| 9. Using CIS Unix E-Mail | ||
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| 9. Using CIS Unix E-Mail | ||
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By far the most common use of the CIS Unix systems is to receive and send e-mail. This section discusses the various ways you can do that.
Your can use a number of different methods to send and read e-mail. Each has advantages and disadvantages, and your choice will be made according to your personal preferences and usage patterns.
An incomplete list of things you might want to consider:
How important is a mail program's (so-called) “ease of use”? Many people like to get going with e-mail without having to learn a lot of stuff; that's fine, but a program that's not “easy” can have powerful features that you consider useful or important.
How often do you send or receive e-mail attachments? (I.e., word-processing documents, images, sound files, etc.). Some programs make this easier than do others.
Similarly, some good people will send you mail with “hyperlinks” (web URLs); some programs will allow you to click on them to bring up a web browser, for others the process is slightly more involved.
How important is mail “management” to you? (I.e., the ability to automatically or manually classify your mail into logical folders.)
Where do you want to store your mail on a long-term basis? On the Unix server, where you can access it from “anywhere”, or on your own PC? (A related question: will your typical usage be while you're sitting in front of your own PC, or will you be accessing your e-mail from a variety of locations?)
In the remainder of this section, we'll briefly describe three ways to handle your mail: CIS Unix WebMail (Section 9.1.1, “CIS Unix WebMail”); a PC-based program such as Eudora (Section 9.1.2, “PC-Based Mail Clients”); and Pine (Section 9.1.3, “Pine”).
You can read and send e-mail using only a web browser by accessing the CIS Unix WebMail server at the URL https://webmail.unh.edu/horde/. It should work with any recent GUI web browser (Mozilla or Internet Explorer, for example) on any platform; just log in with your CIS Unix username and password when the page comes up. “Use is self-explanatory.” The product is based on IMP from the `Horde Project'; more informaion is available from the Horde Project web page.
You can also access WebMail indirectly via UNH's BlackBoard service at the URL http://blackboard.unh.edu/.
WebMail requires no configuration, and you don't need to learn to use any other software than your web browser, so it's ideal for people who “just want to get it going.” It has a limited number of optional configurations, an integrated address book, and a “to do” calendar. It makes hyperlinks in mail messages clickable, and (at least in some cases) does useful things with attachments. Attachments are also easy to send (although uploading them to the WebMail server is a separate step and can take time). All traffic between the WebMail server and your computer is encrypted, so you shouldn't need to worry about network eavesdroppers.
The software does quite a bit of work “behind the scenes” to plaster a web interface onto e-mail functions. So it's probably the slowest method of e-mail access; it can get slower during peak usage times and if you have a large INBOX (or a large number of folders) it can get slower still. WebMail does little automatic management on your INBOX and other mail folders; you will probably need to periodically remove old mail, tranferring it to your PC if desired.
WebMail is extremely well-suited for use as a “backup” method of CIS Unix mail access since it can be run just about anywhere there's a web browser. Underneath everything, it's a standard IMAP server, so it should “interoperate seamlessly” with your current primary mail-handling software. (I.e., it won't delete or move messages from your INBOX unless you tell it to.) You should be able to “see” your other mail folders too; by default it looks in your Pine folder directory.
Tips and problem workarounds can be found on our WebMail Tips page.
There are a decent number of mail client programs that run on your PC. Examples are Mozilla Thunderbird; Eudora; Microsoft Outlook; or PC-Pine (Windows only).
PC-based mail client programs are (generally) easy to use, although they require more configuration than alternatives. Attachment-handling and hyperlink-handling is generally straightforward. Often they have built-in spam filters.
Such clients make it easy to download mail to your PC. This is good in that (generally) you'll have a lot more free space on your PC to store mail than on the CIS Unix servers; however, mail on your PC would not be readable from other machines.
Your mail client software may provide you the option of accessing your e-mail via either or both of the POP or IMAP protocols. IMAP is a little newer protocol than POP and is more flexible.
Generally, to configure your mail software correctly, you need to specify your SMTP server (for sending mail out) and your POP/IMAP server.
For on-campus users,
we suggest specifying
cisunix.unh.edu
as your SMTP server. Do not specify authentication information; the CIS
Unix SMTP server doesn't use it. Feel free to specify TLS or SSL
encryption; I think that works, and it's a pretty good idea.
Off-campus
customers of a commercial internet service provider will
probably want to specify their provider's SMTP server instead. For
example, Comcast (cable modem) customers in New Hampshire should use
smtp.comcast.net.
Alternatively, you can use the UNH VPN when you are connecting
from off-campus; if you're logged into the VPN, you
can specify cisunix.unh.edu
as your SMTP server.
Unlike sending mail, receiving your mail requires a lot more information. To read your mail via POP protocol, you need to supply:
your CIS Unix username;
your CIS Unix password;
your POP server name.
Not all these options may be configurable in the same place. Specifically, your client software may ask your password only when you command it to retrieve your mail.
We suggest specifying cisunix.unh.edu as your POP server.
You should note that many POP clients give you varying degrees of control about what happens to your mail: whether it gets moved to your PC, or left on the server, or some combination. What you decide depends on your usage patterns, but you should think about it, and make sure your client software isn't doing something you don't expect (or even understand).
CIS Unix hosts also have IMAP server software available;
you'll need to specify the same information as for the POP server,
and we suggest specifying cisunix.unh.edu
as the IMAP server.
You can often also specify a directory in which your non-INBOX mail folders are stored. You should leave this unset unless you have (somehow) chosen some odd location for your mail folders.
You might find it useful to look up e-mail addresses from our CIS Unix LDAP service from within your mail program. You can only use this service from a UNH host (or if you're logged into the VPN.)
Specify cisunix.unh.edu
as your LDAP (“directory”) server. The "Base DN"
should be specified as ou=People,dc=cisunix,dc=unh,dc=edu
The default is probably OK for other items.
The pine program can be used to read and send e-mail in a terminal sessions. (See Section 7, “Logging On” for directions on setting up a terminal session.) You can choose the “pine” option from the menu interface (see Section 7.5.1, “The CIS Unix Menu”) or if you're using the shell (Section 7.5.2, “The Shell”), simply give the command:
%pine
Pine probably has the steepest “learning curve” of all the supported mail programs. In return, however, you get to use a very powerful and configurable program that lets you handle large amounts of mail efficiently and flexibly. By default, Pine automatically organizes your sent and received mail into monthly folders. An integrated addressbook is provided.
Attachments you send out in Pine must be uploaded to the Unix server before you send them. Conversely, attachments you receive in incoming mail often must be downloaded from the Unix server to your computer in order to look at them. It's not hard to do such transfers with an FTP client program; see Section 11.2, “File Transfer Via FTP” for more information.
Extensive on-screen help is provided in Pine. A lot of helpful documentation is available at the Pine Information Center; beginning users will want to see the tutorial Getting Started With Email Using Pine.
Hyperlinks in Pine are handled (sort of) by the lynx browser (see Section 10.1, “World Wide Web”). You can also cut-and-paste them from your terminal window into a GUI browser running on your local computer, which is probably a better idea.
If you don't like Pine, but you do like terminal sessions, you might be interested in Mutt. Mutt is a full-featured mail system that allows extensive customization of mail processing; it's especially noted for efficient handling of large volumes of messages. One possible drawback is that it uses the vi editor to compose messages, since that is the default for most users. Also, it's not supported by CIS. To try it out:
%mutt
Note that incoming e-mail “counts against” your disk quota. Here are some things you should know with respect to e-mail and your disk quota:
Mail will almost certainly not be delivered to your home directory if it would put you over quota. Failed mail is deferred by being inserted in a “queue” for later delivery. Redelivery attempts happen every four hours or so.
If the delivery failure is due to a lack of free space, redelivery happens automatically soon after you either shrink your disk usage or (rarely!) get your quota increased.
If delivery fails for over four hours, the sender gets a warning note letting them know of the problem.
If one or more of your incoming messages are deferred for more than 12 hours, a phony mail message will be “forced” into your incoming mailbox (bypassing the quota restriction) notifying you of the problem.
If a mail message is undeliverable for five days, it is returned to the sender.
If mail to you has been continuously failing for two weeks, we may
“suspend” your mail. (I.e., newly incoming messages will begin to be
thrown away on arrival instead of being queued or bounced.)
A message to this effect will be appended
to your mailbox.
In this case, you can drop
us a note
(<sysman@cisunix.unh.edu>)
to let us know you're under quota and mail delivery
can resume.
Unusually large messages (or an unusually large number of messages) queued for you may be bounced back to the sender immediately, if possible. If this is due to malicious (or unintentional) misbehavior on the sender's part, we'll take appropriate actions to try to ensure the situation doesn't reoccur.
It's possible for you to set up up an “@unh.edu”
e-mail alias
for yourself. This might allow, for example, people to send e-mail to
you using the address <Joe.Englebart@unh.edu> instead of
<joe@cisunix.unh.edu>.
Detailed instructions
on how to set up such an alias for
yourself are available via the
E-Mail Alias web page.
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| 8. Quotas |  | 10. Using The Web |