sendEmail - Send email from a console near you!
Written by: Brandon Zehm <caspian@dotconf.net>
http://caspian.dotconf.net/
http://www.tsheets.com/
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What is sendEmail?
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SendEmail is a lightweight, completly command line based, SMTP email agent.
If you have the need to send email from the command line, this tool is perfect.
It was designed to be used in bash scripts, Perl programs, and web sites, but
it is also quite useful in many other contexts. SendEmail is written in Perl
and is unique in that it requires NO SPECIAL MODULES. It has an intuitive and
flexible set of command-line options, making it very easy to learn and use.
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Installation
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SendEmail is a perl script/program, and only needs to be copied to a directory
in your path to make it accessible. Most likely the following steps will
be sufficient:
1) Extract the package
tar -zxvf sendEmail-v1.XX.tar.gz
2) Copy the sendEmail script to /usr/local/bin
cp -a sendEmail-v1.XX/sendEmail /usr/local/bin
3) Make sure its executable
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/sendEmail
4) Run it
sendEmail
or
/usr/local/bin/sendEmail
NOTES:
* Running sendEmail without any arguments will produce a usage summary.
* SendEmail is written in Perl, so no compilation is needed.
* On a Unix/Linux OS if your perl binary is not installed at /usr/bin/perl
you may need to edit the first line of the script accordingly.
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Usage Overview
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sendEmail-1.56 by Brandon Zehm <caspian@dotconf.net>
Synopsis: sendEmail -f ADDRESS [options]
Required:
-f ADDRESS from (sender) email address
* At least one recipient required via -t, -cc, or -bcc
* Message body required via -m, STDIN, or -o message-file=FILE
Common:
-t ADDRESS [ADDR ...] to email address(es)
-u SUBJECT message subject
-m MESSAGE message body
-s SERVER[:PORT] smtp mail relay, default is localhost:25
Optional:
-a FILE [FILE ...] file attachment(s)
-cc ADDRESS [ADDR ...] cc email address(es)
-bcc ADDRESS [ADDR ...] bcc email address(es)
-xu USERNAME username for SMTP authentication
-xp PASSWORD password for SMTP authentication
Paranormal:
-b BINDADDR[:PORT] local host bind address
-l LOGFILE log to the specified file
-v verbosity, use multiple times for greater effect
-q be quiet (i.e. no STDOUT output)
-o NAME=VALUE advanced options, for details try: --help misc
-o message-content-type=<auto|text|html|other>
-o message-file=FILE -o message-format=raw
-o message-header=HEADER -o message-charset=CHARSET
-o reply-to=ADDRESS -o timeout=SECONDS
-o username=USERNAME -o password=PASSWORD
-o tls=<auto|yes|no> -o fqdn=FQDN
Help:
--help the helpful overview you're reading now
--help addressing explain addressing and related options
--help message explain message body input and related options
--help networking explain -s, -b, etc
--help output explain logging and other output options
--help misc explain -o options, TLS, SMTP auth, and more
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Examples
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Simple Email:
sendEmail -f me@gmail.com \
-t friend@yahoo.com \
-s smtp.gmail.com:587 \
-xu me@gmail.com \
-xp MY-PASSWORD \
-u "Test email" \
-m "Hi buddy, this is a test email."
Sending to mutiple people:
sendEmail -f myaddress@isp.net \
-t "Scott Thomas <scott@isp.net>" jason@isp.net renee@isp.net \
-s relay.isp.net \
-u "Test email" \
-m "Hi guys, this is a test email."
Sending to multiple people using cc and bcc recipients:
(notice the different way I specified multiple To recipients, you can do this for cc and bcc as well)
sendEmail -f myaddress@isp.net \
-t scott@isp.net;jason@isp.net;renee@isp.net \
-cc jennifer@isp.net paul@isp.net jeremiah@isp.net \
-bcc troy@isp.net miranda@isp.net jay@isp.net \
-s relay.isp.net \
-u "Test email with cc and bcc recipients" \
-m "Hi guys, this is a test email."
Sending to multiple people with multiple attachments:
sendEmail -f myaddress@isp.net \
-t jason@isp.net \
-cc jennifer@isp.net paul@isp.net jeremiah@isp.net \
-s relay.isp.net \
-u "Test email with cc and bcc recipients" \
-m "Hi guys, this is a test email." \
-a /mnt/storage/document.sxw "/root/My Documents/Work Schedule.kwd"
Sending an email with the contents of a file as the message body:
cat /tmp/file.txt | sendEmail -f myaddress@isp.net \
-t jason@isp.net \
-s relay.isp.net \
-u "Test email with contents of file"
Sending an email with the contents of a file as the message body (method 2):
sendEmail -f myaddress@isp.net \
-t jason@isp.net \
-s relay.isp.net \
-o message-file=/tmp/file.txt \
-u "Test email with contents of file"
Sending an html email: (make sure your html file has <html> at the beginning)
cat /tmp/file.html | sendEmail -f myaddress@isp.net \
-t jason@isp.net \
-s relay.isp.net \
-u "Test email with html content"
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Contributors
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Many thanks go to the people who have submitted ideas and patches.
I know I've forgotten to mention everyone who's helped with sendEmail,
but here is a small list. Please let me know if you feel your name
should be here!
v1.56
- Several people submitted fixes for the authentication bug.
Thanks to all of you for nagging me to get this release out!
Simon Matter (v1.55)
- Local bind address patch
CBL Team <http://cbl.abuseat.org/> and Chris Peay (v1.55)
- Bug reports about sendEmail causing people get blacklisted.
Jared Cheney (v1.42)
- More bare LF bug fixes and bare period encoding.
- Mime encoding patch
Buddy Nahay (v1.41)
- Bare LF bug report
John Rouillard (v1.41)
- html detection bug report
Reidar Johansen (v1.40)
- Added support for HTML email
- Created a function called tz_offset that determines the local timezone
- Many other fixes and suggestions
Paul Kreiner (v1.40)
- Submitted a patch that forces the timestamp string to always follow
the HH:MM:SS convention required by the RFCs.
Al Danial
- Found and reported a logging/typo/attachment issue in v1.32
Svante Gerhard
- Found and reported the file attachment/padding issue in v1.31
Charles Leeds
- Put together all the original file attachment code and got me
on the path to v1.3x
- Provided the compiled Windows executable version of sendEmail
for a LONG time. I really appreciate your help!
Nick Pasich
- Passing the email message via STDIN
- Multiple <to> recpients
- Log file option
- Quiet option
- Cc option
- Lots of other suggestions and code
Richard Duim
- For mime/content-type/attachment suggestions
Ulisses Montenegro
- First one to report problems with bare LF's on qmail servers
Michael Santy
- Reported problems with various SMTP servers and helped me fix a few
fairly serious problems.
Many other people have submitted bug reports and helped to make sendEmail
what it is today, and my best regards go out to all those .. complainers ;-)
