best/easiest commandline email program for mass-email

[Jay Daniels]

On Wed, 2010-01-27 at 15:00 -0700, Karl F. Larsen wrote:
> Gilles Gravier wrote:
> > Hi!
> > 
> > On 27/01/2010 22:21, Karl F. Larsen wrote:
> >> Alex Janssen wrote:
> >>   
> >>> Alex Janssen wrote:
> >>>     
> >>>> I must send personalized email to our clients, about 2500.  So I figured 
> >>>> on putting together each with a shell script and then sending the file 
> >>>> with a commandline email program.  I was looking for suggestions on what 
> >>>> might be the best package to install for this.  I have seen a suggestion 
> >>>> for a program called "mail", but I can't figure out what package to 
> >>>> install to get it.  I looked at the list presented by Synaptic, but 
> >>>> there's a boat load of programs related to email.
> >>>>
> >>>> If anyone has done this sort of thing, I'd sure appreciate your suggestions.
> >>>>
> >>>> Thanks,
> >>>> Alex
> >>>> -Ubuntu 9.10 on several computers since version 5.04
> >>>>
> >>>>   
> >>>>       
> >>> Please, pardon me for replying to myself, but I found and installed 
> >>> mailx.  Whats the best configuration for me to use?
> >>>
> >>> Alex
> >>>
> >>>     
> >> Please use apt-get install mailutils to be able use mail 
> >> either on your own LAN or on the Internet.
> >>
> >> 	The way you use mail is to in a terminal type mail.
> >>
> >> 73 Karl
> >>   
> > "mailx" tends to be a bit more user-friendly than vanila "mail". When
> > I've had to use a text-based mail system, "mailx" was the choice.
> > 
> > There's a much fancier mail client that used to be called "pine" but has
> > been discontinued but replaced by "alpine" :
> > http://www.washington.edu/alpine/ which you can install in Ubuntu by
> > typing "sudo apt-get install alpine" and that will install all the
> > dependencies.
> > 
> > Apline is text-terminal oriented, but unlike "mailx", it actually uses a
> > user interface (albeit in vt220 mode). So may be easier to use than
> > mailx if you are not an expert.
> > 
> > Gilles.
> > 
> 	I am not an expert. I recall an expert who was very busy 
> around 1996 who used mail. He was in charge of the Internet at 
> Stanford U. He could answer/read/delete with just a single 
> keystroke.
> 
> 	I used pine as my main email client for several years before 
> Thunderbird came along. It worked fine.
> 
> 	In mail I forget how to send a message I just typed. Do you 
> recall what to use? I can't find it in man mail.
> 
> 73 Karl
> 
> 

bsd mail went something like this...

mail -s "hello karl" karl at outerspace.edu
The quick brown fox jumped over the fence.
.

then i think you hit ctrl+d to send

quick and nasty.  hey could pipe a list of addresses to mail and if the
text file was formated properly, there you have mass mailer.



jay