so I've been looking at this for too long, and can't make sense of why its not working?
no, Net::SMTP and Mail::Send are not on this box and it takes forever to get modules installed on this box..

        if($EMAILS) {
                socket(MAIL,PF_INET,SOCK_STREAM,getprotobyname('tcp'))
+;
                connect(MAIL,sockaddr_in(25,inet_aton($MAILHOST))) || 
+die "$!\n";;
                select MAIL; $|++; select STDOUT;
                print MAIL "HELO mydoamain.net\r\n";
                print "Emailing users: ";
                for(split(/,/,$EMAILS)) {
                        print "$_, ";
                        print MAIL "MAIL FROM: $from\n";
                        print MAIL "RCPT TO: $_\n";
                        print MAIL "DATA\n";
                        print MAIL "Subject: $subject\n\n";
                        print MAIL "$data\n";
                        print MAIL ".\r\n";
                }
                print "done. \n";
                print MAIL "QUIT\r\n";
                close MAIL;
        }
[download]

$EMAILS is a comma delimited string of email addresses.. I've tried all sorts of combinations with \r and \n and can't seem to get it to work, the script acts as though its working, but it doesn't send me mail, the connections don't fail and no errors are thrown anywhere..
I tested the mail server by telnetting to it on port 25 and issuing the EXACT commands the script is and its working.. I'm kinda lost on this one..

I'm trying to avoid a pipe to sendmail directly being that this SHOULD work.

-brad..