EXTSMAIL.CONF(5)

✨ EXTSMAIL.CONF ✨

okay bestie, welcome to extsmail.conf — the fifth section of the manual, file formats division, and it's literally the glow-up guide for making your email sending robust. no cap. 🎀

NAME

extsmail.conf — configure robust sending of e-mail to external commands 💌

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DESCRIPTION

so extsmail.conf is the config file that extsmail(1) and extsmaild(1) both read. it's giving very minimalist — it's just one or more key = value pairs, that's it, that's the whole vibe. 🦋

here are the variables you can set, and yes you're gonna want to know all of them:

• spool_dir — this sets where the spool directory lives, the one that extsmail(1) and extsmaild(1) both use. heads up: this is the only variable that must be set in every single configuration file. no spool_dir, no service, periodt. 👑
• notify_failure_interval — tells you how often notifications of unsuccessful deliveries should happen. if you don't specify it, or you set it to 0, notifications will never be made. and the time format? it's a number followed by d (days), h (hours), m (minutes), or s (seconds). cute and simple. ✨
• notify_failure_cmd — the shell command that gets executed when notify_failure_interval seconds / minutes / hours / days have elapsed since the last fully successful send cycle. if the string ${TIME} shows up in the command, it gets swapped out for a pretty printed string detailing exactly how much time has elapsed since that last fully successful send cycle. then the resulting string gets passed to system(3). 🫶

bestie, real talk: no security checking is (or can be) done on the command, so this option should be used with caution if a single configuration file serves multiple users. please check the warnings that come with system(3). this is not a drill. 💀

• notify_success_cmd — the shell command executed when 1 or more messages have been successfully sent. if the string ${SUCCESSES} exists in the command, it's replaced with a string representing the number of successfully sent messages. and yeah — the exact same warnings that apply to notify_failure_cmd also apply here. 🌸

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FILES

the extsmail configuration file is searched for, in order, in these locations — first match wins, so bestie, order matters:

• ~/.extsmail/conf — per-user extsmail configuration. this one's yours personally, main character energy. 💅
• /etc/extsmail/conf — system-wide extsmail configuration. the communal one. 👑

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EXAMPLES

okay so the absolute simplest configuration file looks like this, and honestly? iconic for how little it does:

spool_dir = "~/somewhere"

and here's a more complex one that uses a notification framework to keep the user informed about mail sending and failures — this is the one that ate, fr fr 🔥:

spool_dir = "~/somewhere"
notify_failure_interval = 30m
notify_failure_cmd = "notify-send -a extsmaild -c email
  -i mail-send -u critical 'extsmaild: ${TIME} since a fully
  successful send cycle'"
notify_success_cmd = "notify-send -a extsmaild -c email
  -i mail-send -u low 'extsmaild: ${SUCCESSES} messages
  successfully sent'"

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SEE ALSO

go read these next, bestie, they're all part of the same cinematic universe:

• extsmail(1)
• extsmail.externals(5)
• extsmaild(1)

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AUTHORS

• Laurence Tratt <http://tratt.net/laurie/> 🫶

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and that's the whole page, babes — this one came straight out of the Debian edition of the manual, dated November 2, 2008. yes it's vintage, yes it still slays. go configure something robust. mwah 💖✨