Often times, we want to send log files or other emails from command line or want to script them. In this tutorial, I will show you how to do that using two mail clients mail and mutt.
Sending mails using mail:
mail (mailx is the newer version) is a fantastic program that can be used for sending email from command line or from within scripts.
The following example will send an email to admin@example.com, with subject “Apache is down” and text “Please check Apache at host name of the server”
echo “Please check Apache at `hostname`” | mail -s “Apache is down” admin@example.com
We can cat the contents of any text file, for example, log file and it will be sent to the recipient specified
cat “/var/log/apache2/error.log” | mail -s “Apache is down” admin@example.com
To attach a file, other than a text one, we need to uuencode (unix to unix encode) it before sending
uuencode banner.jpg banner_out.jpg | mail webmaster@example.com
The banner.jpg is the name of input file and banner_out.jpg is the output uuencoded file that we will be sent by mail.
To have text sent alogwith the attachment, we can cat or echo that text too
(cat /var/log/apache2/error.log;uuencode banner.jpg banner.jpg) | mail -s pic webmaster@example.com
Sending mails from using mutt:
With mutt, its same as using mail.
echo “Please check Apache at `hostname`” | mutt -s “Apache is down” admin@example.com
or we can cat the contents of a text file to show as body text
cat /var/log/apache2/error.log | mutt -s “Apache is down” admin@example.com
OR
mutt -s “Apache is down” admin@example.com
To send an empty body mail, use an empty line as the mail body:
echo | mutt -s “Software upgrades for `hostname`” admin@example.com
To attach a binary file, its even easier with mutt, just use the -a option
echo | mutt -s “New logo for the company” -a logo.gif webmaster@example.com
Hope you this tutorial added to your knowledge.
Your formatting leaves a bit to be desired when viewed in IE7. The text is too long for the html pre code and forces a horizontal scroll bar to appear which completely covers the text which then causes a vertical scroll bar to be added.
Look ok in Firefox though
Good !
the formatting works a little better as a here document.
mailx -s “archive tool failure” $(< ~/.primary) <<- EOF
$err exit called in exit_arch function
+—log file start—+
$(<$my_log)
+—log file end—–+
EOF
There are also scrollbars in iceweasel 3.0. Very good tutorial though.
Thanks for pointing out the scrollbars issue. I am doing a remake of the site which would take care of this. Currently, I will just remove the css class applied to pre tag.