From sadeep at asciimx.com  Sun Oct 19 03:50:42 2025
From: sadeep at asciimx.com (W. D. Sadeep)
Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2025 11:50:42 +0800
Subject: How to send a PGP-encrypted email from the CLI?
Message-ID: <aPRgEicJoMGY1Hu9@wd>

Hello,

I'm trying to send an encrypted email via a cron job. I can't get it to
work. For instance, I tried the following command, but it opens up mutt
for an interactive session:

echo "encrypted msg" | gpg -e --armor -f <pub_key> | \ 
    mutt -s "PGP test" \
         -e "my_hdr MIME-Version: 1.0" \
         -e "my_hdr Content-Type: application/pgp-encrypted" \
         -e "my_hdr Content-Disposition: inline" me at example.com

Also tried the following:

echo "encrypted msg" | gpg -e --armor -f <pub_key> | \ 
    mutt -s "PGP test" \
         -e "my_hdr MIME-Version: 1.0" \
         -e "my_hdr Content-Type: multipart/encrypted; protocol='application/pgp-encrypted'" \
         -e "my_hdr Content-Disposition: inline" me at example.com

And I get the error: Error in command line:
protocol=application/pgp-encrypted: unknown command

Is there a way to accomplish this (ideally, without creating temporary
files for the encrypted part)?

-- 
W. D. Sadeep 
PGP: 103BF9E3E750BF7E

From nunojsilva at ist.utl.pt  Sun Oct 19 10:25:12 2025
From: nunojsilva at ist.utl.pt (Nuno Silva)
Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2025 11:25:12 +0100
Subject: How to send a PGP-encrypted email from the CLI?
References: <aPRgEicJoMGY1Hu9@wd>
Message-ID: <10d2ea8$rh1$2@ciao.gmane.io>

On 2025-10-19, W. D. Sadeep wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm trying to send an encrypted email via a cron job. I can't get it to
> work. For instance, I tried the following command, but it opens up mutt
> for an interactive session:
>
> echo "encrypted msg" | gpg -e --armor -f <pub_key> | \ 
>     mutt -s "PGP test" \
>          -e "my_hdr MIME-Version: 1.0" \
>          -e "my_hdr Content-Type: application/pgp-encrypted" \
>          -e "my_hdr Content-Disposition: inline" me at example.com
>
> Also tried the following:
>
> echo "encrypted msg" | gpg -e --armor -f <pub_key> | \ 
>     mutt -s "PGP test" \
>          -e "my_hdr MIME-Version: 1.0" \
>          -e "my_hdr Content-Type: multipart/encrypted; protocol='application/pgp-encrypted'" \
>          -e "my_hdr Content-Disposition: inline" me at example.com
>
> And I get the error: Error in command line:
> protocol=application/pgp-encrypted: unknown command
>
> Is there a way to accomplish this (ideally, without creating temporary
> files for the encrypted part)?

For the second invocation:

Any chance that you have to either enclose the Content-Type value in
quotes or escape the semicolon there?

-- 
Nuno Silva


From ckeader at disroot.org  Sun Oct 19 21:46:20 2025
From: ckeader at disroot.org (ckeader)
Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2025 22:46:20 +0100
Subject: How to send a PGP-encrypted email from the CLI?
In-Reply-To: <aPRgEicJoMGY1Hu9@wd>
References: <aPRgEicJoMGY1Hu9@wd>
Message-ID: <aPVb7-Ji2ofH9ope@localhost.localdomain>


> And I get the error: Error in command line:
> protocol=application/pgp-encrypted: unknown command
> 
> Is there a way to accomplish this (ideally, without creating temporary
> files for the encrypted part)?

This is an intriguingly simple question, and I thought I had an answer,
but it seems this is not currently possible. All methods I came across
involve encrypting the message and then piping it into mutt. Not
surprisingly, the question has been asked here multiple times.

This message, "https://marc.info/?l=mutt-users&m=113222153115670&w=2",
says:

| ... As I was told here in the list, the command line code 
| doesn't allow encryption.

 And I'm wondering why that is. It should be possible especially since
 modern versions of gnupg use gpg-agent, and when mutt is built with the
 gpgme interface.