Files that affect your mail

The default mail setup at Nevis works for most users. However, if you'd like finer control over your e-mail, mail notifications, mail forwarding, spam processing, mail filtering, or are trying to fix a mail problem, the following information can be useful.

In the descriptions below, $USER is the name of your Nevis Linux cluster login account.

/nevis/benjamin/mail/inbox/$USER (/a/mail/inbox/$USER)

This is the file that contains the contents of your INBOX. On the mail server, it's located in /mail/inbox/$user, but the above path makes the file visible on other the other systems on the cluster via automount.

/nevis/benjamin/mail/folders/$USER (/a/mail/folders/$USER)

This is the default location of your IMAP mail files. On the mail server, this path is /mail/folders/$user, but the above path makes the file visible on other the other systems on the cluster via automount.

/nevis/benjamin/mail/folders/$USER/.subscriptions

This file contains the list of IMAP folders that you see in your mail reader. For the most part, you don't have to change the contents of this file; you can drag, drop, create, (un)subscribe, etc., using your mail program. But every once in a while, it's easier to edit this text file than it is to manually click on lots of different folders.

Not all mail programs use this file. For example, Thunderbird does; Apple Mail does not.

/nevis/benjamin/mail/forward/$USER or ~/.forward

The forwarding file controls how your e-mail is forwarded, and can also be used to automatically send vacation messages.

There are two places where you can put your forwarding instructions: /nevis/benjamin/mail/forward/$USER or ~/.forward. The latter name is the standard location for a forwarding file, and it's supported at Nevis. The former location is preferred, however, since the file will remain available to the mail server if your home directory becomes unavailable; e.g., if your group's server goes down.

If you have both files /nevis/benjamin/mail/forward/$USER and ~/.forward, only the lines in the former will be interpreted. The latter will be ignored.

/nevis/benjamin/mail/procmailrc/$USER or ~/.procmailrc

See the Procmail page for details.

~/.spamassassin/user_prefs

For the most part, you can ignore the contents of your ~/.spamassassin/ directory, which is automatically created for you the first time you receive mail at Nevis. The one file that you might want to look at is ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs, which allows you to control the functionality of SpamAssassin.

Your mail reader may also offer spam-filtering options. See this page on configuring SpamAssassin for why this is not the best option.