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How to use
Electronic Mail
at the Dept. of Computer Science
The important thing from the user perspective to know about using IMAP is the concept of IMAP folders. All your mail is organised in folders and those folders can be located on our mailserver but also anywhere else. In the last case we speak about local folders. In local folders you can archive your mail and order it on topic, sender, etc. Local folders can be located in your homedirectory or on your local machine. On the mailserver there are a few default folders like 'INBOX', 'Sent , 'SPAM', 'Drafts', 'Templates' and 'Trash' but you can create additional ones. The folder 'INBOX' is the default location where the mailserver drops incoming new mail.
Whether to use mailfolders on the server or local folders is up to the user. Using local folders gives more freedom to spend lots of disk space (and is therefore preferred for archives) and the ability to reach the mail with other tools than IMAP. The benefit of storing mail in folders on the server is that those folders can be reached from anywhere in the world and not just via your local desktop machine at the department.
Note that some people are puzzled by password problems. This page is about the departments mail facility, not about Solis-mail (see below) or other stuff. At the department, accounts have a Unix password and a Windows password which are initially the same. However, if you change one of thoose the other won't go along. The importing thing to notice regarding to mail is that for using mail you need your Unix password (which can only be changed on our Unix systems (Sun/Linux)).
1 The SMTP server can only be used if you are directly connected to our network(s). If you are using e-mail at home and you are not using Authenticated mail (see below), you should use the SMTP server(s) of your Internet Service Provider (ISP).
STAFF network STUDENTS network
- Q:
- What is the name of the SMTP server? 1
- A:
- smtp.cs.uu.nl
- Q:
- What is the name of the IMAP(-SSL) server?
- A:
- imaps.cs.uu.nl (port 993)
- Q:
- What is my e-mail address?
- A:
- your-login-name@cs.uu.nl
- Q:
- What is my e-mail domain?
- A:
- cs.uu.nl
- Q:
- What is the name of the SMTP server? 1
- A:
- smtp.students.cs.uu.nl
- Q:
- What is the name of the IMAP-SSL server?
- A:
- imaps.students.cs.uu.nl (port 993)
- Q:
- What is my e-mail address?
- A:
- your-login-name@students.cs.uu.nl
- Q:
- What is my e-mail domain?
- A:
- students.cs.uu.nl
You mailclient probably complains about a certificate, the first time. You can accept that certificate permanently.
More about SSL certificates and how to tell your browser about them can be found on our UU SSL certificate installation page.
inbox-path={imaps.cs.uu.nl/ssl/novalidate-cert}INBOX
user-domain=cs.uu.nl
smtp-server=smtp.cs.uu.nl, smtp1.cs.uu.nl, smtp2.cs.uu.nl
nntp-server=news.cs.uu.nl
STAFF network STUDENTS network
STAFF STUDENTS using imap-ssl:
set imap_user="your_login_name_here"
set hostname=cs.uu.nl set spoolfile=imaps://imaps.cs.uu.nl/INBOX set folder="~/Mail" set certificate_file=~/.mutt.certificatesusing imap-ssl:
set imap_user="your_login_name_here"
set hostname=students.cs.uu.nl set spoolfile=imaps://imaps.students.cs.uu.nl/INBOX set folder="~/Mail" set certificate_file=~/.mutt.certificates
Refer to the Mutt documentation for more detailed information on using and configuring Mutt.
If you are migrating to Mozilla, take a look at our conversion doc.
If you want to use Eudora in order tot receive and send e-mail (at the
department as well as at home),
make sure you have installed at least Eudora version 5.1, which is
necessary for SSL. It can be found in our software depot. If you don't know
how to do this, ask our helpdesk.
A detailed guide for our IMAP-SSL setup
We do not support Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express. On student machines, we don't even promise the package to be available. There are email solutions that are far less dangerous regarding virusses, worms, trojan horses, etc.
However, that doesn't mean that we just ignore Outlook. Our mailservers will always provide solutions which are compatible with recent Outlook versions. After all, Outlook is in widely use in the outside world and staff users are free to use whatever they like as a mailclient. Staff use Outlook at their own risk. They should carefully configure each version of the application, and pay extra attention to their anti virus setup and maintenance. We have checked that both Outlook and Outlook Express support our IMAP-SSL implementation. Use Google and you will find a wealth of information.
Our mailserver in the students network uses diskquota. The diskquota are implemented using filesystem quota. You can inspect your quota with the quota command (see example below). You can also inspect disk usage via your emailclient. Advanced clients let you order your messages by size, to get a quick impression where your megabytes are hanging out. For webmail users, the folder size plugin is installed.
Filesystem quota systems use a soft limit and a hard limit. At the moment, the soft limit is 125 MB, the hard limit 150 MB. When you're over your soft quota limit, incoming mail will bounce. When you're over your hard quota limit or when the 'grace' period is exceeded (30 days), you can't use additional disk blocks. As a result, managing mail will become hard if you use preferences like 'move deleted mail to trash'.
As a result of the (default) 'move deleted mail to trash' setting, when a user is over quota deleting mail will fail. To solve this, one has to disable the use of the Trash folder. With SquirrelMail (webmail) do:
- go to 'Folder' ->
- choose 'Folder Preferences' ->
- for ' Trash Folder' select 'Do not use Trash'
People where (usage > soft limit * 0.9) receive an email every night explaining their situation and disk usage. This mail arrives even when they exceeded there hard limit and all other mail is failing.
On our linux platform server, the mail disk is nfs-mounted. For most users this is not relevant but for some it may come handy, for example when they are doing filtering tricks and want to see what's going on. However, this gives also another way to inspect your disk usage, as is illustrated by the following example ( The mailpartition is mounted under /var/spool/mail/<username> ):
bellatrix:/users/hgklinge 519% ssh pclown@tux pclown@tux's password: eos:/users/pclown-> quota Disk quotas for user pclown (uid 2107): Filesystem blocks quota limit grace files quota limit grace home.students.cs.uu.nl:/export/students 7498 210000 240000 717 0 0 mail.students.cs.uu.nl:/export/mail 264 128000 153600 64 0 0 eos:/users/pclown-> du -ks /var/spool/mail/pclown/* 4 /var/spool/mail/pclown/courierimapkeywords 4 /var/spool/mail/pclown/courierimapsubscribed 4 /var/spool/mail/pclown/courierimapuiddb 32 /var/spool/mail/pclown/cur 8 /var/spool/mail/pclown/new 4 /var/spool/mail/pclown/tmp eos:/users/pclown-> du -ks /var/spool/mail/pclown/.??* 20 /var/spool/mail/pclown/.Drafts 24 /var/spool/mail/pclown/.Sent 16 /var/spool/mail/pclown/.SPAM 16 /var/spool/mail/pclown/.Templates 24 /var/spool/mail/pclown/.Trash eos:/users/pclown-> exit logout Connection to tux closed. bellatrix:/users/hgklinge 520%
Forwarding incoming E-mail to other addresses can be done in various ways. A simple and wide-spread method is using a .forward file. A better way is to incorporate this job in your filtering methods, for example in your .mailfilter file. That way you don't forward SPAM (see next section, and note the Wordpad warning there).
We recommend using the .mailfilter file (see also below) for mail-forwarding. At the end of your .mailfilter file, add a line like
to "!user@some.other.domain"To copy all your mail to user@some.other.domain, add a line like
cc "!user@some.other.domain"If you must, create a .forward file in your homedirectory containing one or more e-mail addresses, either seperated by comma's or by new-lines. If you want to leave a local copy of the message too, use something like this:
your-login-name
metoo@some.where.else
This will cause the message to be delivered to the mailbox of user
your-login-name and forwarded to the address
<metoo@some.where.else> as well.
Windows explorer can't rename a file to .forward. Proceed as follows :
echo your-login-name > .forward echo metoo@some.where.else >> .forward
For local delivery (the delivery of new mail in users' mailboxes), our mailserver uses (by default) maildrop. The actions of maildrop are guided by a $HOME/.mailfilter file. If the file does not exist, new mail is delivered in your default inbox.
There is a standard .mailfilter file (the contents is shown below in the yellow box). This file realises three features:
$HOME/vacation.txtIf this file exists, it is sent as auto-reply in response to non-spam, non-maillist messages. When you rename or remove the file, auto-replying stops.
The old mechanism still works :
.mailfilter has a switch that enables auto-replies
(vacation messages).
To enable the switch, change
VACATION_AUTO_REPLY=0into
VACATION_AUTO_REPLY=1and provide a auto-reply message body in
$HOME/.vacation.msg
mailfilteron any Sun or Linux box (for instance shell.cs.uu.nl)
$HOME/.mailfilterMake sure it has mode 0600 (-rw-------).
# to send a vacation message in reply to mail that is not spam or bulk mail, # simply create a file $HOME/vacation.txt (H:vacation.txt) ; # this file is sent as the /body/ of the vacation auto reply # To sent a message in reply to html-mail (Content-Type: text/html) # set HTML_AUTO_REPLY=1 # Html-mail is diverted to folder 'HTML'. It requires a file # $HOME/htmlmail.msg containing something like "I'm not a browser". # Note: This only drops HTML-only messages, so the multipart ones are O.K. HTML_AUTO_REPLY=0 #----------------------------------------------------------------------- if (/^X-Spam-Flag: YES/) { to "$DEFAULT/.SPAM" } if ( $HTML_AUTO_REPLY ) { if (/^Content-Type:.*text\/html/ && !/^Precedence: (bulk|list|junk)/) { cc "$DEFAULT/.HTML" xfilter "reformail -r -t" to "| ( cat - htmlmail.msg) | $SENDMAIL -t" } } # the next line sends a vacation message, if applicable ; # the contents of this file can be found here: # http://www.cs.uu.nl/technical/services/email/using.php#filter include "/etc/maildroprc.vacation" # processing of .mailfilter goes on after the previous include, so # you can put your own stuff below...
And this is the contents of the included maildroprc.vacation file which lives on the mailserver.
# # maildroprc.vacation # # To be included from ~/.mailfilter via: include "/etc/maildroprc.vacation" # NB: We enforce spamchecking, here we don't respond to spam tagged msgs. # If you use our default ~/.mailfilter, spam msgs won't reach this point # anyway. # # NB csg: src in the linux sw dept stuff... if ( !/^Precedence: (bulk|list|junk)/:h && !/^X-Spam-Flag: YES/:h ) { VAC_TXT=`sh -c 'test -f "$HOME/vacation.txt" && echo 1 '` if ( $VACATION_AUTO_REPLY || $VAC_TXT ) exception { cc "|reformail -r -t | /local/src/vacation/vacation" } }
Note:
to "!some.user@some.domain.com"
$HOME/.spamassassin/user_prefsyou can set your prefered value for required_hits
required_hits 4or blacklist annoying spam that gets periodically
blacklist_from *@verba-volant.net
blacklist_from mailman-owner@milkrecords.net
If you find false negatives (spam messages not marked as spam)
you can use sa-learn to teach spamassassin. Save the false
negatives in a file X, and when you collected some stuff,
login on the
linux platform server and run sa-learn:
sa-learn --spam --showdots --mbox XSa-learn now updates spamassassin's Baysian filters. There is no harm in presenting a message more than once because sa-learn remembers which messages it has seen. So if you present the same message twice, spamassassin will ignore it the second time.
Make sure not to break your local delivery.
More info about Solis Mail can be found in the cs.uu.nl page and the UU pages on Solis Mail.
postmaster@cs.uu.nl,
$Id: using.php,v 1.36 2008/09/05 14:55:00 koos Exp $
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Departement Informatica, Universiteit Utrecht