Introduction to electronic mail (email)

These notes provide a brief introduction to electronic mail facilities. Little previous knowledge of computers is assumed!

Important news about email in DAMTP

Starting in September 2005, DAMTP computer accounts for new users are being set up to use the University central email service, hermes. New users should read these notes.

Email software

Some programs are supported, some are not. We have a list of supported and unsupported email programs.

Email addresses

Electronic mail messages may be exchanged with computer users all over the world. Each user has an email address of the form name@site:

            M.Name@damtp.ac.uk
      or    myn1000@damtp.ac.uk

We prefer if you give people the address that doesn't involve your login name. You can check what this address is with the command

	mailaddress

To find the email address of someone in damtp

  • Look at the departmental contact list
  • Check the email address search page. This is available worldwide and only provides the addresses of users who have agreed to have their email address findable. Run the command visiblemail to check if your address is set to be searchable.

  • Alternatively look in file /etc/aliases, which lists all individuals' email addresses which are recognised in DAMTP. For example: 
        grep Newton /etc/aliases

    might display

        I.Newton:         in1002@axon.ac.uk

    so that you could send her mail to I.Newton or in1002.

  • Use the finger command to find someone's login name, which you can use to email them. 
    	finger Newton

may display

Login:  in123                           Name: Iname Newton
Directory: /home/raid/group/in123       Shell: /usr/local/bin/bash
Never logged in.
Mail last read Wed Oct  8 09:36 2003 (BST)

Note that you need not (and should not) specify a particular computer name in a mail address. The mail delivery service looks after that.

If you wish to send mail to someone in DAMTP from within DAMTP you can omit the @ and the site part of the address.

You should check your own name in the aliases file to make sure that your initials and surname are correct, and match the address that you advertise on your letterhead etc., otherwise mail sent to you may "bounce" and be returned to sender, address unknown.

If you need help finding the correct form of a remote site's address, send email to postmaster@damtp. If you are unsure of someone's email name at a remote site try looking on the site's Web pages for an email address search engine. If this fails try sending a request for help to postmaster@site.

You can search for @cam addresses (described below) on the University of Cambridge Web site

Most mailers allow you to maintain an address book (a list of aliases) which allows mail to be sent to one or more users using a brief nickname or group name. If several people exchange email on a group basis you can ask postmaster@damtp to set up a group mail distribution list and so avoid the need for each group member to keep a group alias list up-to-date.

Mailboxes and folders

Incoming email is stored in a system mailbox file until collected. Once you have read a message it should be deleted, or stored for future reference in a mailbox file of your own (often called a mail "folder"). Please do not leave mail uncollected in the system mailbox for long periods. If the disk space reserved for incoming mail fills up nobody in DAMTP will be able to receive new email!

Most users keep separate folders for important mail topics and for messages from/to individual correspondents. You can specify a folder name when saving (or reading) messages, or use a default name provided by the mailer. Pine uses default folder names saved-messages and sent-messages in a directory called mail. xmail uses a default mailbox called mbox in your home directory.

Default folder names and other options can be specified in configuration files .pinerc (for pine) and .mailrc (for xmail) in your home directory, but many people use email quite happily without needing to change the configuration files.

Mail facilities

Mail handlers typically provide the following facilities:

  • send a message
  • list incoming messages held in the mailbox
  • display a message
  • reply to a message
  • forward a message to someone else
  • delete a message
  • undelete a message
  • print a message
  • save a message in a folder
  • maintain a list of nicknames in an address book

Useful Links