Send email from UNIX command with attachment and HTML message body

Question

This may sound like a dumb question, but I have tried and searched a lot of options, and none met my requirements

I am trying to send a mail with a report from unix command line using a bash script, I managed to send it with body and attachment using the mailx service, but the body is unformatted and not pleasing to the eye

(echo "$(cat /tmp/report_summary.html)";uuencode /tmp/report_details.xls report_details.xls) |/usr/bin/mailx -s "Report for XYZ" $MAIL_GRP

I tried the sendmail option, which formats the message body perfectly, but does not have an option for attachment

(
echo "From: [email protected]";
echo "To: [email protected]";
echo "Subject: Test Message 1 2 3";
echo "Content-Type: text/html";
echo "MIME-Version: 1.0";
echo "Content-Disposition: inline";
echo "<HTML><BODY><PRE>";
cat /tmp/report_details.html;
echo "</PRE></BODY></HTML>";
) | /usr/sbin/sendmail -t

I do not have mutt option, but I tried sendmail, mailx and mail service and none is able to help me meet my apparently simple need

Unix OS: Solaris 10 8/07 s10s_u4wos_12b SPARC

Note: Don't tag this as duplicate with existing answers, as they either have option to send attachment or html body or attachment with plain body.

IIRC, there needs to be a blank line between headers and content, and the line endings should be CRLF (although that probably doesn't matter). — rici
– rici, Commented Jun 1, 2018 at 21:48
FWIW, your sendmail command worked fine when I tried it on my Ubuntu 16.04 system using the Postfix implementation of the sendmail binary. — Anthony Geoghegan
– Anthony Geoghegan, Commented Jun 1, 2018 at 22:59
@Anthony Geoghegan: Both work fine individually, but as I said send mail only sends body, does not have option for attachment — user1933888
– user1933888, Commented Jun 2, 2018 at 13:35

AnFi · Accepted Answer · 2018-06-02 07:40:03Z

1

Sending "single MIME part" using sendmail (low level command) is pretty easy.

Your script grave bugs:

Missing "END OF HEADERS" (empty line)
Missing -i sendmail command line option

Your script suggested improvements:

Moving recipients from headers to sendmail command line
Missing charset in Content-type (unless you use US-ASCII)
Missing Content-Transfer-Encoding (unless you use US-ASCII = 7bit)

Corrected script:

#!/bin/sh
(
# Email headers and html header body in body 
cat - <<END
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Test Message 1 2 3
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Disposition: inline

<HTML><BODY><PRE>
END
# file to be "HTMLized" 
cat /tmp/report_details.html
# html footer in body
cat - << END_FOOTER
</PRE></BODY></HTML>
END_FOOTER
)
| /usr/sbin/sendmail -t -- '[email protected]'

answered Jun 2, 2018 at 7:40

AnFi

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2 Comments

user1933888 Over a year ago

My sendmail script works fine, I am not able to send attachment, as mentioned in my question

AnFi Over a year ago

sendmail command (provided by sendmail/postfix/exim/...) is a "low level tool". There is no command line option for attachment(s) - you must generate properly formatted message yourself. It is pretty simple for "single MIME part" message.

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