To setup email in any program that is not already configured to do so, you will need the following settings:
Outgoing mail server: outgoing.mit.edu, never use a secure
(SSL) connection, no username required
Incoming mail server: poXX.MIT.EDU (where XX is a number)
You can find your incoming mail server by entering
athena% hesinfo $USER pobox
at the
Athena prompt.
In general, we recommend that you use IMAP, as it stores your mail on the mail server, and allows you to read your mail anywhere. With POP, your mail is downloaded onto your computer, and deleted from the server. You can find more about the difference in these protocols in our previous mail column at http://www.mit.edu/~asksipb/2002columns/2002-11-08-email/.
athena%
evolution &
The other recommended and officially supported program to read mail on
Athena is Pine. Unlike Evolution, Pine is a text-based program. You
can start Pine by tping athena%
pine
When you start Pine for the first time, you will get a message asking
whether you want to run Athena or SIPB Pine. We recommend that you
use Athena Pine, as you are less prone to run into problems or
unexpected behavior.
At Friday's Activities Midway, you will likely end up on many such mailing lists that student groups use to notify members of events and other information.
mailmaint
is a menu-driven program that you can use to
manage mailing lists. Simply type athena% mailmaint
to
run it.
blanche
is a command-line program that also allows you to
manage mailing lists.
To add a user to a mailing list (the -a
stands for add):
athena% blanche listname -a
username
To remove a user from a mailing list (the -d
stands for
delete):
athena% blanche listname -d
username
To get information about a mailing list (the -i
stands
for info):
athena% blanche listname
-i
Mailing List Name | What It's Used for |
netusers | netusers is a low-traffic mailing list is provides notification of network events, like outages or security problems. For example, the recent blocking of port 135 to and from the dormitory networks was sent to this mailing list. Though similar information often appears on 3-DOWN, details are generally provided on this list. General security vulnerabilities are also sent to this list. |
release-announce | release-announce is a low-traffic mailing list that provides notification of new releases of Athena, including security patches and other changes, such as updates to non-locker software. |
athena-outage-redist | athena-outage-redist is a member of the list athena-outage, which provides notification of outages of Athena services, such as maintenance of file or print servers. |
reuse | reuse is a high-traffic mailing list dedicated to the posting and claiming of free items at MIT. When users have something they would otherwise throw away, they often e-mail this list. Then, other members of the community go to pick up the item, subsequently e-mailing the list to let other users that the item has been taken. See http://web.mit.edu/pocky/Public/reuse.txt for details, including rules for the list, which you should read if you decide to subscribe. The lists reuse-ask and reuse-sell lists, which are included in the rules page, also exist for asking for items, and selling items, respectively. |
athena% blanche listname -i
as mentioned above. Such
lists will have an AFS group called
system:listname
which you can use to allow
read-only access, read and write access, or full access to a directory
of your choice. Thursday's column will cover this topic in more
detail.