Forwarding mail

• Vacation explains the Vacation auto-reply tool available on most unix shells.
• Mail Tools page lets you turn vacation or forwarding on or off.

How to set up mail forwarding on your unix shell account (using me@example.com):

1. Telnet (or dialin directly with a serial terminal program if that is possible) to your shell account.
   • If you need telnet software, see: Macintosh.
   • Windows: coming soon
2. login
   1. You will first need to tell your telnet application to connect you to example.com
   2. After being connected, you may have to hit return once or twice
   3. When it asks for your username, enter your username (me)
   4. When it asks for your password, enter your password (******)
3. edit a file called .forward -- Pico is a user-friendly text editor. In order to do so, try typing (the $ just represents the prompt, don't type it):
   • $ pico .forward
   • Put on the first line, without hitting enter, the email address you wish to have your mail forwarded to:
   • me@counterexample.com
   • If you wish to forward just to another user whose account is @example.com, you would just enter:
   • ernie
   • If you wish to leave a copy for yourself, but also forward a message, be sure to put a backslash in front of your username so as to avoid infinite forwarding loops. Use a comma between addresses:
   • \me, me@counterexample.com
   • To delete mail so that no one gets it:
   • /dev/null
   • To delete mail and send an autoreply (see the vacation page for other requirements of sending autoreplies)
   • /dev/null, "|vacation andrew"
4. Test it. (send a message to yourself, or have a friend do so)

1. To turn off forwarding:
2. Telnet to shell account and log in.
3. delete the .forward file:
   • $ rm .forward

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