Short Tip: Extract attachments from multipart messages

Sometimes e-mails are stored as a plain text file. This might be due to backup solutions or as in my case, sometimes I have to save e-mails in text format because the client has issues with more complicated S/MIME mails with attachments.

In such cases the text file itself contains the multipart message body of the e-mail, so the attachments are provided as base64 streams:

--------------060903090608060502040600
Content-Type: application/x-gzip;
 name="liquidat.tar.gz"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment;
 filename="liquidat.tar.gz"

qrsIAstukk4AA+17Wa+jSpZuPfMrrK6Hvi1qJ4OxsfuodQU2YLDBUJDGrvqBeR7MaPj1N7D3
OEmSxO8Wq7+3Y48dTWvXi8XvvKj8od6vPf9vKjWIv1v7nt3G/d8rEX5D/FdrDIxj2IrUPeE/
j5Dv4g9+fPnTRcX006T++LdYYw7w+i...

These data can be extracted manually, but that’s a wearisome task. It’s easier to use munpack, which can easily extract attachment(s) out of such text files and write them into a proper named files.

$ munpack -f mail.txt
liquidat.tar.gz (application/x-gzip)