UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello,

I would like to send about 4,000 html e-mails a week preferably with in a 2 day span of time, I know UNIX has a mail server but is this the type of request that UNIX is best suited for or is there something else that is better to fulfill this request?

thank you in advance,
Joey

Hmm, I'm not sure I would want to answer this - I get enough spam already.

To answer your question, yes, the mail server that came with your UNIX will handle that with no problem - mail servers can handle 4000 emails in about one hour (more or less - it matters on memory, disk speed, interface speeds, DNS lookups...).

Sorry I was unclear this is not for spam but for a newsletter email that has been requested to be sent on a bi weekly basis.

can you direct me to a site or book that would detail the requirements and steps to set this up.

thank you
Joey

To do it is simple. You write a script.

Put your subscribers in a file: % cat subscribers.txt
joe@yahoo.com
harry@mailroom.com
joan@hotmail.com

Then in your script you simple read the subscribers file in and run a loop -

#!/bin/csh -f
#
#
set all="`cat ~/subscribers.txt`"
#
foreach x ($all)
mailx -s"Bi-Weekly Newsletter" $x < your.mail
end

your.mail would contain your newsletter.

I don't know if it will work with html - I've never tried it.

Probably going to have to put the following text before the rest of the HTML message:

Code:

Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

That way MUA's will know how to handle the message.