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Sending email or mail with attachment from command or shell prompt

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If you are looking to send email with attachment via shell script or at shell prompt/command line (read as bash prompt), use mutt command.
Mutt is a small but very powerful text based program for reading electronic mail under UNIX /Linux operating systems, including support for color terminals, MIME, and a threaded sorting mode.
Please note that mutt is a pure MUA and cannot send e-mail without proper email server . You need a working Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) such as sendmail or postfix. I am assuming that you have configured email server.

Install mutt

If mutt is not installed, use apt-get or yum or up2date command as follows (login as a root user):
(A) Debian Linux / Ubuntu Linux user use following command to install mutt:
# apt-get install mutt
B) Fedora / CentOS or Red Hat Linux (RHEL) user can use following command to install mutt:
# yum install mutt
OR
# up2date mutt
C) FreeBSD user use following command to install mutt via pkg_add command:
# pkg_add -v -r mutt

How do I send email attachments from a command prompt?

1) Use mutt command as follows to send an email with attachment:
$ mutt -s “Test mail” -a /tmp/file.tar.gz vivek@nixcraft.co.in < /tmp/mailmessage.txt
Where,
  • vivek@nixcraft.co.in – is the recipient
  • /tmp/mailmessage.txt – is the main body of the e-mail (read message from the file “mailmessage.txt”)
  • /tmp/file.tar.gz – is an attachment (with option -a)
  • “Test mail” – is a subject line (option -s)
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