Pine E-mail Program—Create a Vacation Message

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Overview

If you depend on e-mail as a means of communication, you have probably wondered what to do when you're away from your mail for a week, a month, or even a semester. Ideally, you could still receive all your e-mail but have a message automatically sent back to whoever is trying to contact you. In that message, you could let them know that you are away from your e-mail, offer alternate means of communication, or say when you'll be returning.

The Unix vacation program accomplishes just that. Setting up vacation for your e-mail involves several steps, the first of which initializes some files that the vacation program uses to keep track of things. If someone sends you multiple messages, vacation will ensure that they get only one of your custom replies per week.

Instructions

To initialize the vacation files in your home directory, log on to your Unix e-mail account and run the following command:

ucsu> vacation -I

(The last character is a capital letter i).

Once you have done this, the next step is to edit a custom message that will be sent as a reply to anyone sending you e-mail. The file containing this message must be called .vacation.msg and it must reside in your home directory. The following example illustrates the creation of this file using the pico editor:

ucsu> cd
ucsu> pico .vacation.msg

The contents of this file are important. The first two lines specify your address and the subject of the mail message that will be sent in your absence. The third line is used to prevent your vacation message from being delivered to mailing lists. After these lines, insert one blank line followed by the body of your message. An example .vacation.msg file is shown below:

From: William.Shakespeare@Colorado.EDU
Subject: I am away from my mail
Precedence: bulk

Hi, I am traveling in the Amazon and will be away from my mail until July 18th. Your message will be read when I return.

Sincerely, Bill

The From: line above can use either your Firstname.Lastname@colorado.edu address, or your regular username address, say, shakespe@colorado.edu.

After creating the message, you need to create another file in your home directory that causes the vacation program to run when any new mail is received. This file is called .forward, and it is the presence of this file that actually turns vacation "on." Once it is there, your vacation message will be activated and working. The .forward file must be in your home directory:

ucsu> cd
ucsu> pico .forward

This file must contain one line only (see the example below). First is a backslash character (\), followed by your CU login name, and then a pipe character, the full vacation command path and your username in quotes (hint: the first character after the open quotes, the "pipe" character, is the vertical line found on your keyboard, usually near the backslash). Copy the example below, but substitute your username for the shakespe example.

\shakespe, "|/usr/local/bin/vacation shakespe"

Now you should be ready to go. It is a good idea to have a friend or a colleague send you a test message to make sure things are working properly. They should receive the message you created above as a reply, but note that they will receive it only once per week.

To deactivate vacation, you simply get rid of the .forward file. The best way to do this is to rename it. This way it won't be used, but you'll have a copy of it around in case you want to use it again at some point. The following example renames the .forward file to .forward.vacation, which will not be used:

ucsu> cd
ucsu> mv .forward .forward.vacation

Online documentation for the vacation program is available with the man command:

ucsu> man vacation

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