Using ksh and sendmail to send an html message w/ attachment?

Server Config
1

Not sure if anyone around here can help me with this but I’m struggling w/ using ksh (Korn Shell) on a Red Hat machine to send an HTML message with a simple txt file attachment…

Here’s what I have so far:

#!/bin/ksh

attachment="archive/$logfilename"

subject="Foobar"
email_to="mister.foo@bar.com"
email_from="foo@bar.com"

email_msg="
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \\"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN\\" \\"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd\\"><head>
<meta http-equiv=\\"Content-Type\\" content=\\"text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\\">
<title>Foobar</title>
</head>

<body>
<div>
Test
</div>
</body>
</html>
"

cat <<- _EOF_ | /usr/lib/sendmail -oi -t
From: $email_from
To: $email_to
Subject: $subject
Date: $(date +%Y%m%d)
Return-Path: help@foobar.net
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="MAIL_BOUNDARY";
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

--MAIL_BOUNDARY
Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

$email_msg

if [[ -n $attachment && -f $attachment && -r $attachment ]]; then
--MAIL_BOUNDARY
Content-Type: application/html; name="$logfilename";
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="$logfilename";

fi

_EOF_

--MAIL_BOUNDARY

When I send the message, I get it and there is a txt file attached, but the contents is never correct because it outputs shell code as the contents of the attachment–which tells me I have my MIME headers screwed up.

Any input / feedback is appreciated. The txt file is just a log file for a process we have.

Do I have to somehow use ksh to grab the contents of the file, store it in a variable, and then echo that variable inside the attachment area??? Pretty lost right now… (ksh is something I’m not very familiar with.)

2

Figured it out…

Make a file named “whatever.sh” and throw that onto a Linux box. Paste the following into it, change the data, and you should be good to go (at least, I was!):

#!/bin/ksh

attachment="archive/$logfilename"
payload="archive/$contactsarchive"

subject="Foobar"
email_to="Wolf_22@sitepoint.com"
email_from="foo@bar.com"

email_msg="
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \\"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN\\" \\"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd\\"><head>
<meta http-equiv=\\"Content-Type\\" content=\\"text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\\">
<title>Foobar</title>
<style type=\\"text/css\\">
html,body{margin:0;padding:0;height:100%}
body{height:100%;line-height:100%;background-image:url('http://foobar.com/whatever.png');background-position:center}
</style>
</head>

<body>
<!-- Your HTML goes here. Just make sure it's in a table because most e-mail apps (i.e. - Outlook) tend to generally prefer tables.) Outlook 2007 is particularly picky about stuff like this.
</body>
</html>
"

while read line
do
  log="$line $IFS $log"
done < "$attachment"

while read line
do
  payload="$line $IFS $payload"
done < "$payload"

cat <<- _EOF_ | /usr/lib/sendmail -t
From: $email_from
To: $email_to
Subject: $subject ($current_time)
Date: $(date +%Y%m%d)
Return-Path: foo_help@bar.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="MAIL_BOUNDARY";
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
This is a message with multiple parts in MIME format.
--MAIL_BOUNDARY
Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII"
$email_msg
--MAIL_BOUNDARY
Content-Type: application/html; name="$logfilename";
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="$logfilename";
--MAIL_BOUNDARY
$log
--MAIL_BOUNDARY
Content-Type: application/html; name="$contactsarchive";
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="$contactsarchive";
--MAIL_BOUNDARY
$payload
--MAIL_BOUNDARY--

Notes: all this does is send an e-mail to whoever with whatever log files. Not sure if the headers are as universal as they should be, but it worked for me when I tested it against Gmail and Outlook 2007. The log files get attached and everything works great. I guess some apps exist in the Linux world that make this whole process a bit more modernized without being forced to manually mess with headers, but I learned about this after the fact… Plus, I could never find anything on the next about using those “easier” solutions with special e-mail templates as above. So it’s all good.

Hope this helps someone in the future. Questions or comments welcomed.