How to send HTML email using linux command line

Question

I need to send email with html format. I have only linux command line and command "mail".

Currently have used:

echo "To: [email protected]" > /var/www/report.csv
echo "Subject: Subject" >> /var/www/report.csv
echo "Content-Type: text/html; charset=\"us-ascii\"" >> /var/www/report.csv

echo "<html>" >> /var/www/report.csv
mysql -u ***** -p***** -H -e "select * from users LIMIT 20" dev >> /var/www/report.csv
echo "</html>" >> /var/www/report.csv

mail -s "Built notification" [email protected] < /var/www/report.csv

But in my mail-agent i get only plain/text.

alt text

Readers of answers to this question beware: there are several different programs called mail, for example heirloom-mailx and bsd-mailx on Debian jessie. If a mail command from an answer here doesn't work for you, you're probably using the wrong mail. Refer to your distribution's package manager to install the correct package, and use the specific name of that binary (e.g. bsd-mailx on Debian) to resolve that issue. More details on this here: heirloom.sourceforge.net/mailx_history.html — Martin von Wittich
– Martin von Wittich, Commented Oct 18, 2017 at 7:52

Dude · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-28 16:57:20Z

67

This worked for me:

echo "<b>HTML Message goes here</b>" | mail -s "$(echo -e "This is the subject\nContent-Type: text/html")" [email protected]

edited Apr 28, 2011 at 16:57

answered Apr 28, 2011 at 16:51

Dude

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13 Comments

mc0e Over a year ago

I'd say that's a bug in OSX's implementation of mail, though it'd need to be combined with other bugs to be exploitable. I'm sure there would be a few web scripts around that don't properly check for carriage returns in what they insert into subject lines.

Wally Over a year ago

works on AIX 7.1.0.0! Oh, and word to the wise, the backticks don't work (in ksh) but the $( ) do.

Sergey Petrunin Over a year ago

Worked on Debian Wheezy

TheWalkingData Over a year ago

Works on Godaddy and Amazon Linux

Kisor Biswal Over a year ago

Doesn't work in Oracle Linux 7.4. Getting the context as text along with <b> tag.

Magda LAITI Aug 11 at 15:29

Hello, please how did you fix it ? Thank you.

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Ole Tange · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-04 11:18:06Z

48

My version of mail does not have --append and it too smart for the echo -e \n-trick (it simply replaces \n with space). It does, however, have -a:

mail -a "Content-type: text/html" -s "Built notification" [email protected] < /var/www/report.html

answered Sep 4, 2012 at 11:18

Ole Tange

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6 Comments

kidmose Over a year ago

Works on ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS, mail set to bsd-mailx

m3nda Over a year ago

I use this way echo `curl -L www.google.es` | mail -a "Content-type: text/html" -s "website content" [email protected] instead of <. For my convenience, i create a /usr/local/bin script to bypass the most of the command. I just use wmail url email

Valter Ekholm Over a year ago

I tried it but SpamAssassin gave me lower score than I got without the -a "Cont...", maybe beacuse I didn't have text as html

Saikiran Over a year ago

I get no such file or directory for content type with mail and mailx

daveg Over a year ago

I also get "Content-type: text/html: No such file or directory". Are you sure the "-a" is right ?

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Eric Leschinski · Accepted Answer · 2023-02-08 14:18:45Z

38

Send email using command Line

This answer is over 11 years old, these days I use python's import ezgmail for a 4 line plug, auth and play solution

Create a file named tmp.html with the following contents:

<b>my bold message</b>

Next, paste the following into the command line (parentheses and all):

(
  echo To: [email protected]
  echo From: [email protected]
  echo "Content-Type: text/html; "
  echo Subject: a logfile
  echo
  cat tmp.html
) | sendmail -t

The mail will be dispatched including a bold message due to the <b> element.

Shell Script

As a script, save the following as email.sh:

ARG_EMAIL_TO="[email protected]"
ARG_EMAIL_FROM="Your Name <[email protected]>"
ARG_EMAIL_SUBJECT="Subject Line"

(
  echo "To: ${ARG_EMAIL_TO}"
  echo "From: ${ARG_EMAIL_FROM}"
  echo "Subject: ${ARG_EMAIL_SUBJECT}"
  echo "Mime-Version: 1.0"
  echo "Content-Type: text/html; charset='utf-8'"
  echo
  cat contents.html
) | sendmail -t

Create a file named contents.html in the same directory as the email.sh script that resembles:

<html><head><title>Subject Line</title></head>
<body>
  <p style='color:red'>HTML Content</p>
</body>
</html>

Run email.sh. When the email arrives, the HTML Content text will appear red.

--append lets you add arbitrary headers to the mail, which is where you should specify the content-type and content-disposition. There's no need to embed the To and Subject headers in your file, or specify them with --append, since you're implicitly setting them on the command line already (-s is the subject, and [email protected] automatically becomes the To).

answered Apr 7, 2010 at 22:17

Marc B

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2 Comments

Tom Over a year ago

don't have that option on my mail command mail: invalid option -- a Usage: mail [-iInv] [-s subject] [-c cc-addr] [-b bcc-addr] to-addr ... [-- sendmail-options ...] mail [-iInNv] -f [name] mail [-iInNv] [-u user]

Marc B Over a year ago

@nylund: mail (GNU Mailutils 2.2). this is off ubuntu 12.04, but will be in older versions as well, given this answer's almost 3 years old now.

loentar · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-17 07:01:45Z

3

With heirloom-mailx you can change sendmail program to your hook script, replace headers there and then use sendmail.

The script I use (~/bin/sendmail-hook):

#!/bin/bash

sed '1,/^$/{
s,^\(Content-Type: \).*$,\1text/html; charset=utf-8,g
s,^\(Content-Transfer-Encoding: \).*$,\18bit,g
}' | sendmail $@

This script changes the values in the mail header as follows:

Content-Type: to text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: to 8bit (not sure if this is really needed).

To send HTML email:

mail -Ssendmail='~/bin/sendmail-hook' \
    -s "Built notification" [email protected] < /var/www/report.csv

answered Sep 17, 2014 at 7:01

loentar

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4 Comments

bgStack15 Over a year ago

For some reason I can't get this to work in a function, but you can indeed use this as a separate executable file. This worked when other suggestions on this page did not.

loentar Over a year ago

You can't get this work as a function because mail's process spawned don't have access to functions in your bash script

bgStack15 Over a year ago

[Can't figure out how to take this to a chat or PM.] Could I source my mail command? . mail -Ssendmail='~/bin/sendmail-hook' -s "Subject" [email protected] < inputfile

loentar Over a year ago

You cannot source it, because it is binary. You should create own bash script with those commands and (if you need that) source it.

ghostdog74 · Accepted Answer · 2010-04-07 10:56:09Z

2

you should use "append" mode redirection >> instead of >

answered Apr 7, 2010 at 10:56

ghostdog74

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1 Comment

Cristian Ciupitu Over a year ago

I think this should have been a comment, not an answer.

Cromax · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-16 05:51:55Z

I was struggling with similar problem (with mail) in one of my git's post_receive hooks and finally I found out, that sendmail actually works better for that kind of things, especially if you know a bit of how e-mails are constructed (and it seems like you know). I know this answer comes very late, but maybe it will be of some use to others too. I made use of heredoc operator and use of the feature, that it expands variables, so it can also run inlined scripts. Just check this out (bash script):

#!/bin/bash
recipients=(
    '[email protected]'
    '[email protected]'
#   '[email protected]'
);
sender='[email protected]';
subject='Oh, who really cares, seriously...';
sendmail -t <<-MAIL
    From: ${sender}
    `for r in "${recipients[@]}"; do echo "To: ${r}"; done;`
    Subject: ${subject}
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

    <html><head><meta charset="UTF-8"/></head>
    <body><p>Ladies and gents, here comes the report!</p>
    <pre>`mysql -u ***** -p***** -H -e "SELECT * FROM users LIMIT 20"`</pre>
    </body></html>
MAIL

Note of backticks in the MAIL part to generate some output and remember, that <<- operator strips only tabs (not spaces) from the beginning of lines, so in that case copy-paste will not work (you need to replace indentation with proper tabs). Or use << operator and make no indentation at all. Hope this will help someone. Of course you can use backticks outside o MAIL part and save the output into some variable, that you can later use in the MAIL part — matter of taste and readability. And I know, #!/bin/bash does not always work on every system.

Muc · Accepted Answer · 2017-11-17 13:11:06Z

2

I found a really easy solution: add to the mail command the modifier -aContent-Type:text/html.

In your case would be:

mail -aContent-Type:text/html -s "Built notification" [email protected] < /var/www/report.csv

answered Nov 17, 2017 at 13:11

Muc

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5 Comments

Saikiran Over a year ago

But I get no such file or directory when am using this

Muc Over a year ago

@eightStacker: is there a file called report.csv in your /var/www directory? If not you should replace that with the file you want to send. Also [email protected] is an example, you have to replace that with the actual destinatary of your message

Muc Over a year ago

@Zafar same thing I told eightStacker :)

ecedenyo Over a year ago

-a option is for "attachment"... I'm working with version "12.5 7/5/10" on a CentOS 7.4 server; in other comments they talk about --append, and this is not even an option ... why so many (apparently) mail implementations?

tripleee Over a year ago

See also stackoverflow.com/a/48588035/874188 which discusses the many mail implementations and how to know which one you have.

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 10:31:31Z

1

Very old question, however it ranked high when I googled a question about this.

Find the answer here:

Sending HTML mail using a shell script

edited May 23, 2017 at 10:31

CommunityBot

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answered Mar 27, 2012 at 7:57

Magge

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Comments

Simone Margaritelli · Accepted Answer · 2010-04-07 10:59:01Z

0

Try with :

echo "To: [email protected]" > /var/www/report.csv
echo "Subject: Subject" >> /var/www/report.csv
echo "MIME-Version: 1.0" >> /var/www/report.csv
echo "Content-Type: text/html; charset=\"us-ascii\"" >> /var/www/report.csv
echo "Content-Disposition: inline" >> /var/www/report.csv

echo "<html>" >> /var/www/report.csv
mysql -u ***** -p***** -H -e "select * from users LIMIT 20" dev >> /var/www/report.csv
echo "</html>" >> /var/www/report.csv

mail -s "Built notification" [email protected] < /var/www/report.csv

answered Apr 7, 2010 at 10:59

Simone Margaritelli

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2 Comments

lrkwz Over a year ago

This does not work. $ lsb_release -a Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS Release: 10.04 Codename: lucid

Alpesh Gediya Over a year ago

@Simone, this is not working perfectly because of order of MIME-Version and Content-Tye. You need to put this information prior to Subject to work for most of the unix/linux flavor.

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