Electronic Mail on Athena -- Draft

Table of Contents || Revision history || Copyright information

Introduction

Information Services and Technology (IS&T) provides e-mail accounts with an incoming mail server storage quota of 1 GB to MIT affiliates. A suite of supported programs gives you the option of storing and managing e-mail on your local computers (POP protocol) or on the e-mail server (IMAP) protocol. On Athena we recommend and support use of the IMAP protocol that stores your email on the servers.

IMAP, the Internet Message Access Protocol, allows you to store and work with your e-mail on the mail server itself instead of downloading it to your account. Thus it is easy to access all of your mail, instead of just new messages, from many locations with a variety of clients -- including a web option.

As your mail is stored on the server itself, you will have a quota on the mail server that is entirely separate from the quota for your files on Athena. Currently the quota on the IMAP server is set at 1Gb. You will recieve warnings when you are close to using your entire quota and if you are over quota for more than a week your mail will start bouncing. See the section Checking Your Quota for more details.

The supported mail clients for IMAP on Athena are evolution, and pine. Evolution is a Eudora-like graphical interface. It is the easiest to use of the email options. Pine is the command line interface that is popular amongst Unix users. It is primarily for power users and those who regularly use a terminal interface for mail reading.

Webmail is the recommended web client for remote use. It works with both Evolution and Pine, and will allow you to read your mail from any certificate-capable web browser. We do not recommend using Webmail as your primpary email client.

Also, see the Athena Rules of Use contain important information about appropriate use of the email system at MIT.

Creating Folders on the Server

When you first use an IMAP client to read your e-mail, a folder called "Inbox" is automatically created on your post office server. Besides being the mailbox in which your incoming mail is stored, it also serves as the master folder in which all other mailboxes you create (or are automatically created, such as Trash) are stored. For example, if you want to create a mailbox called "project-x", it will be created as sub-folder of Inbox.

You can also create mailboxes that are within mailboxes you've created. For example, if you want to create a mailbox called "reports" for project x, you can make it a sub-folder of the "project-x" folder

In some e-mail programs, your post office server, e.g., po14.mit.edu will be displayed in list of mailboxes. In addition, it may appear in a dialog box as the default folder in which to create new mailboxes. If you try to create a mailbox as a sub-folder of your post office server, you'll get a "permission denied..." error message. You need to use either Inbox, or a mailbox that you've created within inbox in which to place a new mailbox that you're creating.

Hint: Some email clients such as evolution store a list of your folders on local disk. If you create a new folder using another client, such as Webmail, the folder list in evolution may not include the new folder. Do not worry. The folder and mail within it still exist on the server. Simply refresh the folder list in your client and the new folder will appear in the list.

Evolution

Evolution is the supported IMAP graphical mail program on Athena. It is the easiest to use of the mail programs on Athena because of its intuitive graphical interface. You can start it at the command line: 
athena% evolution
Or by clicking on the Mail icon on the panel at the bottom of your screen. It will start a window that looks like this:

Click on the Inbox icon in the Shortcuts toolbar on the left hand side of the window.

Result: Your inbox appears.

You are now ready to send and receive mail using evolution. Most functions are accomplished by selecting messages or options with your mouse. The user's guide for Evolution is available from within Evolution via the help menu at the top of the window as seen above or visit the online Evolution 2.0 User Guide from Novell's site.

Pine

Pine is a popular menu-based, non-graphical email client. It is particularly useful for reading and sending mail when logged in remotely to an Athena workstation or dialup, e.g. via dialup, telnet, or ssh. To use pine, simply type pine at the Athena prompt: 
    athena% pine
If you get a "pine: Command not found." error, then you are probably on an Athena machine running an older release (9.0 or below); in this case, you can get a functionally similar version of pine by running "athrun sipb pine-imap".

After successfully starting pine for the first time, you should see a screen like this:

Hit Return and you will see the starndard start screen that looks something like this:

Note: Subsequent examples are shown in plain text for clarity.

Navigating in pine is done by keystrokes similarly to emacs or other terminal-style programs:

Most of the time, you will want to go straight to reading the new message in your inbox, so hit I to do that. You will now see a screen containing the following text:

  PINE 4.33L   MESSAGE INDEX             Folder: INBOX  Message 8 of 64 NEW

+ A   1 May 17 Bjorn Borud        (2,921) ares channel->next_id, and some ques
+ A   2 May 18 Bjorn Borud        (6,169) Re: ares channel->next_id, and some
  N   3 Jun 11 U.S. Conference S  (6,373) Minimize your phone expenses
  N   4 Jun 12 Darren Reed        (3,293) Re: code freeze on current?
  N   5 Jun 11 Jason R Thorpe     (2,525) Re: code freeze on current?
      6 Jun 11 Greg Stein         (6,277) Community input for Alpha
      7 Jun 12 CableDescrambler4  (2,709) *****cable converter/decoder*****
  N   8 Jun 12 Greg Stein         (2,869) Re: notification system rewrite in p
      9 Jun 12 Ben Collins-Sussm  (2,961) Re: broken libtool on freebsd



? Help       < FldrList   P PrevMsg      - PrevPage D Delete     R Reply
O OTHER CMDS > [ViewMsg]  N NextMsg    Spc NextPage U Undelete   F Forward
As shown at the bottom of the screen, you can use the P or N keys to navigate the message list; the currently selected line will be displayed in reverse video. The arrow keys and PgUp/PgDn may also work. To view a message, press >, and then press < to get back to the message list (or press N to go on to the next message).

You can clean up mail you don't want to keep around by pressing D to mark it for deletion and then X to execute all of the marked deletions. Deleted mail is difficult or impossible to retrieve, so be careful.

You can use the R key to reply to a message, or the C key to compose a new message. The message editor will look like this: 

To      : CableDescrambler4U6223d11@tfn.net
Cc      :
Attchmnt:
Subject : Re: *****cable converter/decoder*****

----- Message Text -----


^G Get Help  ^X Send      ^R Read File ^Y Prev Pg   ^K Cut Text  ^O Postpone
^C Cancel    ^J Justify   ^W Where is  ^V Next Pg   ^U UnCut Text^T To Spell
When the key guide at the bottom indicates a key like ^C, that means to press control-C. You can usually navigate in the message editing screen using the arrow keys; if those don't work, use control-P, control-N, control-B, and control-F for previous line, next line, back, and forward respectively. When you are done entering the message you want to send, press control-X to send it.

For further information about Pine, you can consult its online help (type ? at any screen other than the message editor), read the University of Washington's tutorial on Pine, or use the olc command from the athena% prompt to read stock answers or ask questions.

Webmail

MIT WebMail is an e-mail service from Information Services and Technology which allows access to MIT e-mail through almost any web browser on almost any computer, almost anywhere in the world. Access to the MIT e-mail servers is over a secure, encrypted link (check for the closed padlock on your browser window).

For instructions, see Using WebMail. WebMail is still being improved, so it may change as you use it. For information about major updates and known issues, see WebMail Known Issues.

To start using Webmail: Login to Webmail

Spam Screening

You have the option of screening incoming messages for spam. MIT Spam Screening performs a series of tests on an incoming e-mail message, scores it according to a set of criteria, and can optionally filter any message that qualifies as spam. Spam screening works with all three supported clients on Athena (Webmail, Pine and Evolution).

For more information on utilizing spam screening services at MIT, see Spam Screening at MIT.

Auto Responder (Vacation Email)

Auto-Responder is an e-mail service at MIT that allows you to set an automatic reply to mail sent to your MIT e-mail address (username@mit.edu) during an extended absence. It will reply to every message that contains your address in the To: or Cc: line with a message you customize. To set up an auto-response for your account, visit the Auto Responder page.

Mail Forwarding

You can have e-mail that's sent to your MIT e-mail account forwarded to another account. You also have the option of having copies of your forwarded e-mail messages sent to your MIT account (referred to as a "split mailbox"). These options are described below:

Standard Mail Forwarding

If you want all your athena mail forwarded to a non-MIT address, you should type:

     athena% chpobox -s  desired-address

To forward your mail from your athena account to joeuser@aol.com, you would type:

     athena% chpobox  -s  joeuser@aol.com

Warning: Be sure type your address correctly. The system does not check the validity of the address. If you type an invalid address, your mail will bounce back to the sender and you will not receive your mail.

It may take up to three hours for the forwarding to take effect. In the meantime, check your mail as usual. Once the change actually takes place and your mail is forwarding to the new address, you will no longer receive mail on athena.

NOTE: If you want to forward a copy of all your mail (or all of one particular folder) to another address, you can use the redistmail command as described in the OLC stock answer.

Split Forwarding

Split Forwarding allows you to forward all your email to another email account while having a copy still sent to your athena account. This feature is known as having a SPLIT mailbox. To do this:

     athena% chpobox -S desired-address
If your username is juser, to forward all your email to both your athena account and to joeuser@aol.com, type:

     athena% chpobox -S  joseph.user@startup.com

You will be able to check your email both on Athena and via your startup.com account. It will, again, take up to several hours for the forwarding to take effect. Make sure you type your address exactly as it should be spelled, otherwise copies of your mail will be bounced back to the sender.

Note that you are still limited to your quota for how much mail can be stored on MIT's PO servers. You should not allow that mail to accumulate without checking it. If you exceed your quota for stored mail, mail sent to you will begin to bounce.

Stopping Email Forwarding

When you want to stop forwarding your mail:

     athena% chpobox -p
Within about three hours, your mail will be delivered to and only to your original Athena mailbox again.

Checking Email Forwarding

If you want to see where your mail is currently being forwarded to, you can use the chpobox command:

     athena%  chpobox
It will give you a result similar to one of the following:

  User joeuser, Type IMAP, Box: joeuser.po (joeuser@PO11.MIT.EDU)
  Modified by joeuser@ATHENA.MIT.EDU on 06-jul-2001 12:37:21 with chpobox
The mail in this example is not being forwarded. Type IMAP is what the MIT mail servers are identified as, and the entry joeuser@PO11.MIT.EDU means that the mail is being delivered to joeuser's post office server, which is PO11.MIT.EDU.

  User freduser, Type SMTP, Box: fred@ucla.edu
  Modified by freduser@ATHENA.MIT.EDU on 28-aug-2001 09:58:00 with chpobox
The above example has regular mail forwarding set up, as indicated by the SMTP entry. Any mail addressed to freduser@mit.edu will instead be delivered to fred@ucla.edu.

User janeuser, Type SPLIT, Box: jane@aol.com(janeuser@PO12.MIT.EDU), (janeatmit@aol.com)
  Modified by janeuser on 20-mar-2000 21:21:34 with chpobox
The above example has split forwarding set up, as seen by the SPLIT entry type. Jane's mail is going both to her MIT post office server (PO12) and to her AOL account (janeatmit@aol.com).

Checking your Email Quota

Your mail quota, which is entirely separate from the quota for files on your Athena account, is 1Gb. Since the IMAP protocol leaves messages you do not delete on the server you should check your quota periodically by following this link. You will need MIT personal and site certificates in order to access this site.

When you reach 85%, 90%, and 100% of your quota, you will receive email messages telling you this. If you reach 100% quota, you will no longer receive incoming messages, but the messages will be held for you. If you remain at 100% for 7 days, your incoming messages will be returned to the senders until you delete some of your mail and drop below quota.

You should always try to keep a significant amount of your quota available for incoming messages, especially if you will be unable to check your mail for more than a week or are expecting large attachments.

Mailing Lists/Moira

There are two kinds of e-mail list services available at MIT for various purposes: Athena lists and Mailman lists. For more information about these types of mailing lists at MIT and how to acquire a mailing list see the Mailing Lists topic page. For more information specific to Athena lists including obtaining a list and adding/removing yourself from Athena lists, see Working on Athena's section on Mailing Lists.

Additional Resources

OLC (On-line Consulting) has an extensive collection of Stock Answers incuding an entire section devoted to e-mail. If your issue is not covered by the stock answers, you can always Ask OLC a Question.
MIT Information Systems Comments and feedback to olh-suggest@mit.edu