr/share/emacs/21.3/lisp/mail/sendmail.elc" . 21146) nil 2
> ("/usr/share/emacs/21.3/lisp/mail/sendmail.elc" . 20985) "P"], 0
> 
> (all on one line, of course.  My mail client autowraps.)
> 
> I commented out ''(mail nil ....)'' and the error went away.
> 
> "C-h f mail" says there can be more args, but doesn't say it must.  I'm
> not certain how to fix this line.

Mail accepts anywhere between 0 and 7 arguments:

(mail &optional noerase to subject in-reply-to cc replybuffer actions)

The call above passes 3, so I can't imagine why it is complaining.

-- 
Kevin