How do I send a file as an email attachment using

Question

I've created a script that runs every night on my Linux server that uses mysqldump to back up each of my MySQL databases to .sql files and packages them together as a compressed .tar file. The next step I want to accomplish is to send that tar file through email to a remote email server for safekeeping. I've been able to send the raw script in the body an email by piping the backup text file to mailx like so:

$ cat mysqldbbackup.sql | mailx [e-mail]

cat echoes the backup file's text which is piped into the mailx program with the recipient's email address passed as an argument.

While this accomplishes what I need, I think it could be one step better, Is there any way, using shell scripts or otherwise, to send the compressed .tar file to an outgoing email message as an attachment? This would beat having to deal with very long email messages which contain header data and often have word-wrapping issues etc.

Answer 1

metamail has the tool metasend

metasend -f mysqlbackup.sql.gz -t [e-mail] -s Backup -m application/x-gzip -b

Answer 2

None of the mutt ones worked for me. It was thinking the email address was part of the attachemnt. Had to do:

echo "This is the message body" | mutt -a "/path/to/file.to.attach" -s "subject of message" -- [e-mail]

Answer 3

I usually only use the mail command on RHEL. I have tried mailx and it is pretty efficient.

mailx -s "Sending Files" -a First_LocalConfig.conf -a
Second_LocalConfig.conf [e-mail]

This is the content of my msg.

.

Answer 4

I once wrote this function for ksh on Solaris (uses Perl for base64 encoding):

# usage: email_attachment to cc subject body attachment_filename
email_attachment() {
    to="$1"
    cc="$2"
    subject="$3"
    body="$4"
    filename="${5:-''}"
    boundary="_====_blah_====_$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S)_====_"
    {
        print -- "To: $to"
        print -- "Cc: $cc"
        print -- "Subject: $subject"
        print -- "Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"$boundary\""
        print -- "Mime-Version: 1.0"
        print -- ""
        print -- "This is a multi-part message in MIME format."
        print -- ""
        print -- "--$boundary"
        print -- "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1"
        print -- ""
        print -- "$body"
        print -- ""
        if [[ -n "$filename" && -f "$filename" && -r "$filename" ]]; then
            print -- "--$boundary"
            print -- "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64"
            print -- "Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name=$filename"
            print -- "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$filename"
            print -- ""
            print -- "$(perl -MMIME::Base64 -e 'open F, shift; @lines=<F>; close F; print MIME::Base64::encode(join(q{}, @lines))' $filename)"
            print -- ""
        fi
        print -- "--${boundary}--"
    } | /usr/lib/sendmail -oi -t
}

Answer 5

Just to add my 2 cents, I'd write my own PHP Script:

http://php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php

There are lots of ways to do the attachment in the examples on that page.

Answer 6

I use mpack.

mpack -s subject file [e-mail]

Unfortunately mpack does not recognize '-' as an alias for stdin. But the following work, and can easily be wrapped in an (shell) alias or a script:

mpack -s subject /dev/stdin [e-mail] < file