This simple little command-line mailer compiled cleanly on Mac OS X Panther, and RPM's etc. are available at the web link.
This is strictly for sending mail. It can work through your systems SMTP server, some external server, or you can specify a particular server on the command line: that can be very handy. Real MIME attachments can be attached, and it can use GPG for encryption or signing.
For some reason I didn't investigate, "make install" didn't work, so I just did it by hand:
sudo ./install-sh --bindir /usr/local/bin --sysconfdir
/usr/local/etc --mandir /usr/local/man --binext '' --version
"2.2.2" --docdir /usr/local/doc
See also: GETTING A MAC TO "PHONE HOME" WITH AN E-MAIL
I find this quite useful on my Mac for quickly sending files without bothering to get into Mail.app, find the file, attach it..
email [options] recipient1,recipient2,... -h, -help module Print this message or specify one of the below options -q, -quiet Suppress displayed messages (Good for cron) -f, -from-addr Senders mail address -n, -from-name Senders name -b, -blank-mail Allows you to send a blank email -e, -encrypt Encrypt the e-mail for first recipient before sending -s, -subject subject Subject of message -r, -smtp-server server Specify a temporary SMTP server for sending -p, -smtp-port port Specify the SMTP port to connect to -a, -attach file,... Attach N binary files and base64 encode -c, -conf-file file Path to non-default configuration file -t, -check-config Simply parse the email.conf file for errors -cc email,email,... Copy recipients -bcc email,email,... Blind Copy recipients -sign Sign the email with GPG -html Send message in HTML format ( Make your own HTML! ) -u, -smtp-user Specify your username for SMTP AUTH -i, -smtp-pass Specify your password for SMTP AUTH -g, -gpg-pass Specify your password for GPG -high-priority Send the email with high priority
The man page is better than many:
EMAIL(1) EMAIL(1) NAME email - Encrypted SMTP email via Command line SYNOPSIS email [options] recipient1,recipient2,recipient3,... DESCRIPTION Email is a command line email client similiar to 'mailx'. Added fea- tures make this a more advanced client for sending email via the com- mand line. Email works with sendmail, just as 'mailx' does, but email also allows sending to remote smtp servers for your email delivery. It also works with GPG for encrypting and signing the emails on the fly. Email also incorporates a few other features as well. These features include signature files with wildcard options to specify the data, time, day, version, system, and even a 'fortune' with the help of the 'fortune' command. Email also supports a very configurable address book. This way you can specify a persons name with an email address and also place a group of names into one group for sending. Email also support attachments. It will accept N attachments via a command line option and encode them with Base64 before sending them with the email. Email works with a configuration file named email.conf which is found in /usr/local/etc/email/email.conf although can be changed by specify- ing the --sysconfdir option during the ./configure. If you do not have or want a configuration file, you can specify the -r option to specify your smtp server and this will allow you to bypass using a configura- tion file and use default values. If you specify the -r option (listed below) and you do have a configuration file, it will still use the con- figuration file but override the SMTP_SERVER variable with what is used at the command line. OPTIONS There are a few possible options to email. I have listed them in order of relevance of usage: --help , -help , -h Module of Help This option can be specified with a module of help topic, or without one. Without a module of help topic, it will just print a standard help screen with all your possible options. With a module of help option, it will display a more detailed discrip- tion of that module. Modules are determined by command line switches. For instance: if you want to know about the 'encrypt' command line option, you would specify --help 'encrypt' or --help 'e' and help will dis- play the correct module help section. The Help is not statically programmed into email. Instead it is a file in email's home directory called be rewritten with every release of email. --quiet, -q This option will allow you to suppress the output of email. Email will normally be verbose with it's messages to the screen detailing its process in sending the mail ( i.e. a progress bar is displayed). If you are using email in cron jobs, it is a good idea to use this option so that no output, except for errors, are displayed. --blank-mail, -blank-mail, -b Use this option if you would like to send a blank email from the command line. This is good if you just want to send a message with only the headers and no content. --subject , -subject , -sub , -s Subject of Email This option should be rather obvious. You specify the subject of the email with this option. If you are not redirecting to standard input and you do not specify a subject, email will ask you for the subject. Null subjects are allowed. --encrypt , -encrypt , -e This options allows you to encrypt your email message using 'gpg'. GPG can be obtained by going to: When this option is specified, it will get the first recipient from the recipient list and it will encrypt the message using their key. This key MUST be present in order for the encryption to work properly. --sign , -sign This options will let you sign your emails on the fly... It uses the 'gpg --detach-sign' option. It will 'sign' the email with your public key. --cc , -cc recipient1,recipient2,recipient3,... This option allows you to "curtosy copy" a list of recipients. Recipients can be from the address book or just plain email addresses. They should be comma delimited just as the main recipients will be. CC recipients *will* be posted in the head- ers and read by email clients. --bcc , -bcc recipient1,recipient2,recipient3,... Same as the --cc option, but these recipients will *not* be posted in the headers of the email. This is a positive solution to "secretly" copy someone on the email without the other recip- ients knowing so ( Managers usually bcc their boss when sending an email to you about your performance and you'll never know it ;-) ) --attach , -a file1,file2,file3,... Attach a binary file. This option will allow you to attach N files to your email and will be base64 encoded upon delivery. This option is helpful if you need to send any type of file that is not plain ascii text. --smtp-server , -r server This option will let you override the smtp server that is speci- fied in the email.conf file... You can use this option if you do not have an email.conf file. It will allow you to use email without a configuration file. A helpful option to add with this option would be the --smtp-port option, however, it is not needed. --smtp-port , -p port This option works well with the above option as it will allow you to bypass the configuration file and specify a port on the command line. This is helpful if you don't have a configuration file yet need to specify an smtp server and a port. The default port is always port 25, so that if you don't specify this option, and you don't have an email.conf file, it will default to port 25 for you. --smtp-user , -u user If you don't want to keep your SMTP username in your email.conf file (SMTP_AUTH_USER), then you can use this command line option to specify it. --smtp-pass , -i pass If you don't want to keep your SMTP password in your email.conf file (SMTP_AUTH_PASS), then you can use this command line option to specify it. --from-name , -n name This option will override MY_NAME in email.conf. This is what the recipient will see in the from field of their email client. --from-addr , -f addr This option will override MY_EMAIL in email.conf. This is what the recipient will see in the from field of their email client as your email address. --conf-file file Use this option to specify a configuration file other than ~/.email.conf or /usr/local/etc/email/email.conf. --high-priority , -o This options allows you to take advantage of using the priority option used by some email clients. If the option is specified when sent to a user using MS Outlook, a small exclimation mark will be next to the message as to let the user know this email is important. --html This option allows you to send html emails. As of right now, you need to write your own html. In later versions of email, it will make your html for you... This is not a high priority issue though, so we will take our time on it. ( Being as the lead developer *hates* html emails being sent to him... Ugh... ) --gpg-pass , -g pass If you don't want to keep your GPG password in your email.conf file (GPG_PASS), then you can use this command line option to specify it. CONFIGURATION Configuration of email is fairly simple. Just open the default config- uration file. If you did not specify an email home directory during your compilation of email then this will be in /usr/local/etc/email and the file is called 'email.conf'. The configuration options are listed below. SMTP_SERVER : Server name, or IP SMTP_PORT : Servers port number SENDMAIL_BIN : Specify the sendmail binary path and options MY_NAME : Specify your Name MY_EMAIL : Specify your email address REPLY_TO : Seperate reply to address SIGNATURE_FILE : Your signature file SIGNATURE_DIVIDE : A design for a divider ADDRESS_BOOK : Location of your address book file SAVE_SENT_MAIL : Directory to save email.sent file GPG_BIN : Full path to gpg binary GPG_PASS : Optional passphrase for gpg TEMP_DIR : Specify where to store temp files SMTP_AUTH : Specify what type of authentication for your smtp server. SMTP_AUTH_USER : Specify a username login for SMTP AUTH SMTP_AUTH_PASS : Specify a password for SMTP AUTH You can choose to use sendmail instead of a remote smtp server. All you have to do is input the path of where you have sendmail located in the SENDMAIL_BIN variable. You may also provide options to pass send- mail. The best values for this would be /usr/lib/sendmail -t -i. If you have both SENDMAIL_BIN and SMTP_SERVER uncommented and both have values, then SMTP_SERVER will take presedence over SENDMAIL_BIN and 'email' will try to contact the SMTP server provided. You can create your own email.conf file in your home directory. It must be a hidden file. For instance: ~/.email.conf Email will look in your home directory before it looks for a global configuration file. The easiest thing to do is simply copy your global config file to your home directory as .email.conf and edit it as needed. If you do not have a global config file or a personal config file, email will choose defaults according to your current login on the sys- tem. So a configuration file is not manditory, it just helps you cus- tomize email. You can look at the basic configuration file for more information on the configuration of 'email'. SMTP AUTH Email now support SMTP AUTH. I will briefly describe how it works here. To use email with an SMTP server that expects authentication you must set a few options in your email.conf file. These options are: SMTP_AUTH, SMTP_AUTH_USER, SMTP_AUTH_PASS. SMTP_AUTH: This option must be set to one of the two: LOGIN or PLAIN. LOGIN and PLAIN are standard RFC compliant SMTP AUTH protocols. If you are unsure which options to choose, ask your ISP or SMTP Administrator if any of these are supported. Usually it's a safe bet to use LOGIN for SMTP AUTH. Most AUTH servers support LOGIN. SMTP_AUTH_USER: If you're using SMTP AUTH, please specify your username here. This option is MANDITORY if you're using SMTP AUTH. SMTP_AUTH_PASS: You can choose to set this option or not. However, if you don't set this option, email will prompt you for your password before proceeding. So if you're using email from a cron job and don't expect any interaction with email, please set this option! ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES Two environment variables can be set that email will check. EDITOR will allow you to specify your favorite editor to use with email for constructing messages. If this variable is not set, it will default to vi. TMPDIR can be set to specify a temporary directory to place your temp files while email is working. This is analogous to the TEMP_DIR vari- able in email.conf. environment variable TMPDIR for a temporary direc- tory. If neither contains a value, email defaults to /tmp. ADDRESS BOOK The address book for email takes on the format as described below. It will check for any syntax errors in the address book and completely stop email if it finds any, so try to keep the same gramatical syntax. A single entry in the address book will look like: single: Dean = dean@cleancode.org #Comments allowed You are welcome to use a whole name with spaces as long as you use a single quote closing the name with another single quote. You may also use double quotes in place of the single quotes. Example: single: 'Dean Jones' = dean@cleancode.org Groups are allowed and can only consist of comma delimited single entries from the file and may contain spaces. You can *not* recur- sively specify groups. You may, however specify single email addresses that are not part of the address book. If you would like to break one line into two lines, you should use the '\' as a newline escape mark. Examples: group: Mygroup = 'Dean Jones', John, Sam, Bob, \ software@cleancode.org This example will specify a group with the single entries of 'Dean Jones', John, Sam, Bob, and the unadded email address of 'soft- ware@cleancode.org'. SIGNATURE FILE The signature file is specified in the configuration file. You will also have the option to specify a signature divider. This is by default '---'. This just divides the signature file from the rest of the email. There are a few wild cards that you can specify in writing your signa- ture file that will allow your signature file to obtain dynamic options when sending your email. %v This will show the version of email %t This will show the time the email was sent %d This will display the date the email was sent %c This will display a completely formated date and time %h This will display the host type %f This will display the output of the 'fortune' command SIGNATURE EXAMPLE Example of a signature file is below: This email was sent with 'email %v' Sent on host: %h At the time : %c Your fortune for today is: %f This will end up replacing the %v, %h, %c, and %f with their corre- sponding equivalents above respectively. EXAMPLES OF USAGE # Redirect your message to email email -s "Sending this.txt" dean@cleancode.org < this.txt # Make your message with email email -s "Subject" dean@cleancode.org # Encrypt and email to "Dean Jones" email -s "Encryted" -encrypt dean@cleancode.org # Multiple Recipients from address book email -s "no subject" Dean,Jeff,Tom,Bob -cc Josh,Carl # Attach some files with your message email -s "files attached" Dean,Jeff --attach stuff.tar.gz,readme.doc BUGS They're those little things that make you cringe when you find them in your bed ( or program ) at 3 am. If you find any in this program, please submit them to software@clean- code.org AUTHORS Dean Jones - dean@cleancode.org
There may be a Sco binary at www.systemjanitor.com/sco_email/
Nope - long gone. But try this perl script as an alternate: sendEmail-v1.56
Got something to add? Send me email.
More Articles by Tony Lawrence © 2012-07-12 Tony Lawrence
Better to fight for something than live for nothing. (George S. Patton)
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CleanCode Email Copyright © November 2003 Tony Lawrence
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