How can I send an email from the command line?

[Neil Woolford]

Hi all,

I'd like to semi-automatically send a short email of system information
from my brother's computer to mine.  The nearer I can get to a 'one
click' process the better.

Evolution works fine on my brother's machine, and he knows how to use
the basic mail features.  So if I could get a script to start evolution
and fill in a message, he could easily send it to me.  Frustratingly,
while I can find how to initiate a message from the command line
("evolution mailto:joe at soap.com"), I can't find out how to insert text
into the message from the command line.  This must be possible, as Gnome
does it when sending an invitation to a VNC session.  I can't find any
proper man pages about using Evolution from the command line, so I'm
stuck.

Any suggestions?

Neil

PS I have already tried 'mail' at the command line;  this worked for
sending mails between local users on my machine, but although a data
package did appear to leave when I tried to send to a full email address
via my ISP, nothing arrived and no error messages were given.  (I
understand that other people's mileage varies here...).

If someone could point me in the right direction to configure this so
that it works, that would be another way to solve the problem.