How to attach a file using mail command on Linux

Question

I m on a server running a Linux shell   I need to mail a simple file to a recipient   How to do this  prefereably using only the mail command    UPDATE  got a good solution  using mutt instead     echo   mutt -a syslogs tar gz admin domain org

User · Accepted Answer

Example using uuencode   uuencode surfing jpeg surfing jpeg   mail sylvia home com   and reference article   http   www shelldorado com articles mailattachments html  Note   you may apt install sharutils to have uuencode command

User · Answer

The following is a decent solution across Unix Linux installations  that does not rely on any unusual program features  This supports a multi-line message body  multiple attachments  and all the other typical features of mailx   Unfortunately  it does not fit on a single line      bin ksh    Get the date stamp for temporary files DT STAMP  date    C y m d H M S      Create a multi-line body echo  here you put the message body which can be split across multiple lines  woohoo     gt  body-  DT STAMP  mail    Add several attachments uuencode File1 pdf File1 pdf  gt   attachments-  DT STAMP  mail uuencode File2 pdf File2 pdf  gt  gt  attachments-  DT STAMP  mail    Put everything together and send it off  cat body-  DT STAMP  mail attachments-  DT STAMP  mail  gt  out-  DT STAMP  mail mailx -s  here you put the message subject  nobody test-address com  lt  out-  DT STAMP  mail    Clean up temporary files rm body-  DT STAMP  mail rm attachments-  DT STAMP  mail rm out-  DT STAMP  mail

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On Linux I would suggest     FILE TO BE ATTACHED abc gz  uuencode abc gz abc gz  gt  abc gz enc   This is optional  but good to have                                       to prevent binary file corruption                                        also it make sure to get original                                        file on other system  w o worry of endianness    Sending Mail  multiple attachments  and multiple receivers  echo  Body Part of Mail    mailx -s  Subject Line  -a attachment1 -a abc gz enc  youremail domain com anotheremail domain com    Upon receiving mail attachment  if you have used uuencode  you would need uudecode  uudecode abc gz enc     This will generate file as original with name as same as the 2nd argument for uuencode

User · Answer

Using ubuntu 10 4  this is how the mutt solution is written  echo   mutt -a myfile zip -- admin domain org

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With mailx you can do   mailx -s  My Subject   -a   mail att csv -S from noreply foo com  recipient bar com  lt    mail body txt   This worked great on our GNU Linux servers  but unfortunately my dev environment is Mac OsX which only has a crummy old BSD version of mailx  Normally I use Coreutils to get better versions of unix commands than the Mac BSD ones  but mailx is not in Coreutils   I found a solution from notpeter in an unrelated thread  https   serverfault com questions 196001 using-unix-mail-mailx-with-a-modern-mail-server-imap-instead-of-mbox-files  which was to download the Heirloom mailx OSX binary package from http   www tramm li iWiki HeirloomNotes html  It has a more featured mailx which can handle the above command syntax    Apologies for poor cross linking linking or attribution  I m new to the site

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There are a lot of answers here using mutt or mailx or people saying mail doesn t support  -a   First  Ubuntu 14 0 4 mail from mailutils supports this   mail -A filename -s  subject  email example com  Second  I found that by using the  man mail  command and searching for  attach

User · Answer

echo   mutt -a syslogs tar gz admin domain org   But it uses mutt  not mail  or mailx

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mpack -a -s Hey  might this serve as your report   -m 0 -c application x-tar-gz survey results tar gz hesco example net  mpack and munpack work together with metamail to extend mailx  and make it useful with modern email cluttered with html mark up and attachments     Those four packages taken together will permit you to handle  any email you could in a gui mail client

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mailx might help as well   From the mailx man page   -a file      Attach the given file to the message    Pretty easy  right

User · Answer

I use mailutils and the confusing part is that in order to attach a file you need to use the capital A parameter  below is an example   echo  here you put the message body    mail -A syslogs tar gz admin domain org   If you want to know if your mail command is from mailutils just run  mail -V    root your-server    mail -V mail  GNU Mailutils  2 99 98 Copyright  C  2010 Free Software Foundation  inc  License GPLv3   GNU GPL version 3 or later  lt http   gnu org licenses gpl html gt  This is free software  you are free to change and redistribute it  There is NO WARRANTY  to the extent permitted by law

User · Answer

mailx -a  path to file email address   You might go into interactive mode  it will prompt you with  Subject    and then a blank line   enter a subject  then enter a body and hit Ctrl D  EOT  to finish

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mail on every version of modern Linux that I ve tried can do it  No need for other software   matiu matiu-laptop    mail -a doc jpg someone somewhere com Subject  testing  This is a test EOT   ctrl d when you re done typing

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My answer needs base64 in addition to mail  but some uuencode versions can also do base64 with -m  or you can forget about mime and use the plain uuencode output        FROM me mydomain com    TO someone mydomain com    SUBJECT  Auto emailed     MIME  application x-gzip     Adjust this to the proper mime-type of file    FILE somefile tar gz    ENCODING base64      boundary  ---my-unlikely-text-for-mime-boundary---  --        cat  lt  lt EOF     From   FROM     To   REPORT DEST     Subject   SUBJECT     Date    date    a   b  e  Y  T  z       Mime-Version  1 0     Content-Type  multipart mixed  boundary   boundary      Content-Disposition  inline      -- boundary     Content-Type  text plain  charset us-ascii     Content-Disposition  inline      This email has attached the file      -- boundary     Content-Type   MIME name   FILE      Content-Disposition  attachment filename   FILE      Content-Transfer-Encoding   ENCODING      EOF     base64  FILE     echo        echo  -- boundary      mail

[linux] How to attach a file using mail command on Linux?

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