sendmail subject

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

what is the syntax for sending a subject ?

sendmail -t a@b.com

The person receives the mail with an empty subject!

the man pages dont give anything related to subject...anybody??

2

Check these links
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2002/07/18/0000.html

3

Hi When i use the syntax given in the site ..i get a ">" after executing the below line

When i type the below and hit enter
cat <<content | sendmail -t a@b.com

I get this
cat <<content | sendmail -t a@b.com
>

and when i type in
cat <<content | sendmail -F Me -t a@b.com
>Subject:hello

I am getting the mail with the subject hello

but how do we input the subject using a script?

I am already using mail -s but the problem is it doesnt allow us to mention a from address :frowning:

4

If you have mailx installed, you can use the -r option.

Else...

$ SUBJECT="Testing some mail stuff"
$ cat << EoF | /usr/lib/sendmail -F me@here.com -t you@there.com
> Subject: $SUBJECT
> Testing stuff
> EoF

Cheers
ZB

5

I know this works when you type this in the command prompt..I can type my own body and its done..

My concern being the same cannot be reproduced if I put this in a script and want the body contents to be taken from a file

I have the contents in a file named text

And each time i execute the script sendmail should a send a mail with subject:testing and the contents from the file text

6 
echo "Subject: Testing" | cat - text | /usr/lib/sendmail -F me@here.com -t you@there.com

Cheers
ZB

1 Like
7

Why didnt i think of this :slight_smile:

Working Gr8! Thanks!

8

Thanks dude I was also looking for something like this!!!

9

Can you tell me why its this "cat - text" It didn't work without the "-" The subject was empty. Sorry I might be asking a dumb question...

10

Sure.

The "-" is a synonym for STDIN - standard input. So what we're saying here is conCATenate STDIN (in our case, the echo command) and the "text" input file, then pipe everything through to sendmail.

e.g.

$ echo "foo" | cat - /etc/hosts
foo
192.168.0.1 host1
192.168.0.2 host2

Cheers
ZB

11

You can also use the following syntax (tested whith ksh) :

{ echo "Subject: Testing" ; cat  text ;} | /usr/lib/sendmail -F me@here.com -t you@there.com

Jean-Pierre.

12

Or:

sendmail -f me@here.com -t\
< <(printf "%s\n" "To: you@there.com" \
"Subject: Testing" "$(<inputfile)")

P.S. Use pipe if your shell doesn't support process substitution:

printf "%s\n" "To: you@there.com" \
"Subject: Testing" "$(<file)"\
|sendmail -f me@here.com -t