Sending e-mail with zip file attachment via mailx to Outlook

[Linda Stowell]

I need to send a mail file with several attachments from HP UX to Outlook. The problem is that we have a 5mb limit on the size of the attachments. Since one file is 7mb, I am trying to use tar to zip and compress the files and then using mailx to send this file to Outlook. I get the e-mail but the zipped file is not-readable with winzip. Below are the commands that I am using. Is it possible to read with winzip a file that was zipped with tar on Unix? Has anyone had any luck with this?

Thanks for the help.

tar cvf - BRKRCM.*.csv | compress > $ZIPFILE
uuencode $ZIPFILE $ZIPFILE | mailx -m -s "EPM Broker Commission CSV File"

[Geoff Wild]

I don't know if this will help - but try using mpack to send the file instead:

http://hpux.ee.ualberta.ca/hppd/hpux/Users/mpack-1.6/



Rgds...Geoff

[Doug O'Leary]

Hey;

You also might try gzip instead of compress. I've *generally* gotten better compression from gzip than from compress...

HTH;

Doug

[Ivan Ferreira]

bzip2 has even better compression ratio.

[Sandman!]

Linda,

You're not specifying an output file for the tar command "-" is for stdin not stdout. Might help breaking up the command line:

# tar cvf BRKRCM.*.csv
# compress
# uuencode | mailx -m -s "EPM Broker Commission CSV File"

cheers!

[Jeff_Traigle]

There's nothing wrong with the command line she's using. Tar sending to stdout piped to stdin of compress with it's stdout redirected to a file. Just the way it's all supposed to behave. If she wanted to, she could even put the whole thing on a singel command line by piping stdout from compress into uuencode like this:

tar cvf - BRKRCM.*.csv | compress | uuencode $ZIPFILE | mailx -m -s "EPM Broker Commission CSV File"

As for WinZip handling compressed (Z) and tar archives, I've never had a problem. It's handled those formats for years and numerous versions.

Getting things to show up on the other end can be tricky, however. I think I've sent to Outlook clients before without the -m option on mailx.

[Sandman!]

For Jeff...I'm unable to make your command work so the suggestion to break it up (easier to debug)?

[Jeff_Traigle]

Don't know. Works fine for me.

Linda, I don't have a way to test with Outlook and WinZIP, but, if the attachment is showing up in Outlook all right, you might try 7-Zip as an alternative to WinZIP to see if that handles the file any better. Free software and it seemed to work fine on my little test case I ran.

www.7-zip.org

[Linda Stowell]

I figured out my problem. The file that I used the tar command on didn't have .tar extension which caused confusion with winzip. As soon as I renamed it to a .tar, winzip worked. However I couldn't get compress to work but I did get gzip to work for me. Below is what I ended up with. I had to rename the gzip file to have a .gzip extension because it wouldn't open in Outlook with the .gz extension (it actually made the contents of the file the body of the e-mail message).

Thanks for everyone's help.

tar cvf BRKRCM.tar BRKRCM.*.csv

gzip BRKRCM.tar

cp BRKRCM.tar.gz BRKRCM.tar.gzip

uuencode BRKRCM.tar.gzip BRKRCM.tar.gzip | mailx -m -s "EPM Broker Commission CSV File"

[Sandman!]

Linda,

I used the same commands w/o renaming the "gz" file to "gzip" and WinZip had no problems opening them.

# tar cvf BRKRCM.tar BRKRCM.*.csv; gzip BRKRCM.tar
# uuencode BRKRCM.tar.gz BRKRCM.tar.gz | mailx -m -s "EPM Broker Commission CSV File"

my 2 cents!

[Dave La Mar]

Linda -
Just another opinion. We often use gzip since it's compression ratio is better than compress.

As with many windows users, we send files to, we were told the zipped file was corrupt.
Subsequent to that we found that WINRAR worked fine for unix zipped files.

Your mailx portion looks fine.

Best of luck.

Regards,

dl

[Florian Heigl (new acc)]

The zipped file is not in pkzip (implemented in windows) format, but in gzip format.

There's two close choices:

-Install a better archive handler on Windows (winrar, winace, winzip, to my knowledge all have to be licensed for at least commercial use)

- Compile pkzip on HP-UX (works, but the manhours involved will equal the license cost; still a useful idea.)

[Keerat Singh]

Linda,

It is very useful info you have posted. I wanted to the same thing but my client OS is Linux. Any ideas?

I appreciate you help or any forum members help.

Regards,

Keerat

[Steven Schweda]

> I wanted to the same thing but [...]

This would work better in a new thread, but
that new thread can refer to this old one.

> my client OS is Linux.

So you want to send e-mail with an attachment
from an HP-UX system to a Linux system? The
methods shown here should work, but the best
answer may depend on the e-mail client
program at the destination.


By the way, ...

> - Compile pkzip on HP-UX (works, but the
> manhours involved will equal the license
> cost; still a useful idea.)

Info-ZIP's (free) Zip and UnZip programs work
just fine on HP-UX, if you're looking for a
more Windows-compatible file compress/archive
method.

http://www.info-zip.org/

[Keerat Singh]

Thanks for quick reply; I really appreciate it. I am trying to send zipped file from Linux to MS Outlook.

I have tried everything and no luck :-(

???

Keerat

[Steven Schweda]

> I have tried everything and no luck :-(

Obviously not true. For example, you
haven't tried asking about Linux in a Linux
forum.

And when you start a new thread in the right
place, you might say _which_ Linux (and which
version). Then you might give an example of
what you have tried, with an explanation of
what went wrong when you tried it. It's
often difficult to diagnose "no luck" without
more information than "no luck".