mailx Set Name of Attached File

Weylin Piegorsch

11/21/23, 4:13 PM

I have a cron job, whose output I send to mailx:

# Monday morning at midnight; "mail" is symlink to "mailx"
00 00 * * mon python3 script-with-7500line-output.py | mailx -S 'from=noreply' -s "Report" [email protected]

When the email is delivered, the script's output is in an attachment named ATT0001.bin.

We like that it attaches the output rather than puts it in the body. But: is there a way to set the name of the attachment?

106

2 + 1

attachment

pipe

cron

mailx

diya

11/22/23, 8:01 AM

Generally I recommend writing a wrapper script to use as the batch job when the requirements become less than trivial. for example make a shell script that redirects the output to a temp file with the correct name and then use `mailx -a filename ...`

Score:0

Server

Weylin Piegorsch

11/22/23, 2:50 PM

I like @diya comment. I'll add here as an answer, and shift "accepted answer" to him if he posts his comment as an answer.

"Generally I recommend writing a wrapper script to use as the batch job when the requirements become less than trivial. for example make a shell script that redirects the output to a temp file with the correct name and then usemailx -a filename ..."

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Score:0

Server

Weylin Piegorsch

11/23/23, 4:55 PM

Posting this just in case someone comes across this and wonders how I did it.

this is a separate file... my production has a bunch of other robustness features (error-handling; template for mktemp; etc), but this is the basics:

#!/bin/bash
tmpDir="$(mktemp -d --tmpdir)"
python3 script-with-7500line-output.py > "${tmpDir}/PreferredAttachmentName.txt"
echo "Email Body" | mail -S "from=noreply" -s "Report" -a "${tmpDir}/PreferredAttachmentName.txt" [email protected]
rm -rf "$tmpDir"

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Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: mailx Set Name of Attached File

Post an answer

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