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I am trying to include an attachment to my sendmail eml file. The current eml file (order.eml) has the following contents

From: Sender <sender@email.com>
To: client@email.co.za
Subject: Report
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="B835649000072104Jul07"

--B835649000072104Jul07
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

Body Copy

--B835649000072104Jul07
Content-Type: application/pdf
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="por5151.pdf"
base64 por5151.pdf

--B835649000072104Jul07--

both the order.eml and por5151.pdf file are in the same directory and I try to send it with

# /usr/sbin/sendmail -t < order.eml

When the email arrives I can see the por5151.pdf in the attachments but it is blank (0 bytes). I don't know why this is and I am struggling to fix it

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2
  • Are those the actual contents? Because that attachment is 0 bytes. ;-) The eml-file must contain the data – according to the headers, a base64-encoded pdf-file – it won't parse the headers to find, encode, and include the contents itself.
    – The Sidhekin
    Aug 17, 2015 at 11:13
  • Do you know how I would be able to do that? I've never added attachments before so I'm very noob at the moment
    – TheLovelySausage
    Aug 17, 2015 at 11:38

2 Answers 2

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What you would need to do is include the file below the 

Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="por5151.pdf"

line while you generate the .eml file. You can do so using the base64 utility:

base64 por5151.pdf

Make sure the closing boundary (--B835649000072104Jul07--) gets inserted behind that.

sendmail doesn't interpret the file that you hand it, and therefore doesn't magically insert the contents of the .pdf file.

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  • Hi Anthon, I made an edit to the question adding the base64 poer5151.pdf but the file seems to still be empty, did I add in the base64 correctly?
    – TheLovelySausage
    Aug 17, 2015 at 11:37
  • 1
    @trent No you need to put the output of that command into .eml file while you generate it. I never assumed you would be editing this file by hand.
    – Anthon
    Aug 17, 2015 at 11:42
  • 1
    Ooooooooh! I'm an idiot, I thought base64 was eml syntax I didn't realise it was a shell command! That worked perfectly thanks so much
    – TheLovelySausage
    Aug 17, 2015 at 11:49
0

I have created below script to attach a CSV File. Its truncating the column name of CSV incorrectly and also there is one more file gets with email, namely 'ATT0001.txt'. 

(
echo "From:"$1;
echo "To:"$2;
echo "Subject:"$3;
echo "MIME-Version: 1.0";
echo "Content-Type:multipart/mixed; boundary=\"B835649000072104Jul07\"";

echo "--B835649000072104Jul07";
echo "Content-Type: text/html; charset=\"UTF-8\"";
echo "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit";
echo "Content-Disposition: inline";
echo "";
echo "$4";

echo "--B835649000072104Jul07";
echo "Content-Type: text/csv";
echo "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64";
echo "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"$5\"";
base64 "$5"

echo "--B835649000072104Jul07";
) | sendmail -t
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