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Mail on RULink

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RULink has a complete mail system. However most people will probably want to use it simply to forward mail.

Students are a possible exception. Students who want to send mail with a name @rutgers.edu rather than @eden.rutgers.edu or @camden.rutgers.edu may have to use this mail system, because eden and clam have been set up to make it difficult to change your email name. This does not appear to be an issue at Newark.

If you don't do anything else, mail sent to NETID@rutgers.edu will be forwarded to the address defined in the People Database for that person.

This will let you advertise an address at rutgers.edu on business cards and other places. That address will work as long as you remain at Rutgers. If you move around, mail will follow you as long as you keep your entry in the People Database up to date.

How to use the address NETID@rutgers.edu

To use this address, all you have to do is change your mail program so that your From: address is NETID@rutgers.edu. For example, with Netscape or Mozilla, you would look at account settings, and change the email address for that account. You don't need to change anything else. You can still read email the way you're reading it now.

Mail sent to NETID@rutgers.edu will (unless you do something else) be forwarded to the mail address registered for you in the People Database. That will be the address you set up when you created your most recent Rutgers computer account, or set by the online ADR (faculty/staff) or the student directory web program.

Note that pine and web mail on some campuses do not permit you to make this change, as noted below. Some people may need to use RULink for mail if you are on campuses where the adjustment can't be made.

Here's how to change your address in some common mail programs. If you have assigned an address such as john.smith@rutgers.edu, you can use it instead of NETID@rutgers.edu.

If you prefer a different address

As mentioned above, mail sent to NETID@rutgers.edu is normally sent to the address registered in the People Database. For most people that's right. That should be the place you normally read your mail.

If for some reason you want mail for NETID@rutgers.edu to go somewhere else, you can change it.

You can also create an additional mail address, such as john.smith@rutgers.edu:

The Configuration Tool is located in the main http://rulink.rutgers.edu page, near the upper right corner in the list of Applications.

If you want to read mail on this system

For most people, this system will forward mail to the address registered in the People Database, or some other address that you choose. If that's what you want, you can stop reading this page now.

However it is also possible to use this system as a mail server. It has a complete mail system, which could be used as an alternative to RCI or other mail servers.

We're not publicizing this facility widely to individuals, because we regard it is primarily useful for departments that are using RULink to host departmental services. However the Chief Technology Officer uses it as his primary mail system, and several departments are now using it for their mail. Feel free to try it out.

Support is available through the normal OIT help desks. Significant downtimes will be announced in the "NEWS" section on the main rulink web page.

To read mail on this system, open the "Configuration Tool" near the upper right corner of the main rulink web page, http://rulink.rutgers.edu. Once you have logged in, choose "Change Mail Configuration". On that page, select "I will read mail on this system." At this point any mail sent to your address on rutgers.edu will go into a mailbox on rulink. You can read it either through RULink's web mail interface, or by pointing any IMAP mail client to rulink.

How to read mail on RULink

The web client is listed in the Applications section of the RULink web page, right next to the Configuration Tool in the upper right corner of the page. We recommend using the "Unified Web Client." It's available directly as https://rulink.rutgers.edu/uwc The Unified Web Client gives access to mail and the calendar.

To use an IMAP or POP mail program (e.g. Netscape, Mozilla, Outlook, Outlook Express), use "rulink.rutgers.edu" as the mail server name for incoming mail. You may also use it for outgoing mail, but only if you configure your program to login with your netid and password for sending mail as well as reading it. You must select "use SSL" for both sending and receiving mail.

For specific instructions on setting up mail with IMAP clients, see the Secure Services web page. However you'll need to use rulink.rutgers.edu for a server name where it says to use email.rci.rutgers.edu or email.eden.rutgers.edu.

If you are on a Rutgers network, you are probably better off to use mx.rulink.rutgers.edu for outgoing mail. It doesn't require (or allow) a password. If you are in the residence halls, this may not work. The residence halls must use a specific server for outgoing mail. The residential networking documentation should give its name.

Once you are sure that you can read mail on rulink, you may want to forward mail from your current mail system (e.g. rci or eden) to your mail address at rutgers.edu. That way people who have your old address can still get mail to you.

WARNING: Don't set up another system to forward mail to USER@rutgers.edu until you've chosen "I will read mail on this system", and made sure that you can actually read mail sent to you at rutgers.edu. If you set up forwarding on another system before mail on rulink works, you'll end up with a mail loop that may cause you to lose all mail and/or fill your disk quota.

Features of the RULink mail system

This mail system has disk quotas, which are by default similar to those on RCI. See the next section for more details.

This mail system does virus checking of all mail going into and out of the system. It uses the same virus checking approach as RCI: Mail is passed through Mcafee anti-virus software.

This mail system has some provisions for spam control. All mail coming into the system is sent through Spamassassin. The same Spamassassin software is used as for RCI and Eden. That adds a tag to each message, giving it a numerical score according to how much it looks like spam. You can then set up a rule to cause all mail above a certain score to be dropped or put into a special folder.

To set spam processing,

  1. Go to the Configuration Tool at the upper right corner of http://rulink.rutgers.edu.
  2. After logging in, choose "Mail Configuration."
  3. Scroll down until you see "Filters". Choose "Change mail filters".
  4. Under "Add Filters" choose "spamassassin".
  5. Choose the cutoff score. Everything with that value or higher is considered spam. The default is 5, which seems to work well.
  6. Choose the name of a folder where you want spam to go. The default is "spam", which should be fine.
  7. Choose "create filter"

Make sure you delete mail from your spam folder periodically. Otherwise your quota will fill.

If you want to adjust the filter later, log in again, choose Mail Configuration and Filters. You'll now see the spamassassin filter. Choose "edit". You'll be able to change the score, the folder name, and other things. Note that instead of a numerical value for the score, you'll see a number of *'s. For example if you chose a score of 5, you'll see *****. To change the score, change the number of *'s.

Technical note: The server supports both STARTTLS and SSL on a separate port, for IMAP and SMTP. For POP, it only supports SSL on a separate port. MTP is set up so that if you log into it (which you should only do if you're using SSL), it will relay mail for you. Most Rutgers systems refuse to relay mail from off campus, to prevent our systems being used by spammers. As long as you've logged in, that's not a problem.

Technical note about using addresses @rutgers.edu in the PDB

There is possible problem with this setup: After verifying that user@rutgers.edu works, a user might be inclined to decide that they want to use the address user@rutgers.edu, and register that address in the PDB. We think this is a reasonable thing to do.

If we didn't take special action, this would cause a loop. By default, the system forwards mail sent to user@rutgers.edu to whatever address is registered for the user in the PDB. If the PDB entry is user@rutgers.edu, then the mail will come right back to rutgers.edu.

In order to prevent this loop, the software that takes information from the PDB will ignore any email addresses @rutgers.edu (as well as @rulink.rutgers.edu and @moltar.rutgers.edu). Thus if a user changes their PDB address to user@rutgers.edu, mail will continue being forwarded to whatever address they had registered in the PDB before making that change. This is probably what they intended. If they need to change that address, they will need to make the change on RULink, using the mail/calendar configuration tool. [Alternatively, they could put the new address in the PDB, wait for a day for this system to pick it up, and then change the PDB address back to user@rutgers.edu.]

The configuration tool will show this "frozen" address as their PDB address, for users who have changed their PDB address to something @rutgers.edu

Use of this system with pine

Pine can be used to read mail on RULink, but there are some things to know:

1. You need a version of pine that is at least 4.44.

2. You'll need to specify /novalidate-cert. This may not be needed in the future, but for the moment it is.

3. Here's a typical command for .pinerc to make your RULink mailbox your primary mailbox:

inbox-path={rulink.rutgers.edu/novalidate-cert}INBOX

4. Note that there is a difference in naming conventions between RULink and RCI. In both cases, your main inbox is called INBOX. However if you create other folders, RCI treats them as subfolders of INBOX, using "." as a separator. RULink puts other folders on the same level as INBOX. So if you create a folder called "myfolder", RCI would refer to it as INBOX.myfolder. RULink would refer to it as just myfolder.

In particular, if you want to be able to look at all your folders, on RCI you might say

folder-collections=mail/[],
   {email.rci.rutgers.edu/novalidate-cert}INBOX.[]
To see all your folders on RULink, you would simply specify
folder-collections=mail/[],
   {rulink.rutgers.edu/novalidate-cert}[]
(Incidentally, the initial mail/[] isn't necessary, but many people want it. It gives you access to the mail subdirectory on your local system.)

If you needed to specify a subdirectory, "." is the separator on RCI, while "/" is the separator on RULink. E.g. INBOX.folder.subfolder on RCI and folder/subfolder on RULink.

5. If you want to open someone else's folder, and you have permission to do so, it is referred to with a name like this: Shared Folders/User/smith/INBOX. However because "Shared Folders" has a space in it, you'll need to surround the entire path name with quotes if you put it in .pinerc. Here are a couple of examples:

incoming-folders="{rulink.rutgers.edu/novalidate-cert}Shared Folders/User/clh/INBOX"

folder-collections=mail/[],
   "{rulink.rutgers.edu/novalidate-cert}Shared Folders/User/clh/[]"

NOTE: Your browser may split these examples into more lines than it should. In your .pinerc, the entire "quoted" specification must be on one line.

The first example defines clh's inbox as a secondary inbox. It will show after your own mailbox in the "Incoming Message Folders" collection.

The second example defines clh's directory as a directory in which you can access folders. It will show in your collections list. For some reason, INBOX isn't shown. Any other folders to which you have access should show. (I believe it is a bug in pine that INBOX doesn't show.)

Some features of this mail system

In the following notes, the terms "mailbox" and "folder" are used interchangably.

1. The IMAP implementation supports simultaneous access from several different clients to the same mailbox. You can even expunge (erase deleted messages) when several clients have the same mailbox open. Most IMAP clients notice that messages have gone away the next time you do a mail check. A couple of caveats:

2. You can access other people's folders if they let you, but you need to know how to refer to them. By default if you open a folder by name, you get your own folder. To refer to someone else's folder, use "Shared Folders/User/UNAME/FOLDER" where UNAME is the username and FOLDER the name of the folder. E.g. to see the user smith's main inbox, you would open "Shared Folders/User/smith/INBOX" You'll get no such folder unless the folder exists and its own has allowed you to read it.

The easiest way to look at someone else's folder is to subscribe to it. The web mail system and most IMAP clients look at the list of folders you have subscribed to, and show you all of them. The major exception is Outlook Express. It gets confused by shared folders. You can subscribe to them and look at them, but OE forgets them next time you run it. Outlook is fine; it's just Outlook Express. Netscape and Mozilla work fine, so we suggest using one of them rather than OE if you need to work with someone else's folder.

Many mail programs have ways to subscribe to a folder. But the easiest is probably to use the Mail/Calendar Configuration Tool listed on the main RULink web page. On its main screen there is a subscription tool. It shows you all the folders you can see, and lets you choose which ones you want to subscribe to.

The main screen also lets you decide who can see your folders. It lists all of your folders. If you click on one, you will get a page that lets you control who can access it.

3. The system understands "subaddresses". This lets you mail directly to a folder. If you mail to UNAME+FOLDER@rutgers.edu it will go into that users's folder. The folder must exist, and you must have "post" permission to it. From a practical point of view, if you want a folder to be used this way, you should give "anybody" post permission. Again, I don't know whether anything other than Mulberry and the web mail interface that can set that permission. To set this permission in the web interface,

4. This system was designed for ISP's, who run mail for many clients. In this case each client is completely separate, and you don't want them knowing anything about each other.

I'm using the system differently: We host domains for departments. It is perfectly reasonable for someone from one department to allow someone from another department to access their mail folder. Users with NetID's are official located in the main rutgers.edu domain. Most departments have primarily people with NetID's. They only create users in their domain for shared mailboxes and other special things. Clearly you want the faculty to be able to access these.

Rather than trying to fix the web mail client so that it work across domains, I've added the commands where this matters to the Mail/Calendar configuration tool. If you need to access a mailbox in a different domain, you'll want to use this tool rather than the "share" and "subscribe" icons in web mail's "Folder" tab.

Mail/Calendar configuration has two relevant features:

Summary:

Quotas

For the mail system, disk quotas are in effect. These limit the total amount of disk space that can be used by your mailboxes. By default, the limit is 100 MB, which is the same as on RCI.

(Note: the quotas affect only mailboxes. They do not affect your calendar or anything else you may be doing on this system.)

If you need more space, you will need to get a larger disk quota. At the moment you can increase the quota yourself. Use the Mail/Calendar configuration tool on http://rulink.rutgers.edu. On the first page after you login, you'll see a list of all your mailboxes, with the amount of space taken by each. At the top there is a summary showing your current quota, usage, and what percent of your quota you are using.

The listing is in Kbytes, which in this case are units of 1024 bytes.

Right below the listing is a summary of current usage and quota, and a box that lets you set your quota. This section is Mbytes, i.e. units of 1000 Kbytes. Please contact hedrick@nbcs.rutgers.edu if you need more than 500 Mbytes.

The system takes some time to notice that you are over quota. Once it does:

Using RULink from a Palm

I have not had much success with Palm's mail application, Versamail 2.5. It tends to hang. There is some reason to think that 2.7 is better, so devices that come with it may work. Otherwise, Snapper seems to work quite well. See Snappermail.com. You'll want the Enterprise edition, since you will want to use IMAP and the less expensive editions don't support it.

When creating an account on Snappermail, use the following server information:

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For more information, contact rulink-support@rutgers.edu
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