A.P. Lawrence

This article is from a FAQ concerning SCO operating systems. While some of the information may be applicable to any OS, or any Unix or Linux OS, it may be specific to SCO Xenix, Open Desktop or Openserver.

There is lots of Linux, Mac OS X and general Unix info elsewhere on this site: Search this site is the best way to find anything.

Unix, Xenix and ODT General FAQ

How can I send attachments from the command line?

Using mail from the command line: if you want to send true attachments (that show up in graphical mail clients as attachments), you need something like "mutt" (available from Skunkware and ftp://aplawrence.com/pub/mutt_osr5.tar.Z).

If it's just arbitrary text or a file you want to send, and don't care about it looking like a real attachment, you can use ordinary mail and do

mailx -s "This is it" someone@someplace < somefile

or

echo "text
more text" | mailx somebody somebodyelse fred@fred.com

You can use uuencode to send a binary file the same way, and some mail clients may even display that as they would a "real" attachment.

However: that's NOT an attachment. Every time somebody asks this question on the newsgroup, someone is sure to insist that it is, but a simple visual examination of actual messages should show them their error. The confusion is, of course, that some mail clients will act as though the uuencoded text were a proper attachment. That's fine if the people you are sending to use one of those clients, but if there is any chance they do not, be safe: use Mutt.

Comments /SCOFAQ/FAQ_scotec6mailxmutt.html
To send an attachment via email from a command prompt, you can use the tool 'email'. This can be found at http://email.cleancode.org. This tool can use remote SMTP servers as well as "sendmail" to send messages. It also allows *proper* attachments. An example:

email -s "Attachment" -a coolpic.jpg user@domain.com

You can also redirect text:

email -s "Attachement" -a coolpic.jpg user@domain.com < somefile

You can send an empty email with just the attachment:

email -s "Attachment" -a coolpic.jpg -b user@domain.com

Email can also send to SMTP servers that expect authentication (SMTP AUTH) and has neat features such as an address book and dynamic signature files. Email ALSO works well with GPG/PGP for encryption.


--

Thanks: See http://aplawrence.com/Reviews/cleancodeemail.html

--TonyLawrence


---December 30, 2004

I use "mpack", which I just found in debian repository.

e.g.:
mpack -s "My Subject" /tmp/myfile user@domain.com

Edward van Kuik

---


---December 30, 2004



Mon Apr 16 19:36:06 2007: Subject: Mutt email attachment.   weiss1rogerscom
I have been using MUTT to send email with pdf or htm attachments from the command line. Works well as long as you have a proper .mime file setup.



Cheers

Mon May 19 20:46:07 2008: Subject:   anonymous


I just found nail which is a command line replacement for mail and supports attachments.

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