how to send a mail with a message in unix script

Question

New to unix and learning the talk and walk of it. I am writing a script in .ksh and have a requirement of sending a mail with a message. Currently using this command in my script:

    mailx -s"File not found" [email protected]

This command helps me having a subject and the recipient name. My question is how can I write a message along with it. Cause every time i run the script it pauses and asks me to enter the message and then executes, I want to pre-include the message so the script would not pause in between.

Answer 1

echo 'Message body goes here' | mail -s 'subject line goes here' [email protected]

Answer 2

Try this on the command line or inside a script:

echo "This is the message." | mailx -s "Subject" [email protected]

You can use pre-defined messages from files:

cat message.txt | mailx -s "Subject" [email protected]

Answer 3

Alternatively to mailx (mentioned in the other answers) you can also use sendmail:

cat <<EOF | sendmail -t
To: recipients-mailaddress
From: your-mailaddress
Subject: the-subject
mailtext
blabla
.
EOF

Perhaps you need to add the full path to sendmail if it's not in your path. E.g. /usr/sbin/sendmail or /usr/lib/sendmail.

Update:
See also this question