telnet your.smtp.server 25
HELO your.ip
MAIL FROM:
RCPT TO:
DATA
Subject: YOUR SUBJECT
Your message then end with a point
.
(then disconnect)

I can successfully make Thunderbird open a compose window to send a mail, but I really want it to happen in the background with NO human interaction. Is there an option I can give Thunderbird on the command line to send the message straight away ?

This is what I’ve got so far :-

thunderbird -compose “preselectid=id3,to=fred.bloggs@gmail.com,subject=’Dropbox Sync Log `date +%D`’,body=’`cat ~/Dropbox/sync_log.txt`’,format=2,attachment=’~/Dropbox/sync_log.txt'”

I fully realise I don’t need to attach a file as well as catting it into the message. I’ve just left it in to show that attachments are possible from the command line, that’s all.

If someone knows how to make Thunderbird actually send the email from the command line instead of opening a window in Thunderbird client, I’d be delighted to hear from you.

Many thanks,

Colin

[QUOTE from man]
–body [body-specification]
Specify the body of the email. The default is “This is a test
mailing”. If no argument to –body is given, prompt to supply one
interactively. If ‘-‘ is supplied, the body will be read from
standard input. If any other text is provided and the text
represents an open-able file, the content of that file is used as
the body. If it does not represent an open-able file, the text
itself is used as the body.

If the message is forced to MIME format (see –attach) the argument
to this option will be included unencoded as the first MIME part.
Its content-type will always be text/plain.

[/QUOTE]

I use it to send by emails files generated directly on a server.