Linux : How to send mails with attachments using mailx command

Linux  : How to send mails with attachments using mailx command

Syntax to send emails from linux machine using mailx command is show below :

# echo "E-mail Body" | mailx -vvv -s "test mail"  someone@address

-vvv =        Verbosity.
-s   =        Specifies the subject.

[root@mail-server ~]# echo "This is atest E-mail" | mailx -vvv -s "test mail"  manas.tri@gmail.com
Mail Delivery Status Report will be mailed to <root>.
You have new mail in /var/spool/mail/root
[root@mail-server ~]#

If the mailx version is below 12.x, you can use the uuencode command to send mails with attachments.

# uuencode [path/to/file] [name_of_attachment] | mailx -s "Subject" user@domain.com

-a switch in mailx command

Use the new attachment switch (-a) in mailx to send attachments with the mail. The -a options is easier to use than the uuencode command.

# mailx -a file.txt -s "Subject" user@domain.com

The above command will print a new blank line. Type the body of the message here and press [ctrl] + [d] or simply a DOT to send. This will attach the file to the outbound email correctly with proper Content-Type and boundary headers.

[root@mail-server ~]# echo good > file.txt
[root@mail-server ~]#
[root@mail-server ~]#
[root@mail-server ~]# mailx -a file.txt -s "Test" manas.tri@gmail.com
This is an attachment
.
EOT
[root@mail-server ~]#

To make this more “scriptable”, you can send the message without a body with the following:

# mailx -a file.txt -s "Subject" user@domain.com < /dev/null

To send mails with a message body, replace /dev/null in above command with your message body file.