The Informatics Mail Service

Introduction

This page tells you how to use the Informatics mail service.

From October 2007 all new staff will get mail accounts on the University's Staffmail service.
Information on this service is avialable here.

If you want to get up and running quickly, go straight to the basic instructions.

If you want lots of technical detail there's an advanced section.

To find out more, go on to the next section.

Questions & Answers

I'm a student. Should I use the Informatics mail service?: No. You should continue to use the Student Mail Service. You will not be able to use the Informatics mail service.
I'm a member of staff. Should I use the Informatics mail service?: Yes. You will need your DICE account and password - if you don't yet have these, ask Support for them.
I'm a visitor/associate. Should I use the Informatics mail service?: Yes. You will need your new DICE account and password - if you don't yet have these, ask Support for them.
I use staffmail. Should I change?: No, you can carry on using the University's staff mail service. However you should ensure that all mail to your Informatics addresses is being forwarded to staffmail.
Why do we need a mail service?: There's been a desire to have proper Informatics email addresses in the inf.ed.ac.uk domain ever since Informatics was formed several years ago. We now have the infrastructure to fulfil that desire.
Where will my mail be delivered?: Your mail will be delivered to the Informatics mail server.
How do I get at my mail?: You can either use a mail program with IMAP or you can read your mail on the web. You cannot access your mail inbox via the file system - for example there is no /var/spool/mail/user or /home/user/.mail.
What's IMAP?: IMAP is a mail access protocol similar to - but more powerful and flexible than - the POP protocol. It gives you the choice of downloading your mail or keeping it on the mail server, where it can be kept in multiple mail folders.
How do I forward my mail?: Click on Filters in IMP web mail and click Insert new rule here to set up a rule which forwards your mail elsewhere. Don't forget to click enable this rule when you're happy with it.
How do I filter my mail?: Click on Filters in IMP web mail and click Insert new rule here to set up a rule which filters your mail (for example, to deliver mail from certain people into a special folder). Don't forget to click enable this rule when you're happy with it.
I'm going on holiday. How can I set up an auto-reply message?: Click on Filters in IMP web mail and click Insert new rule here, then click Setup a vacation message and type in your message. Don't forget to click enable this rule when you're happy with it.
Will my old (legacy) mail address continue to work?: Yes. The old mail addresses will continue to work for the foreseeable future. All mail to them will be redirected to the Informatics mail service. For example, mail to Neil Brown's old addresses nrb@dcs.ed.ac.uk and neilb@dcs.ed.ac.uk will automatically be redirected to neilb@inf.ed.ac.uk.
Which mailers do you recommend?: IMP web mail, pine/alpine, and Thunderbird. If you have trouble with any of these mailers, ask Support for help.
Can I use another mailer instead?: Yes, you can use any mailer that's available, if you can get it to work. However, we won't be able to help you if it goes wrong! We've given you some hints below to get you started.
My favourite mailer is no longer supported! Why not?: If you've read the instructions and made the unpleasant discovery that your mailer isn't supported any more - well, we're sorry! However there are good technical reasons: we wanted to make the new mail service above all reliable and secure, and that means - to cut a long story short - that we should only support a remote mail protocol called IMAP. Some mail agents, for example exmh, can't do IMAP and so are now rather more awkward to use than before. The mail agents that we now recommend are the ones that support IMAP properly.
What anti-spam features do you have?: All incoming external email is routed via the EUCS mail relays, where they scan the mail with Spam Assassin which adds a couple of extra headers to the mail message indicating a spam score. The mail is then delivered to your account. Using filters, you can then choose what to do with the mail based on its Spam Assassin score. See the spam filter documentation for more information.
Do I have a mail quota?: In January 2006, we introduced a quota of 200Mb for each user.

This section contains quick instructions on how to access your Informatics mail using IMP web mail, pine/alpine, Eudora, VM, exmh, MH/NMH, mh-e, RMAIL, gnus, and other mailers. Remember that you will need your DICE account and password - if you don't yet have these, ask Support for them.

IMP Web Mail

Support status: we encourage you to use IMP web mail, and we'll help you if you have a problem. Just ask Support.

IMP is simply the web interface to the Informatics mail service. To see it, point your web browser at http://mail.inf.ed.ac.uk. You'll need your DICE account and password - if you don't yet have these, ask Support for them. You should also make sure that you have not disabled cookies in your web browser. Apart from that, you don't need to configure anything - just login and start reading your mail!

(A word more about cookies, for those concerned for their personal privacy - by default cookies are not disabled, so you will only have a problem if you have disabled them yourself. If you have, then enabling cookies either completely or "from the originating web site only" ought to be enough to get IMP working for you. If that worries you, consider using Thunderbird as your browser and explore its Privacy and Security preferences, which let you select which sites you will and won't accept cookies from.)

Pine or Alpine

Support status: we encourage you to use pine (alpine is the new name for pine), and we'll help you if you have a problem. Just ask Support.

To get your Informatics mail in pine, invoke pine as usual and go to the Configure menu. From there, check or set the following:

inbox-path = {mail.inf.ed.ac.uk/ssl}INBOX
user-domain = inf.ed.ac.uk

You will then need to exit & save configuration changes, and then quit pine. The new setup will be invoked the next time you start pine.

You may encounter a couple of problems:

If you leave your pine process running overnight on a DICE machine, you should run renc to re-authenticate yourself the next day. This must be on the same machine as your pine process, but can be from a different window. If you don't, you will still be able to read mail, but won't - for example - be able to print.
You may see a message about a failure to validate certificates. If you see this, check with your local computing support folk to see if the required certificate(s) could be added to the site-wide list.

There are more extensive pine instructions in the advanced pine section.

Thunderbird

Support status: we encourage you to use Thunderbird, and we'll help you if you have a problem. Just ask Support.

(These instructions are rather long and complicated. We hope to simplify them a lot when time permits.)

Firstly you need to register the root University CA Certificate. Full details can be found here. However for a quick install do the following:

Click here. A dialogue box will pop up:
You are about to register a new Certificate Authority; this means that Firefox will trust all SSL certificates signed by this authority.
Select the three tickboxes and click on View.
Check that the MD5 Fingerprint is the same as the one listed here.
Click on Close, and if you wish to accept the certificate, click on OK.

Please note that in adding CA certs you are granting large amounts of trust to any SSL server; this should not be done lightly.

If you have started Thunderbird for the first time then please skip the next two steps (note).

In Thunderbird select Edit -> Account settings.
Click Add Account.
You should have a box marked New Account Setup. Select Email Account and click next.
Identity: enter your details as you want them to appear. Click next.
Server Information: select IMAP and set the Incoming Server box to mail.inf.ed.ac.uk. Click on next.
Set your username and click next.
Give the account a name. This isn't used in the mail process so can be any text like "Informatics mailserver". Click next.
You should now see a review screen. Check that the information is correct and use the back button to change anything. Click on Finish.
You should now see an entry for your new Informatics Mailserver in the pane on the left. You may have to scroll down if you already have a number of accounts. Click on the Server Settings line.
Select the Use Secure connection (SSL) checkbox. This will force Thunderbird to use encrypted IMAP and prevent any passwords being passed over the network in cleartext. At the same time the entry in the Port box should change from 143 to 993. Change any other setting you wish.
Click on the Advanced box. Unselect the Server supports folders… checkbox.
It is recommended that you send mail as plain text, rather than HTML. Do to this select the Composition & Addressing line on the left-hand list, and untick the Compose Messages in HTML format option in the right-hand panel.
In the panel on the left scroll down until you see Outgoing server (SMTP). Set the server name to smtp.inf.ed.ac.uk and under use secure connection (SSL) select when available. Click on OK. You may want to read about our authenticated SMTP if you are setting up Thunderbird at home or on a laptop.
Optional but recommended: (note)
Select Edit -> Preferences (on Windows it's Tools -> Options). Click on Composition, select General tag. Set Forward messages to inline.
Click on Send Options and select Convert the message to plain text.
(DICE machines only) If you want to have an addressbook with all Informatics addresses, click on addressing, tick Directory Server and click on the edit Directories button.
(DICE machines only) Click on add. In the general tab set the following:
```
Name: Informatics LDAP
hostname: localhost
Base DN: ou=People,dc=inf,dc=ed,dc=ac,dc=uk
```
Click on OK.
If you want to perform queries against eddir then add an additional server with
```
Name: eddir
hostname: eddir.ed.ac.uk
Base DN: dc=ed,dc=ac,dc=uk
```
Click on OK and close the options window. Restart Mozilla to make the LDAP changes take effect. If you wish to test the directories then start mozilla with mozilla -addressbook or click on the addressbook icon. You should have addressbooks corresponding to Informatics and eddir. Click on one and type a name; you should get a list of possible addresses - though searching eddir may take several minutes.

Note: We're hoping to customize things such that a default inf mailbox is created and various other settings are sensible the first time a user starts Thunderbird, but it may not be possible in the short-term.

Eudora

Support status: we don't support the use of Eudora with the Informatics mail service. If you want to use it, go ahead; but if you need help with it, please use a recommended mailer instead (IMP web mail, pine or or Thunderbird.

You must upgrade to Eudora 5.1 in order to make use of the new secure IMAP service. You can download Eudora 5.1 from the Eudora home page.

The downloadable version comes in three forms:

Licenced - full features, no adverts sent to the desktop
Free - full features - adverts sent to a small box on your screen
Light - limited features - no adverts

If you don't wish to purchase a licence, you can select the Free version (the advert box is wee and easy to ignore) or the Light version (you lose spell checking and several other features, but the basic mail functions are all there and there are no adverts).

The Eudora 5.1 installer will pick up your old mailboxes and preferences. However, before installing Eudora 5.1, make a copy of your Eudora systems and applications folders - just in case.

Once you have installed Eudora 5.1, you must change your settings so that you now pick up email from the new Informatics server.

To do this, go to the Special menu and select Settings, then Getting started.

Set Mailserver to mail.inf.ed.ac.uk
Set SMTP server to smtp.inf.ed.ac.uk
If your Informatics username is different from your legacy (old) username, set User to your new Informatics username.
Set Return address to informatics-username@inf.ed.ac.uk
Select Checking email and click on IMAP.
In this window you may also select how often you wish to check for new email. A reasonable value is every 5 minutes.

You may also choose whether to download all messages on checking, or whether to download only the message headers. If you decide just to download the headers then the full message will not be downloaded to your screen till you want to read it.

Select Composing Email and set Default domain to inf.ed.ac.uk.
Select SSL and set SSL FOR SMTP and SSL FOR IMAP to Optional (TLS)

Differences between the POP view of Eudora and the IMAP view

If you have been used to pulling your mail off the legacy mail servers with POP and storing it on your local disk then you will see some changes when you move to IMAP.

Your default IMAP folder is called INBOX, and mail in this folder remains on the mail server.

To see mail in INBOX, go to the Mailbox menu and scroll down till you put the mouse on Dominant. Your INBOX folder and any new folders you create on the server will be underneath Dominant.

VM

Support status: we don't support the use of VM. If you want to use it, go ahead; but if you need help with it, please use a recommended mailer instead (Staffmail, or Thunderbird).

VM is one of the mailers available in XEmacs and Emacs. If you already use VM, you can get it to work with the staffmail service by putting the following in your ~/.vm file:

; Get mail from staffmail using SSL
(setq vm-stunnel-program "/usr/sbin/stunnel")
(setq vm-stunnel-program-additional-configuration-file FILE)
(setq vm-spool-files
(list (concat "imap-ssl:imap.staffmail.ed.ac.uk:993:INBOX:login:"
(user-real-login-name)
":*")))

where FILE is the path of an stunnel configuration file containing the following:

#For connecting with VM via stunnel with staffmail
client = yes
connect = imap.staffmail.ed.ac.uk:993

Once this has been done, press L or restart VM to tell it to re-load ~/.vm, then press g as normal to get new mail.

Unlike properly IMAP-capable mail agents, VM does not let you leave your mail on the IMAP mail server after having read it. Instead, it downloads all your mail to your local VM inbox. Nor does VM allow you to access any IMAP folders other than the main INBOX. If you want to do either of these things you should consider using one of the recommended mailers instead.

exmh

Support status: we don't support the use of exmh with the Informatics mail service. If you want to use it, go ahead; but if you need help with it, please use a recommended mailer instead (IMP web mail, pine or or Thunderbird.

exmh relies on the nmh package for its basic message handling, and nmh doesn't currently understand how to speak IMAP. Instead you'll have to use fetchmail and procmail to collect your mail. Once that's been done you can process your mail with exmh as normal. (We hope at some point to be able to automate some of the exmh fetchmail setup, and thus simplify these instructions.)

Create a ~/.fetchmailrc file with the following contents:

	set daemon 300
	poll mail.inf.ed.ac.uk proto imap
	    auth password
	    ssl
	    sslfingerprint "19:32:C6:33:F0:9F:A6:E7:A4:AC:3E:8D:CF:50:4F:FC"
	    mda /usr/bin/procmail

See the fetchmail section for more details.

Create a ~/.procmailrc file with at least the following contents:
```
	DEFAULT=.mail

	:0 :Mail/inbox.$LOCKEXT
	| /usr/libexec/nmh/rcvstore +inbox
```
See the procmail section for more details.
rcvstore is a utility for pre-processing incoming mail, filing it in nmh folders for convenience. The above recipe puts all incoming mail into the inbox folder. However it's entirely possible to sort your mail into a number of folders by calling rcvstore in several procmail recipes. See the procmail section for more details.
Note that it's important not to use procmail's own inbuilt "MH-style" of message-handling: this does not do adequate locking, and if you do use it you'll probably lose messages.
In exmh click on the Preferences button at the top right. Click on Background Processing, set Background processing to flist and Period to 1. Click on Dismiss.
Click on Incorporate Mail, set Ways to Inc to none. Click on Dismiss.
Click on the main Exmh Preferences window's Save button to save these settings. Quit and restart exmh to have them take effect.
To start collecting mail give the shell command fetchmail. To stop collecting mail use fetchmail -q. See the fetchmail section for more details.

MH or NMH

Support status: we don't support the use of MH with the Informatics mail service. If you want to use it, go ahead; but if you need help with it, please use a recommended mailer instead (IMP web mail, pine or or Thunderbird.

The version of MH that is on Linux is called NMH. NMH doesn't know how to communicate with an IMAP mail server, so using it with the Informatics mail service is not straightforward. You may be able to glean something useful from the exmh section. Any use of NMH will probably involve the use of fetchmail.

mh-e

Support status: we don't support the use of mh-e with the Informatics mail service. If you want to use it, go ahead; but if you need help with it, please use a recommended mailer instead (IMP web mail, pine or or Thunderbird.

Mh-e is a mail agent in Emacs and XEmacs. It's based on MH, so it suffers from the same drawback as MH and exmh - it can't do IMAP. You'll probably have to use fetchmail if you want to attempt to use mh-e.

Paul Jackson has kindly contributed some helpful tips on using mh-e 7.3 with xemacs 21.4:

mh-e now has better MIME support. If you were loading & using the tm package, stop doing so now. It doesn't work with mh-e 7.3.
The mh toolbar option seems broken. Add
```
   (setq-default mh-xemacs-use-toolbar-flag nil)
```
to your .xemacs/init.el
If you figure out how to fix this, let me know.
The emacs info documentation is still for version 5.0.2! A significant amount has changed since then, including key bindings and names of customisation variables.
- (C-h)m gives the key bindings for mh-folder mode, but not the mh-letter or mh-show modes. For the latter, you need to look at the source files in directory:
```
   /usr/lib/xemacs/xemacs-packages/lisp/mh-e/
```
  Look at the (gnus-define-keys ...) statements in mh-comp.el for mh-letter mode bindings, and in mh-e.el for mh-show mode bindings.
- Customisation variables are now controllable using xemacs's customisation package. To view/edit the variables, use
```
   (C-h)C mh <return>
```
  The defaults all seem more or less reasonable. However, the main changes I have made so far are:
  - in the folders subgroup:
```
      Set mh-recursive-folders-flag
```
  - in the Mime display group (a sibling of the mh group. Go to the parent group `Mail' of the `'mh' group and then down to `Mime Display'.)
    Change the mm-text-html-renderer to e.g. lynx.
    The default emacs/w3 is painfully slow.
- A full (but seemingly not completely accurate) listing of release notes can be found in the MH-E-NEWS file in the above directory.

RMAIL

Support status: we don't support the use of RMAIL with the Informatics mail service. If you want to use it, go ahead; but if you need help with it, please use a recommended mailer instead (IMP web mail, pine or or Thunderbird.

RMAIL is a mail agent in Emacs and XEmacs. It doesn't support IMAP, so if you really want to continue using it, you'll have to master the intricacies of fetchmail.

gnus

Support status: we don't support the use of gnus with the Informatics mail service. If you want to use it, go ahead; but if you need help with it, please use a recommended mailer instead (IMP web mail, pine or or Thunderbird.

Gnus is an emacs and xemacs-based mail reader. Originally just a Usenet News program, it now also supports reading and sending mail. See the gnus info page for full details.

Perdita Stevens says:

[Configuring gnus for Informatics mail] seems to be easy. For example I put in my .gnus :

(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods
       '((nnimap "mail.inf.ed.ac.uk"
		(nnimap-stream ssl)
		(nnimap-authenticator login))))

and this makes my IMAP folders available as newsgroups, to which I then subscribe in the usual way. Great for mailing lists.

Other Mailers

If you particularly want to, you may be able to use a mail agent not covered above. If it can use IMAP, give it the details below. If it can't, you may still be able to use it in conjunction with fetchmail. In either case, you will have gone outside the bounds of what we support, so unfortunately we won't be able to help you if something goes wrong.

Incoming (IMAP) Server Name: mail.inf.ed.ac.uk
- The service supports secure SSL connections, and we recommend that you use them.
- The server does not support mail folders that contain sub-folders and messages. However you can create directories which contain normal mail folders or further subdirectories.
Outgoing (SMTP) Server Name: smtp.inf.ed.ac.uk.
- If you are planning on using these settings for a mailer outside of the inf.ed.ac.uk network, we now support authenticated smtp.
Your username and password are the same as you would use to login to a DICE machine, which is why we recommend you use a secure SSL connection.

Advanced Topics

If you would like your mail to be manipulated in sophisticated and subtle ways, you can use the tools covered in this section. However, you should only attempt to use them if you understand what they do. Using these tools can make a big mess!

Fetchmail is an IMAP mail client with a difference - at its simplest it merely downloads your mail from the mail server into a file in your home directory. One of its main uses is thus as a tool to make old non-IMAP mail programs useable with the Informatics mail server, which only understands IMAP.

Procmail can do various things to your mail as it arrives. It uses pattern-matching, so that different things can be done to different mail messages.

Pine offers a number of configuration options not covered in the basic pine instructions.

Fetchmail

If you want to continue using an old MUA (Mail User Agent) that doesn't support IMAP connections, or if you have a complicated Procmail configuration that won't be supported on the new mail server, then you can make use of the fetchmail program to perpetuate what you use once the switch has been made to the new server.

What fetchmail does

The fetchmail command transfers mail from a server using IMAP (and other protocols) and re-delivers it on your local machine. This allows you to filter, store and read mail in your local home directory instead of being restricted to what the inf mail server provides. However, this does mean you won't be able to use the IMP web interface directly (although see below).

Use man fetchmail for more comprehensive information.

Configuring fetchmail

Create or edit your ~/.procmailrc to include the following line, usually near the top of the file:
```
  DEFAULT=$HOME/.mail
```
If you already set your DEFAULT mailbox to something else, then you don't need to do this. It is necessary to set DEFAULT to something, as the linux version of procmail expects to find your mailbox in /var/spool/mail/username.
Create or edit your ~/.fetchmailrc file to contain the following:
```
  poll mail.inf.ed.ac.uk proto imap auth gssapi mda "/usr/bin/formail | /usr/bin/procmail"
```
The line above will only work on a DICE machine. If you are still using a legacy machine then use the following line instead:
```
  poll mail.inf.ed.ac.uk proto imap mda "/usr/bin/formail | /usr/bin/procmail"
```
If you use an nmh-based MUA (such as exmh) then you don't need the formail part of the mda, ie. your mda part of the line can just be:
```
  mda /usr/bin/procmail
```
While it is possible to use a mail delivery agent such as cat and skip going through procmail at all, e.g.
```
  mda "/bin/cat >>~/.mail"
```
this is highly inadvisable, as cat will not lock the mail file, so your mail user agent and your mail delivery agent may conflict (and mail may be lost before you even see it) - whereas procmail has proper locking support built in.
Your ~/.fetchmailrc file needs to be protected. Do:
```
  chmod 0600 ~/.fetchmailrc
```

Running fetchmail

Every time you want to transfer mail from your server mail box into your ~/.mail folder (or whatever DEFAULT in your .procmailrc is configured as) you need to run the fetchmail command. Then run your normal mail reader with ~/.mail. When fetchmail is run any rules in your .procmailrc will also be followed (e.g. splitting mail into separate folders).

Unless you are using a DICE machine you will need to supply your password when you use the fetchmail command. If your mail account username on the Informatics server differs from that on your legacy (old) account you might need to change the server line as below:

  poll mail.inf.ed.ac.uk user 'username'

where "username" is your inf (official university) username.

Fetchmail in the background

You can run fetchmail in such a way that it goes into the background and polls for new mail every so often. This means you don't have to explicitly run it every time you want to check for new mail. To do this add the following line at the top of your ~/.fetchmailrc:

  set daemon 300

This sets it to poll the mail server every five minutes. Now when you run the fetchmail command it will go into the background and silently check for and download new mail from the server automatically. To stop it running do:

  fetchmail -q

If you want to start fetchmail up automatically in the background when you login to X and then stop it when you logout of X (but you don't want it to start up every time you open a new xterm or login to another machine) then there is a script you can use to do this. Warning though - it may be a bit flaky ... so, put the following line in your ~/.bprofile:

  /usr/bin/fetchmailctl start

and put the following line in your ~/.bash_logout:

  /usr/bin/fetchmailctl stop

and it might work.

Fetchmail and Kerberos

To run fetchmail, you need a valid Kerberos ticket. A Kerberos ticket is created for you when you login, and it lasts for ten hours. After that time your Kerberos ticket will have expired, and fetchmail won't work any more. You can create a new ticket with the renc command. klist tells you when your current ticket will expire.

Fetchmail's Feedback Mode

For really advanced users only. If you are careful you can use fetchmail to draw mail from the inf mail server and do any procmail processing locally that you cannot do easily on the mail server and then feed the processed messages back to the mail server where you can have an additional procmail filter to do more standard things (such as filtering mail into separate folders). The only thing you have to be careful with here is ending up with mail loops. The advantage of this method is you would then have access to all your mail via the IMP web interface as well. The disadvantage is you have to make sure you have a fetchmail running somewhere to do the offline processing otherwise mail will stack up in the server inbox unfiltered (although still accessable via IMP).

To do this you need a ~/.procmailrc in your home directory that does the processing that can't be done on the mail server and then uses formail to send it back to the mail server, but adds an additional header line. The .procmailrc on the mail server should be setup to only process mail where the header line is present (otherwise leaving the mail in the INBOX to be picked up by fetchmail).

Possible problems are that the IMP interface can also manipulate the procmailrc file (e.g. creating a vacation message) and doing so may well create a mail loop as a result. Also the mail arriving back at the mail server will be stamped as sent by yourself so the filters in the procmailrc on the mail server may need to be suitably modified.

If you need to ask for further instructions on how to do all this in detail then you shouldn't be doing it!

Filtering Mail with Procmail

You can filter your incoming mail on the mail server using a mail filtering program called procmail. If you already use procmail, you may have to change your existing procmail recipes, and you will certainly have to move them.

Creating and Editing Procmail Recipes

All editing of procmail recipes is done via the IMP web interface to the mail server. Once you have logged in to IMP, click the button marked Filters on the left hand side of the screen. This brings up a form which allows you to change your mail filtering rules.

The form allows you to create two different kinds of rules.

Clicking on the Insert new rule here button will produce another form which allows you to create simple procmail recipes by making selections from menus and typing strings into text boxes.
Clicking on a Insert new advanced rule here button brings up a text box into which procmail recipes can be typed directly.

If you're a procmail user already, you may want to move the contents of your existing .procmailrc file to the new mail server. This can be done by opening up a new advanced rule window and cutting and pasting the contents of your old .procmailrc file into it. Clicking on the button marked Update this rule will then move the contents of the advanced rule window into your .procmailrc file on the new mail server.

Changes which may be Necessary

Although you now have a .procmailrc file on the new mail server, you may find that it doesn't work quite as you expect. The first and most important point to remember is that, since the mail server has no access to your normal home directory, all the folders created by procmail will reside in your (separate) mail server home directory, which can only be accessed via IMAP. Recipes which rely on a certain directory existing will fail unless you have created that directory in your mail server home directory using the folder facility of your chosen mail client.

You may also find that the range of utilities available for further processing of messages via a pipe may be more restricted than you are used to. In particular, it is still to be decided whether the spamassassin spam filter will be available on the new mail server. If you want to know whether a particular utility is available, ask Support.

Traditionally, when mail has been sent to an address of the form

user+random data@mailserver

the string contained between the '+' and the '@' has been available to procmail recipes via the variable $1. Thanks to certain anti-looping measures taken on the new mail server, this mechanism will no longer work. However this data is now available through the new variable $PLUSINFO. Old recipes may need to be rewritten to make use of the new variable.

Points To Watch and Unresolved Issues

Variables: IMP web mail imposes no restrictions on what can be inserted into your .procmailrc file. It is therefore possible for you to change the value of such variables as $MAILDIR, $DEFAULT and $ORGMAIL, the default values of which are $HOME/Mail, $MAILDIR/INBOX and $MAILDIR/INBOX. You should be very confident that you know what you are doing before changing the values of these variables.

Access to the Log file: At present there is no truly satisfactory mechanism available to view procmail's logfile. The best workaround for this is simply to define a suitable value for $LOGFILE, treat the procmail log as another mail folder and view the contents via your mail client of choice.

This may require a little massaging. For instance when using Pine, headers mode must be turned on before the contents of the log can be viewed; using IMP, the contents of the log can only be viewed via the message Source button.

Alternatively, fetchmail could be used to copy the procmail log to your normal home directory. It is hoped that a more satisfactory way of viewing the procmail log will be implemented in the near future.