Send an image in the body of the mail using any of the mail utilities in Linux

Question

I am trying to send an email from Linux server, I want to send an image, not as an attachment, that should be displayed in the message body.

I tried.

mailx -s "TEST mail" <MASKED>@mask.com < download.JPEG

The above command gave a random junk data in the body of the mail

mailx --append "Content-type: text/html" -s "TEST mail" <MASKED>@mask.com < download.JPEG

The above command didn't work

mutt -a "download.JPEG" <MASKED>@mask.com -s "TEST mail" < /dev/null

The above command sent the image as an attachment.

UUENCODE is not installed in our server, so we shouldn't use the same.

I don't want anyone of the above. I want my picture to be displayed on the body of my mail instead.

Any help on this is highly appreciated.

Answer 1

To get the picture to be displayed in-line, it must be encoded as a valid MIME object with a Content-Disposition: inline header in it.

The mpack command can do this.

Try sending an email like this:

mpack -s "TEST mail" -c image/jpeg download.JPEG <MASKED>@example.com

Or if you want to output the result into a file instead of sending it directly:

mpack -s "TEST mail" -c image/jpeg download.JPEG -o email-with-image.txt

Then you can send it later with e.g.:

mailx <MASKED>@example.com < email-with-image.txt

If you want to add text to your message before the image, write it into a file, and add a -d text-before.txt option to the mpack command. For adding text after the image, just appending it to the mpack-produced file should work.

Answer 2

You can use the below command.

Command

mutt -e "set content_type=text/html" -a lb.png -s "Test Mail" user@example.com < mail.html

mail.htm

<img src="cid:lb.png" />

Reference: Display attached image in email body

Answer 3

sendimagemail is a 100 line bash wrapper for sendmail(msmtp implement), which supports sending multiple jpg/png/gif inline images and text to gmail/outlook/qq/163 services. Here is the manual.

sendimagemail dst [image...] [--cc=''] [--bcc=''] [--subject='20210315 00:33:52'] [--body=''] [--dry] -- [sendmail-option]

# send text/html to one or more residents, with Cc and Bcc
sendimagemail bilabila@qq.com --body='Hi bilabila' --subject='Hi bilabila'
sendimagemail bilabila@qq.com --body='<div style=color:lightslategray>Hi bilabila<div/>'
sendimagemail 'qq bilabila@qq.com, google bilabila@gmail.com' --cc='163 bilabila@163.com' --bcc='ms bilabila@live.com'

# send one or more images
sendimagemail bilabila@qq.com a.jpg
sendimagemail bilabila@qq.com --body='<div>images</div>' a.jpg b.png c.gif

# send with non-default account
sendimagemail bilabila@qq.com a.jpg -- -a google
sendimagemail bilabila@qq.com a.jpg -- --from=bilabila@qq.com --host=smtp.qq.com --user=bilabila --passwordeval='echo TOKEN' --port 587 --auth --tls
sendimagemail bilabila@qq.com a.jpg -- --from=bilabila@163.com --host=smtp.163.com --user=bilabila@163.com --passwordeval='echo TOKEN' --port 25 --auth --tls
sendimagemail bilabila@qq.com a.jpg -- --from=bilabila@gmail.com --host=smtp.gmail.com --user=bilabila@gmail.com --passwordeval='echo TOKEN' --port 587 --auth --tls

# show what would be sent
sendimagemail bilabila@qq.com a.jpg --dry