Non graphical web browser and sending mails with RPi

This article is about setting up an automated task, using Lynx and sSMTP.

The goal is to set up a script which will automatically send an email to you with the current external IP address.

Lynx is a text browser for the web which you can use through the terminal. 
sSMTP is a lightweight mail client (it can not send attachments).

• first install Lynx

sudo apt-get install lynx

You're done. Try this command line and see the result:

lynx -dump http://ipecho.net/plain 

(so this command reads the output of the webpage http://ipecho.net/plain and prints it out)

• now install sSMTP

sudo apt-get install ssmtp

edit the ssmtp.conf file

sudo nano /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf

verify that these settings are applied:

• root=postmaster 

• mailhub=smtp.gmail.com:587 

• hostname=raspberrypi 

• AuthUser=YourGmailUserName@gmail.com 

• AuthPass=YourGmailPassword 

• UseSTARTTLS=YES 

To be clear: in this case, the setup is for a gmail account. Change the mailhub if you use another account. Verify your hostname and enter your credentials.

Save and close this file.

Now edit the file revaliases

sudo nano /etc/ssmtp/revaliases

and add a line

pi:youremail@gmail.com:smtp.gmail.com:587  

Save and close this file.

Set permissions for ssmtp.conf to 774

sudo chmod 774 /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf 

to test, try: lynx -dump http://ipecho.net/plain | mail -s "Your PI IP" me@myemailaddress.com

•  instead of typing the complete command, you can create a script. Move to the directory where you want to create it, for example /home/pi and type:

sudo nano sendmemyIP.sh

copy the command line from above into the script and save and close it.

to make a cron job of this, you can copy this script to the hourly crons or daily crons, whichever you prefer:

sudo cp sendmemyIP.sh /etc/cron.hourly/sendmemyIP.sh