Sending emails to addresses and subjects in a CSV with a fixed message in a textfile

The following script was generated to notice approvers that an audit initiated the deletion of some users they did not approved (again). The Subject contains the usernames, and the message is a template with some PC blahblah.

#!/bin/bash

if [ $# -lt 2 ]; then
 echo "No arguments passed! I need a 'mailaddr;subject' .csv and a txt containing the fixed message."
 echo "csvmailer.sh addresses.csv message.txt"
 exit 1
fi

while read p; do
 IFS=';'
 TOKENS=($p) 
 EMAIL=${TOKENS[0]}
 SUBJ=${TOKENS[1]}
 IFS=' '
 mail -s "$SUBJ" "$EMAIL" < $2
done < $1

The CSV is like "jane.doe@company.com;This is a message in the subject about deleting the account of 'johndoe@company.com'\n". Do NOT put a semicolon into the subject column :-D

IFS sets the Internal Field Separator to semicolon (';'), instead of the default whitespace. This way the array generator/tokenizer is dead simple in the next line.

$1 is the CSV file, read into $p line-by-line.

$2 is the fixed message piped into mail.

Battlefield 2 Piloting with mouse - tip of the day

Assign "pitch up" ("pitch+") to a key on your keyboard (like spacebar, it's unused by default in jets), so you don't have to destroy your mouse while pulling up ;-)

Thanks, Andris!

Cisco VPN vs. Linux, KDE

So you have a Cisco proprietary PCF file, and you want to use it in your KDE, but the Network Manager's VPN Import says it cannot do it?
Here is what to do:
# apt-get install network-manager-vpnc
(This should also install vpnc if you haven't had it already.) Now, try importing the PCF file again.

Many thanks to: http://thomas.zumbrunn.name/blog/2013/04/04/479/

Linux: Send files in e-mail from console

So I wanted to send some files, but my mailx package did not have support for the famous -a parameter.

#!/bin/bash

function create_attachment_block()
{
        echo -ne "--$BOUNDARY\r\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: base64\r\n"
        echo -ne "Content-Type: $(file -bi "$1"); name=\"$1\"\r\n"
        echo -ne "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"$1\"\r\n\r\n$(base64 -w 0 "$1")\r\n\r\n"
}

if [ $# -lt 2 ]; then
        echo No files specified...
        exit 1;
fi

BOUNDARY="==combine-autogun==_$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S)_$$_=="
BODY=""

for a in "$@"
do
        if [ -s "$a" -a -f "$a" -a -r "$a" ]; then
                BODY="$BODY""`create_attachment_block "$a"`"
        fi
done

/usr/sbin/sendmail -oi -t << COMPLEX_MAIL
To: $1
Subject: Please see files attached
MIME-Version: 1.0
User-Agent: $0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="$BOUNDARY"

$BODY
--${BOUNDARY}--
COMPLEX_MAIL