Fastmail
is a low-level interface to the mail system that allows batch
processing of mail. It's intended for mailing to very large
groups of people in a staggered fashion.
The starting options are;
-b bcc-list
This allows a list of people to receive blind-carbon copies, or BCCs, of
the message. This list should be full email addresses.
-c cc-list
This allows a list of people to receive carbon copies, or CCs, of
the message. This list should be full email addresses.
-C comments
This allows a Comments: line to be added to the RFC822 header with any
text you desire.
-d
Debug. This is helpful for strange, unfriendly errors from
the program (etc).
-f from
This overrides the users name in the From: line, so that if
the user was x@y, and their name was MrX then the default
From: line would be "From: x@y (MrX)". Using "-f Joe" when
invoking this, though, would change it to "From: x@y (Joe)"
-i msg-id
This allows a message-id to which this message refers.
-r replyto
Occasionally, you might send mail but want the replies to go
to a different address (very common with mailing lists).
There is a header for this purpose called "Reply-To:" which
can be utilized by using this starting option. For example,
we could send mail with a reply-to to list-request by
using "-r list-request". The header generated would then
be of the form "Reply-To: list-request".
-R references
This allows descriptive/reference text for this message.
-s subject
The subject of the message is specified by using
this starting option.
Either the name of the file containing the message, or a - to indicate
usage of standard-in is required.
EXAMPLE
Let's say we're user "big" on machine "big-vax" and we have a
shell script called 'batch-mail' that contains the following
lines:
#
# Batch Mail - batch mailing of a file to a LOT of users
#
# Usage: batch-mail "from" "subject" filename
sender_copy = $LOGIN
replyto = "The-Mr-Big-list"
fastmail -b $sender_copy -r $replyto -f "$1" -s "$2" $3 person1
sleep 10
fastmail -r $replyto -f "$1" -s "$2" $3 person2
sleep 10
fastmail -r $replyto -f "$1" -s "$2" $3 person3
sleep 10
fastmail -r $replyto -f "$1" -s "$2" $3 person4
< etc >
with the invocation:
batch-mail "Mr. Big" "Warning to all" warning.text
would mail a copy of the 'warning.text' file to person1, person2,
person3, etc. "$LOGIN" will also receive a copy of the first message
in the mail, silently. Each resultant message will include the headers:
From: big-vax!big (Mr. Big)
Subject: Warning to all
Reply-To: The-Mr-Big-list
This program should turn out to be considerably
faster than the alternative methods of accomplishing this task.
FILES
/usr/lib/sendmail sendmail transport if available
/bin/rmail transport if no sendmail
/tmp/fastmail.$$ temporary file
