splitmail(1)

splitmail -- split a mail message into MIME-compliant partial messages

Synopsis

splitmail [-d] [-v] [-s splitsize] [-p prefix] [-i id-suffix] [filename]

Description

The splitmail program breaks a mail message into smaller pieces using the "message/partial" type defined by MIME, the proposed Internet standard for multimedia mail formats.

By default, the message is taken from the standard input, or if filename, is specified, the message is read from the named file. splitmail then produces a set of partial message files that are MIME compliant.

The names of the output files are /tmp/split.1 for the first part, and so on. The prefix /tmp/split can be overridden using the -p option.

Options

splitmail supports the following command line options:

-d: specifies that the mail should be delivered.
-v: specifies that the verbose flag should be passed to sendmail.
-s splitsize: specifies a chunk-size for splitting messages that overrides the current setting.
-i id-suffix: causes splitmail to generate the pieces with similar (but not identical) ``message-id'' fields, in a format which allows them to be easily correlated with one another and which end with the suffix provided on the command line after -i.
-p prefix: causes splitmail to use the specified prefix rather than the default prefix (/tmp/split) for naming the split files.
filename: causes splitmail to read the message from the specified file rather than the standard input.

Usage

The default chunk size for splitting messages is 250K bytes (that is, 250000, determined on a site basis) though this is also a compile-time option. The size can be overridden with the -s switch, or with the environment variable SPLITSIZE.

Messages smaller than the chunk size will not be turned into partial messages, but will be written to a single file or delivered as a single message.

SPLITSIZE may be used to override the default chunk size, or to ensure that your messages are unlikely ever to be split, Setting SPLITSIZE to a value of 4000K (4000000) will effectively ensure that splitting will not occur, but it may also cause mail to be rejected by some mail transport software.

Warnings

If the size of the input is near the limit, and if the input is coming from a file rather than standard input, splitmail will sometimes estimate the number of parts wrong and will have to write out an extra part. This is harmless but annoying. It is especially annoying if the estimate was 2 but the real number was 1.

References

mailto(1), metamail(1)

Notices

Author is Nathaniel S. Borenstein, Bell Communications Research, Inc. See copyright page for further information.