choice of e-mail agent for batch processing

[Oleg Goldshmidt]

2009/7/21 Matitiahu Allouche <matial at il.ibm.com>:
>
> The following is a quite naive question, and not strictly Linux-oriented, so
> delete this mail if you find it offending.
>
> My problem is the following:
>
> I need to periodically (once a month) send an e-mail message to a number of
> recipients (about a hundred).
> Each message is different and will be created as a separate file by an
> application which is not of concern. The message may be plain text, but HTML
> is preferred.
> Each message will also have one file attachment (the same for all
> recipients).
> I don't have access to a mail server except as a regular client.
> I am ready to write whatever programs are needed to put the data in proper
> format, including the HTML sugar on the plain text.
> I am ready to write scripts as needed.
>
> I am looking for a mail agent, probably working from the command line, which
> can send all my messages as a batch, or that I can invoke repeatedly within
> a script to send each message in turn.
> This mail agent should be available under Linux and Windows (I know, I
> know...), should be free (as in free beer) or cost just a few dollars,
> preferably open source.
>
> Some googling has provided the following mail-agent names which seem to
> answer my requirements:
> Alpine, Gnus, Mutt, Pine, VM (View Mail)
>
> I will appreciate any advice, either positive or negative, concerning those
> programs, or others which answer my requirements.

Hi Mati,

It seems that you only have 2 real problems:

1) sending MIME attachments from the command line;
2) Windows

Whenever I have the 2nd problem I add the word "cygwin" to whatever
google query I construct. Have you tried googling for "send mime
attachment from command line cygwin"? ;-)

The first result for me is http://www.panix.com/~kylet/unix-att.html
that lists quite a few options. Out of all those I would probably
check mutt and zmail first. Both should work on WIndows, and I think
both can use a remote SMTP server to send mails (no
sendmail/exim/postfix on WIndows, right?). I'd stay away from
nail/mailx since the maintainers clearly state they are not interested
in helping it work (better) on Windows.

If your target system has PHP (or you are willing to install what is
needed) then maybe Rmail
(http://www.phpguru.org/static/mime.mail.html) is an option. You'll
need an advice from PHP gurus on that.

I suppose the rest of the puzzle (creating the files, maintaining a
distribution list, periodic execution, etc.)

Hope it helps,

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | oleg at goldshmidt.org