Forward an email from command line in Linux

emailpostfixubuntu-10.04

I have email files in my Maildir received with postfix server (Ubuntu). Is there a utility that can forward a selected email file to the specified email address? Something like:

cat emailfile | utility to@address.com

I tried to use mail command but it just sent the entire file contents including all technical header information as a plain text, which does not look nice.

cat emailfile | mail -s subject to@address.com

Update

Sorry for not being specific. What I wanted is to forward an email file from a shell script, without attachments, but removing all the header and metadata and presenting it in human-friendly way. Like in gmail, when you click 'forward' it automatically parses the email nicely, adds "forwarded message" text on the top and then puts the body text message. I know I can parse the email file myself and construct a new email, but I thought there was a utility that could save me couple hours.

Best Answer

There are more possibilities than one.

This utility is called sendmail. cat emailfile | sendmail -f to@address.com. Maybe you have to rewrite the mail before, as this does not "forward" the mail, but instead "send" the mail.
Do this in Postfix itself. You could use the many possibilities already present in Postfix to send a mail to the local user and additionally to others (locally and/or remote). Clue: *_alias_maps

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I use esmtp, which is a send-only MTA, for that purpose. It is very simple to set up. It has sendmail-compatible command-line options (some ignored). It's in the repositories.

Here is a simple example:

echo -e "To: Recipient Name <person@example.com>\n\
    From: Me Myself and I <me@gmail.com>\n\
    Subject: Here is the example I promised\n\n\
    $(<somefile)" | /usr/bin/esmtp -t

This sends the contents of the file named "somefile".

There is a very simple configuration file, /etc/esmtprc, that contains the hostname, username and password for your upstream email provider (I'm assuming yours is gmail).

Instructions for setting it up for Gmail are here.

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You could give nail a try. It allows you to specify an attachment.

In your script that generates these files you'd do something like the snippet below to deliver the file as an attachment to an email.

echo "body" | nail -s subject -a example-filename.txt you@example.com

Best Answer

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