How do I send a mail via mailx & subprocess?

Question

I am EE, trying to write a script to simplify file checks using Python.

For some reason, our IT will not let me gain access to our SMTP server, and will only allow sending mail via mailx. So I've thought of running mailx from Python and send it, in the same way that it works in my console. Alas, it gives an exception. See Linux log below:

Python 3.1.1 (r311:74480, Dec  8 2009, 22:48:08) 
[GCC 3.3.3 (SuSE Linux)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import subprocess
>>> process=subprocess.Popen('echo "This is a test\nHave a loook see\n" | mailx -s "Test Python" [email protected]')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/depot/Python-3.1.1/lib/python3.1/subprocess.py", line 646, in __init__
    errread, errwrite)
  File "/depot/Python-3.1.1/lib/python3.1/subprocess.py", line 1146, in _execute_child
    raise child_exception

I am a newbie to Python (now migrating from Perl). Any thoughts?

Answer 1

you can use smtplib

import smtplib
# email options
SERVER = "localhost"
FROM = "[email protected]"
TO = ["root"]
SUBJECT = "Alert!"
TEXT = "This message was sent with Python's smtplib."


message = """\
From: %s
To: %s
Subject: %s

%s
""" % (FROM, ", ".join(TO), SUBJECT, TEXT)

server = smtplib.SMTP(SERVER)
server.set_debuglevel(3)
server.sendmail(FROM, TO, message)
server.quit()

If you really want to use subprocess( which i advise against)

import subprocess
import sys
cmd="""echo "test" | mailx -s 'test!' root"""
p=subprocess.Popen(cmd, shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
output, errors = p.communicate()
print errors,output

Answer 2

You cas use subprocess.call. Like:

subprocess.call(["mailx", "-s", "\"Test Python\"", "[email protected]"])

Details here