Nevis Mail Forwarding Tips
Some tips on forwarding your mail, both while you're here at Nevis, and when the time comes for you to leave.
Fowarding your mail
When an account is created for you on the Nevis Linux cluster, you
automatically get an e-mail address (as described at the top of the
mail page). However, you may wish to receive your mail elsewhere.
You have two choices:
Do it yourself
Create a
/a/mail/forward/$user
file (where
$user
is the name of your Nevis user account). Put in the e-mail address
that should receive any e-mail received at Nevis.
There are two possible locations for a fowarding
file:
/a/mail/forward/$user
and
~/.forward
. Which
should you use? The latter location,
~/.forward
, is the
standard for most Unix systems, and it's supported at Nevis. However,
it requires that your home directory is available; if
your
work group's server goes down, your mail won't be forwarded. If you
use
/a/mail/forward/$user
, your mail will be forwarded even
if there's a problem on another server.
The page on
mail-related files has more information on which file to use.
There is no "man" page for forwarding files. However, the
syntax of the
addr_n option in a sendmail
aliases
file is the same as that of a line in a forwarding file. A
separate page has been prepared for typical
problems.
The advantage of this approach is that it gives you complete control
over how and when your mail is forwarded. The disadvantage is that,
if you don't do much work on the cluster, you can forget that the
fowarding file is there, what your account password is, or other details.
Put it on the mail server
Ask
a systems administrator to create a mail alias for you on the mail
server. This is the most efficient way for your mail to be forwarded.
The disadvantage of this approach is that you don't have direct
control if you change your mind. You can check the list of mail
aliases with the command:
ypcat -k aliases | less
(The
ypcat
output is long and unsorted; you'll want to use
less
,
sort
,
or
grep
to filter the results.) However, you can't change the alias without
asking a systems administrator again.
Old mail accounts
Important note: Your mail account is subject to being locked or
cancelled as of the moment your formal connection to Nevis Labs is
terminated. The issue is not whether you have a legitimate continuing
connection with the research at Nevis; the issue is whether external
auditors might conceivably consider that an "old" account would pose a
security risk.
Therefore, when you leave Nevis, you'll want to have something done about your
mail. You should arrange to have it forwarded as described above.
What happens if you leave without giving any instructions about your
mail account?
- If you created a
/a/mail/forward/$user
file, it will be left as it is. All your mail will be forwarded to the address in that file. If your home directory is moved, archived, or deleted after you've left Nevis, the mail address in your forwarding file will be put into the mail server's aliases file instead. The mail alias will remain indefinitely, until you ask
for it be removed.
- Unless your mail files take up a significant percentage of the available disk space on the mail server, it's likely that your Nevis mail files will be kept indefinitely.