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The electronic mail (email) system can be used to exchange messages with staff, faculty, and students within MSU in addition to any user on a system with a connection to the Internet. This section explains the use of the programs mail, and elm and how to specify mail addresses. Another interface available for reading/sending email is Sun's mailtool. More information about mail, elm, and mailtool can be found in the on-line manual pages (accesible by typing the command: man <command-name>). You may also consult Sun's on-line AnswerBook for more information on mailtool (accesible by typing the command: answerbook2). Note: Both mailtool and answerbook are only available within an X Window environment. The department also supports remote access to electronic mail via the IMAP protocol. The server name is `mail.cse.msu.edu'. POP is *not* supported and no plans exist to support it in the future, particularly given IMAP's robustness with respect to it. Your official Internet email address is <user-name>@cse.msu.edu. mail (the program) A few basic command-line mail functions.
When a message is created interactively, the content is entered at the terminal. For instance, when using the command mail <user-name>, the Subject: prompt appears. Enter a short subject line and press. A Cc: prompt appears next. Enter a list of people who should also receive a copy of the mail (or nothing if the mail is only going to the person on the command line) and press. Now enter your message. The command (on a new line) will load the current message into the vi editor to allow easier editing of the message. It is also possible to edit messages using alternate editors. See the mailx man page (type man mailx at a command prompt) for details. At the end of the message (after exiting the editor), type a period and When reading mail, the mail program will provide an & as a prompt. The table below lists some frequently used commands that may be specified at this prompt. In the table, A few basic interactive mail commands.
Elm Many people find elm's menu structure easier to use than mail. elm is accesible by typing elm
Mail forwarding A .forward file can be used to forward mail from one system to another. It is often useful to use your .forward file to manage mail on multiple accounts. To forward your mail to another system: Create a file called .forward in your home directory. This file should contain one line: the internet email address to which you wish your email to be forwarded. Example: <user-name>@msu.edu To receive all your mail at your CSE account: Create a .forward file in your home directory on each system (outside the CSE domain) on which you have an account. This file should contain one line: your internet address on the CSE system. Example: <user-name>@cse.msu.edu. Follow the directions above for setting the correct permissions on your home directory and the .forward file. Those users receiving much email may want to consider using a mail 'filter' to preprocess their incoming mail. Our systems support procmail for that purpose. Please see the man pages for procmail, procmailrc, and procmailex for instructions and sample filters. To send mail to a user in the same domain, (e.g. cse.msu.edu), in which you are currently working, you merely need to mail to <user-name>. To send mail to a user not on your system, you will need to use a more specific address. In general, the address will be of the form <user-name>@site.organization.domain. For example, <user-name>@marketing.att.com. In addition to the programs mentioned here, there are many other mail packages that can be used (For example, pine, Rmail (emacs-mail), VM, and mh. A few may be located on the user-supported software disk, mounted as /soft/lus. Please see the User Supported Software page for more information. |
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3115 Engineering Building
East Lansing, MI 48824-1226
Phone: (517) 353-3148
Fax: (517) 432-1061
web@cse.msu.edu