Email

Basic Configuration

The following provides information for basic configuration of email clients such as Thunderbird or Outlook. If you would like to access your CS&E email via the web, please go to CS&E Webmail.

CS&E Email

Email Address

<username>@cs.umn.edu

Receiving Mail

Server Name:	mail.cs.umn.edu
Server Port:	993
Server Type:	IMAP
Connection Security:	SSL/TLS
Authentication type:	Normal Password

Sending Mail

This server only works from CS&E networks. For off-campus please use your ISP's SMTP server or visit the University's E-mail Configuration Guides to learn how to configure your email client to connect to the university's SMTP server with your x.500 account.

Server Name:	mail.cs.umn.edu
Server Port:	465
Server Type:	SMTP
Connection Security:	SSL/TLS
Authentication type:	Normal Password

CSE Labs Email

Email Address

<username>@cselabs.umn.edu

Receiving Mail

Host:	mail.cselabs.umn.edu
Incoming Mail Server:	IMAP
Secure connection (SSL):	This server requires SSL to receive incoming mail.
Authentication type:	Password

Sending Mail

This server only works from CSE Labs networks. For off-campus please use your ISP's SMTP server or visit the University's E-mail Configuration Guides to learn how to configure your email client to connect to the university's SMTP server with your x.500 account.

Host:	mail.cselabs.umn.edu
Server Type:	SMTP
Secure connection (SSL):	This server does not require SSL to send mail.

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IMAP

IMAP is ideal for people who need to access e-mail from multiple computers since IMAP stores your e-mail on the mail server. Also, if mail is left on the server, it is backed up nightly and safe from potential disasters, such as disk errors.

Do not access your mail from IMAP and a 'local' mail client (such as pine, mutt, or elm) at the same time. Either use IMAP clients at once or a local client on a single machine. If you don't do this odd things my happen to your mailspool and there may be e-mail loss.

For more information regarding IMAP see the following links:

• IMAP vs. POP: What’s The Difference? (University of Minnesota)
• Email Protocols: POP vs. IMAP (Illinois State University)

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Vacation Messages

Enable Vacation Message

1. Go to CS&E Webmail.
2. Log in with your CS username and Unix password.
3. Click on Settings in the upper right hand corner:
   
4. Click on the Vacation tab:
   
5. Click the Send a notification check box.
6. Change any other information that you would like for your vacation message.
7. Click Save:
   

Your vacation message should now be enabled.

Disable Vacation Message

In order to disable your vacation message:

1. Go to the Vacation tab in CS&E Webmail.
2. Click on the Send a notification check box so that it is no longer checked.
3. Click save.

Your vacation message should now be disabled.

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Mail Forwarding

CS&E email to another email account

In order to forward your CS&E email to another email account, you need to to set up a .forward file in your home directory.

First, change to your home directory and create the .forward file:

cd ~
touch .forward

Next, edit your .forward file to include the following information:

\<cs username>
<new email address>

Your CS&E email will now be forwarded to the new email address and a copy of the emails will be saved in your CS&E email account. If you want the emails to be forwarded with no copy saved, simply leave out the \<cs username> line in your .forward file.

U of M gmail to CS&E email

1. Sign into your U of M gmail account.
2. Click on Mail Settings:
   
3. Click on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
4. Click on Add a forwarding address in the Forwarding section:
   
5. Enter your CS email address and click OK
   
6. Select the option under Forwarding that begins with Forwarding a copy of incoming mail to.
7. Select your CS email address and select an option for saving emails in your U of M gmail.
8. Click Save Changes*:

Your U of M gmail will now forward emails to your CS&E email account.

*Click this image to view a larger version on the image.

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Mail in Home Directory

Some users prefer to keep many messages in their mailspool (/var/spool/mail/$username, also called INBOX in IMAP) for easy access. The problem with this is that it leaves large files in /var/spool/mail. Since that directory has to be a single partition and can't easily be backed up if we expand it further, it is a better solution to allow the mail user agent to copy the mail automatically into a user’s home directory. Directions are below for popular clients.

Be aware, ~/mail is subject to your quota. While the clients will not delete the mail in /var/spool/mail if they encounter an error, it may take some intervention to uncorrupt a ~/mail if it ends up in a truncated state. Feel free to contact the Operator if needed.

Also, as with /var/spool/mail mailboxes, the ~/mail files have the same locking conditions as /var/spool/mail. Take care to only use a single client as a time to access mail, as this will reduce locking conflicts and related issues.

Pine/IMAP

To automatically move mail to your home directory with c-client based clients, do the following:

touch ~/mail
chmod 600 ~/mail

c-client will then automatically copy mail from /var/spool/mail into your home directory when you exit Pine, or use IMAP.

Mutt

Default Mutt settings should already be moving mail into ~/mail. However, with the following settings it will be done automatically without prompting each session:

set mbox="~/mail"
set move=yes

Elm

Elm’s default settings should ask upon exiting elm to move all read mail to ~/mail.

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Virus or Hoax?

In order to prevent your machine from becoming infected, always run a virus scanner. If you receive a suspicious email, check a virus scanner's site, such as Symantec (makers of Norton AV) and see if the email you have received is listed.

For more information, please visit the Safe Computing page.