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I am using this line

 ( cat bodyText.txt; uuencode backup.tar ) | mail -s "backup" myEmail@myserver.com

inside a bash script that will be fired by cron.

This line is almost perfect, but it hangs waiting for Ctrl-D to be typed, so the message and the attachement could be sent.

How do I include a Ctrl-D inside a bash script to make this line work?

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why you not simply use cat bodyText.txt | uuencode backup.tar| mail -s "backup" myEmail@myserver.com – Rahul Patil Jan 10 at 12:29
because this will produce two emails, one containing the text and the other containing the tar. – Digital Robot Jan 10 at 12:42
Have you tried ( cat bodyText.txt; uuencode backup.tar ; echo -e "\n.\n" ) | mail -s "backup" myEmail@myserver.com already? – ott-- Jan 10 at 12:44
@DigitalRobot have you tried that ? because i am receiving only one mail – Rahul Patil Jan 10 at 12:46
this \n\n method does not works. It is expecting a Control D. Sending \n will do nothing. – Digital Robot Jan 10 at 12:48
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3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

  • the uuencode is : uuencode name < sourcefile

  • maybe just need a final empty line : add ; echo -e "\n\n" ; before the closing parenthesis, and try again?-

So in your case:

( cat bodyText.txt; uuencode backup.tar < backup.tar ; echo -e "\n\n" ; ) | mail -s "backup" myEmail@myserver.com

Another way is using mutt which handles attachments better, and knows about mime types, etc:

mutt -s "the subject" -a backup.tar -- myEmail@myserver.com < bodyText.txt
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the echo is probably unneeded... I can't try it here, so try with it and try without it, and see which works ^^ – Olivier Dulac Jan 10 at 12:36
not working for me. Same problem. – Digital Robot Jan 10 at 12:49
try : uuencode backup.tar backup.tar for the uuencode part – Olivier Dulac Jan 10 at 13:23
you may have an alias ? on your comment on @goodluck answer below, it looks as if your "uuencode something" does uuencode the file "something" ? see type -all uuencode in bash and if it's an alias, try \uuencode backup.tar backup.tar (with "\" to bypass the alias) – Olivier Dulac Jan 10 at 13:25
I updated my answer: try the new syntax. And try the mutt alternative too. – Olivier Dulac Jan 10 at 13:34
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up vote 0 down vote

As others have said, Control-D is how you tell the shell to send end of file. Processes reading from streams should get end of file when the stream closes.

But it appears you're trying to implement something that already exists in more complete form. You could have reasons for that of course, but if you're interested in existing solutions, mpack/munpack are command line programs that mime encode files and send via mail. You can read the manpage to see if it does what you want.

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up vote -1 down vote

Do you mean:

uuencode backup.tar < bodyText.txt | mail -s "backup" myEmail@myserver.com
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not working for me. The attachment arrives without the body text.... – Digital Robot Jan 10 at 12:52
1  
Your code to uuencode doesn't make any sense, and changing that part wouldn't help with the problem with mail in any case. You should write answers that explain the problem, not just dump a line of code: that would be more useful to readers and would help you figure out whether what you propose has a chance of solving the problem. – Gilles Jan 10 at 13:20

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