Shell script to send email

Question

I am on linux machine and I monitor a process usage. Most of the time I will be away from my system and I have access to internet on my device. So I planned to write a shell-script that can mail me the output of the process.

Is it possible?

If so how to make a shell-script send me mail?

Please provide a snippet to get started.

score 155 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 11 '11 at 13:53

155

Yes it works fine and is commonly used:

$ echo "hello world" | mail -s "a subject" someone@somewhere.com

answered Jan 11 '11 at 13:53

trojanfoe

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$ echo "hello world" | mail -s "a subject" -a "attachment file" someone@somewhere.com for sending files – Saurabh Saxena Feb 18 '13 at 07:45
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Where can I find the preset tutorial for this command? As to execute this command, I need to configure something. – Zen Sep 06 '14 at 02:43
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@Zen Well you'll need to have your local MTA configured. – trojanfoe Sep 06 '14 at 08:26
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Don't forget to install the mail program first: `sudo apt-get install mailutils` – Yonatan Simson Jan 25 '17 at 16:13
I have installed mailutils. This command is working for my local PC however not working for remote server. Also remote system is not showing any error or success message. My remote system is on AWS EC2. – Curious Developer Aug 30 '17 at 09:01
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What will the receiver see in the `From` field? Who will be the sender in this case? – user2513149 Apr 12 '19 at 05:17
@user2513149 It will be the user invoking the commands. Fullname will be retrieved from `/etc/passwd`. – trojanfoe Apr 12 '19 at 14:06
@trojanfoe so will it be in a form of `user@hostname`? Which hostname will be used if the server has multiple domains? – user2513149 Apr 12 '19 at 14:20
@user2513149 That's all part of the MTA configuration, so can be whatever the admin set-up. – trojanfoe Apr 17 '19 at 09:38
it will be nice to include in the answer that mailutils should be installed and configured! – user206904 Apr 06 '21 at 23:18

score 31 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 29 '13 at 12:59

31

Basically there's a program to accomplish that, called "mail". The subject of the email can be specified with a -s and a list of address with -t. You can write the text on your own with the echo command:

echo "This will go into the body of the mail." | mail -s "Hello world" you@youremail.com

or get it from other files too:

mail -s "Hello world" you@youremailid.com < /home/calvin/application.log

mail doesn't support the sending of attachments, but Mutt does:

echo "Sending an attachment." | mutt -a file.zip -s "attachment" target@email.com

Note that Mutt's much more complete than mail. You can find better explanation here

PS: thanks to @slhck who pointed out that my previous answer was awful. ;)

edited Oct 29 '13 at 12:59

Oliver Salzburg

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answered Jan 11 '11 at 13:51

BlackBear

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Stackoverflow should be self contained - it would have taken you the same amount of time to copy/paste the URL of that site and to copy/paste the one-liner @Ashwin asked for. – slhck Jan 11 '11 at 13:59
@slhck: Probably the full page is better than one or two lines and there's explained better than I would do. Mine isn't surely the best answer but downvote it is quite unfair since it provides the same information of any other answer. – BlackBear Jan 11 '11 at 14:16
This has been a long discussion: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8231/are-answers-that-just-contain-links-elsewhere-really-good-answers - Even if it provides the same information, you could have digested it and cited your source. – slhck Jan 11 '11 at 14:18
@slhck: I agree with that, rarely I give only a link. But I thought, "a link is better than nothing", in fact I've never sent email in this way, just wanted to be helpful. ;) – BlackBear Jan 11 '11 at 14:24
Fair enough, I just brought it up because the answer to the original question is just a one-liner. Please edit your answer somehow, then I'll upvote again! Interestingly, the link you posted does not even load for me here. – slhck Jan 11 '11 at 14:27
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@slhck: edited. Thanks for your comments, there's always room for improvements. ;) – BlackBear Jan 11 '11 at 14:42
if "mutt -s 'bla bla' -a /tmp/file target@mail.com" use -c flag in front of target@mail.com – bortunac Sep 24 '14 at 13:41

score 7 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 06 '12 at 21:32

7

sendmail works for me on the mac (10.6.8)

echo "Hello" | sendmail -f my@email.com my@email.com

answered Jul 06 '12 at 21:32

zcaudate

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score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 16 '13 at 14:47

#!/bin/sh
#set -x
LANG=fr_FR

# ARG
FROM="foo@bar.com"
TO="foo@bar.com"
SUBJECT="test é"
MSG="BODY éé"
FILES="fic1.pdf fic2.pdf"

# http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multipurpose_Internet_Mail_Extensions
SUB_CHARSET=$(echo ${SUBJECT} | file -bi - | cut -d"=" -f2)
SUB_B64=$(echo ${SUBJECT} | uuencode --base64 - | tail -n+2 | head -n+1)

NB_FILES=$(echo ${FILES} | wc -w)
NB=0
cat <<EOF | /usr/sbin/sendmail -t
From: ${FROM}
To: ${TO}
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=frontier
Subject: =?${SUB_CHARSET}?B?${SUB_B64}?=

--frontier
Content-Type: $(echo ${MSG} | file -bi -)
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

${MSG}
$(test $NB_FILES -eq 0 && echo "--frontier--" || echo "--frontier")
$(for file in ${FILES} ; do
        let NB=${NB}+1
        FILE_NAME="$(basename $file)"
        echo "Content-Type: $(file -bi $file); name=\"${FILE_NAME}\""
        echo "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64"
        echo "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"${FILE_NAME}\""
        #echo ""
        uuencode --base64 ${file} ${FILE_NAME}
        test ${NB} -eq ${NB_FILES} && echo "--frontier--" || echo 
"--frontier"
done)
EOF

slhck · Answer 5 · 2011-01-11T14:20:46.713

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mail -s "Your Subject" your@email.com < /file/with/mail/content

(/file/with/mail/content should be a plaintext file, not a file attachment or an image, etc)

edited Jan 11 '11 at 14:20

answered Jan 11 '11 at 13:58

slhck

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Does this work with binary files? I think I've had to use mutt before to do all the binary file encoding in the past. – Marcin Jan 11 '11 at 14:12
You mean when trying to send a file as a mail attachment? You're right about this, of course. I meant text files only. – slhck Jan 11 '11 at 14:20
Yes! @slhck meant text files only. 'mail' cannot make attachments to user. – Jan 13 '11 at 11:35

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 11 '11 at 13:59

Well, the easiest solution would of course be to pipe the output into mail:

vs@lambda:~$ cat test.sh
sleep 3 && echo test | mail -s test your@address
vs@lambda:~$ nohup sh test.sh
nohup: ignoring input and appending output to `nohup.out'

I guess sh test.sh & will do just as fine normally.

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 11 '11 at 14:09

0

top -b -n 1 | mail -s "any subject" your_email@domain.com

answered Jan 11 '11 at 14:09

ajreal

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Shell script to send email

7 Answers7

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