mime-tool(1) · carta

Usage

mime [-dDvV] [-S subject] [-F from-address] [-T to-address] [-C carbon-copy address] [-P prolog-text] [-E epiplogue-text] [-B boundary] [-O overall content-type] [-78abiquxopm] [-t content-type] filename

Overview

The mime program constructs MIME messages with attached files. The user can specify the content type (application/octet-stream, text/plain or a user specified type), content type encoding (7bit, 8bit, binary, base64 and auto-detect), content disposition (attached or inline) and the content boundary string. The user can also specify some mail related options: subject, from-address, to-address, carbon-copy address, prolog-text and epilog-text.

The output of the MIME-tool program can be sent directly to the mail, mailx or sendmail commands (or any other command that accepts RFC-822 formatted messages).

NOTE: Specifying 7-bit encoding for an attachment that contains 8-bit data will convert any data bytes whose high-bit is set to question marks.

Options

-7: 7-bit ASCII encoding

-8: 8-bit ASCII encoding

-a: application/octet-stream content type

-b: binary encoding

-d: low detail debugging

-D: high detail debugging

-s: write a subpart

-i: disposition: inline (instead of attachment)

-q: quoted-printable encoding

-c content-type: explicit content type

-t: text/plain content type

-o: omit disposition line

-u: unknown encoding, auto-detect

-v: verbose messages

-V: very verbose messages

-x: base64 encoding

-p: copy existing MIME part

-o: omit content-disposition

-m: omit content-transfer-encoding

-n filename: override the filename in the disposition header

-N: don't add a filename parameter in the disposition header

-0: no-op

Examples

Using MIME-tool to write a mail message to a file:

mime -S "test message" -F [email protected] -T [email protected] file1 > test.msg

Using MIME-tool with the mail command:

mime -S "test message" -F [email protected] file1 | mail [email protected]

Using MIME-tool with the mailx command:

mime -S "test message" -F [email protected] file1 | mailx [email protected]

Using MIME-tool with the sendmail command:

mime -S "test message" -F [email protected] file1 | sendmail [email protected]

Version

This is version 1.5.topal3 from June 2009.

Known bugs

Most of the header values are not properly quoted or folded, so long or complex values for these headers may cause problems. Specifically, the from-address, to-address, carbon-copy-address and content-type headers may not be properly quoted or folded.

For some reason, certain e-mail clients (espcially from a large software company located in Redmond, Washington) don't seem to recognize file attachments as attachments, but instead displays them as inline attachments. (maybe this isn't MIME-tool's fault, but I've gotten a few e-mails about it, so I'm mentioning it here)

History

Debian 13 (Trixie) to Debian 10 (Buster): the text shown here
Debian 9 (Stretch) to Debian 6.0 (Squeeze)