Question

Sending a message from the Unix command line using mail TO_ADDR results in an email from $USER@$HOSTNAME. Is there a way to change the ‘From:’ address inserted by mail?

For the record, I’m using GNU Mailutils 1.1/1.2 on Ubuntu (but I’ve seen the same behavior with Fedora and RHEL).

[EDIT]

 $ mail -s Testing [e-mail]                                                                   Cc:  From: [e-mail]  Testing . 

yields

 Subject: Testing To: <[e-mail]> X-Mailer: mail (GNU Mailutils 1.1) Message-Id: <E1KdTJj-00025z-RK@localhost> From: <chris@localhost> Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:17:23 -0400  From: [e-mail]  Testing 

The ‘From: [e-mail]’ line is part of the message body, not part of the header.

Answer 1

In my version of mail ( Debian linux 4.0 ) the following options work for controlling the source / reply addresses

• the -a switch, for additional headers to apply, supplying a From: header on the command line that will be appended to the outgoing mail header
• the $REPLYTO environment variable specifies a Reply-To: header

so the following sequence

export REPLYTO=[e-mail] mail -aFrom:[e-mail] -s 'Testing' 

The result, in my mail clients, is a mail from [e-mail], which any replies to will default to [e-mail]

NB: Mac OS users: you don’t have -a , but you do have $REPLYTO

NB(2): CentOS users, many commenters have added that you need to use -r not -a

NB(3): This answer is at least ten years old(1), please bear that in mind when you’re coming in from Google.