Currently CCBB does not provide a email service to its users. Quite frankly, this can be a bit time consuming when you consider all of the little bits and pieces that go into successfully managing an email server, and it does require some specialized knowledge. There are better email services on campus, with better features like calendaring, and anti-virus/spam checking. We'll discuss the options in a bit, but if you are cluster user one thing you will need to do is to setup your email forwarding. This should be done on every UNIX system where you have an account, because at times every UNIX computer will need to send you emails. For example, the clusters will email you when a job finishes. Since we want you to receive email, and since we don't want you using our systems as mail servers, everyone should set up and maintain a forwarding file. A file called .forward in your home directory is consulted by the server when it needs to send you an email. If you run the command
echo "EMAIL" > ~/.forward
you will create this file. Replace the text EMAIL with your actual email address. After setting forwarding, you should check that it works. This can be done by typing
mailx -s 'test' USERNAME < /dev/null
replacing USERNAME with your username. If you don't get the test message, you should set the forwarding up again, or remove the .forward file completely.
Here are some other useful commands:
- to check forwarding:
cat ~/.forward
- to disable forwading
rm ~/.forward
For an email service, we suggest Austin Exchange Messaging System . AEMS is a fully featured email, and calendering tool including the ability to share calendars. It's true that Outlook users will get the most benefit out of using it, but it can still be accessed by any email client that supports the IMAP protocol. It is also accessible by smart phones, and has a webmail interface. This means that you can keep your email one AEMS server where it can be backed up, but it will still be accessible to you to read in a wide variety of ways. AEMS is also protected by the ITS run Ironport virus, and SPAM scanners. The basic AEMS account is free, so you will only have to pay for additional storage (which we can help you do using the TRAC system, and an account number). This storage has to be paid for on a yearly basis, but then it is also quite reasonable. If you do happen to hit the limit, and no more storage can be purchased, then older mail can be stored locally (let us know so that we can copy it to a CD for you), as any decent mail client provides the capability of having both local and server stored mail.
For existing mail.utexas.edu users, the process for converting to AEMS is
- obtain an AEMs account with however much extra storage you wish
- configure your clients
- configure your existing mail client to access AEMS using the provided docs
- configure any new mail clients to access AEMS if you want to make a change
- for all clients one important configuration item is your mail address. You can keep using your mail.utexas.edu address if you would like, or you can change to the austin.utexas.edu email address you will be given.
- once the configuration is done, then you should test sending and receiving emails.
- finally, you should log in to mail.utexas.edu and set it up to forward email to your new austin.utexas.edu email address. This will allow you to keep receiving email that is sent to your mail.utexas.edu address. This is useful even if you are changing to using an austin.utexas.edu address just in case someone doesn't switchover.
- Once mail is being routed correctly to your austin.utexas.edu address, you can begin the process of copying folders, and messages over to be stored on AEMS. In some cases, this must be done by recreating folders, and then dragging over a few messages at a time. Smaller folders can just be dragged directly over.
As an aside, I (Craig) spent my first 2 years of my career managing UNIX email servers. At first, I was nervous about moving to AEMS, but now having access to my mail in so many different ways including on my smart phone, and the knowledge that it's all securely backed up have made AEMS a "can't live without" tool for me.
