---
name: "innmail"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "inn"
version: "2.7.4-4"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/innmail"
---

# innmail(1)

Simple mail-sending program

## NAME

innmail - Simple mail-sending program

## SYNOPSIS

**innmail** \[**-h**\] \[**-a** *header*\] \[**-s** *subject*\] *address* \[*address* ...\]

## DESCRIPTION

**innmail** is a Perl script intended to provide the non-interactive mail-sending functionality of [mail(1)](/mail/1.md) while avoiding nasty security problems.  It takes the body of a mail message on standard input and sends it to the specified addresses by invoking the value of *mta* in *inn.conf*.

At least one address (formatted for the MTA specified in *inn.conf*, if it matters) is required.  **innmail** will sanitize the addresses so that they contain only alphanumerics and the symbols `"@"`, `"."`, `"-"`, `"+"`, `"_"`, and `"%"`.

**innmail** was written to be suitable for the *mailcmd* setting in *inn.conf*.

## OPTIONS

- **-a** *header*

  Specifies an additional header field to add in the headers of the message. It should be a well-formed header field surrounded by quotes, consisting of a name and a body separated with a colon and a space.  For instance, `"Auto-Submitted: auto-generated"` is used by some programs invoking **innmail**.

  You may provide more than one header field if *header* is a multi-line string, which can for instance be done with these commands:

  ```
      HEADERS=$(echo -e "Hdr1: Body1\nHdr2: Body2")
      echo "test" | innmail -a "$HEADERS" -s Test joe
  ```

- **-h**

  Gives usage information.

- **-s** *subject*

  Sets the Subject header field body of the message.  A warning is issued if this option is omitted.

## EXAMPLES

This sends a one-line message to the local user `"joe"`:

```
    echo "A one-line message." | innmail -s "Simple message" joe
```

**innmail** by default is used by INN for sending nightly reports to the news administrator, as well as errors during the execution of a few programs.

## BUGS

**innmail** fails on addresses that begin with `"-"`, although one might hope that the news server will not need to contact any such addresses.

There are many "correct" addresses that will be silently modified by the sanitization process.  A news administrator should be careful to use particularly sane addresses if they may be passed to **innmail**.

## HISTORY

**innmail** was written by James Brister \<brister@vix.com\> for InterNetNews.  This manual page was originally written by Jeffrey M. Vinocur.

## SEE ALSO

[inn.conf(5)](/inn.conf/5.md), [mail(1)](/mail/1.md).