Last modified: Jun 13, 2006 by Kachelhoffer

AFS: the mail under AFS


 1. Introduction
 2. The definition of your prefered email address
 3. The configuration of your mail under AFS
    3.1. To manage your AFS mailbox with pine
    3.2. To manage your AFS mailbox with mozilla
 4. Comments

1. Introduction

You have a local AFS account at Computing Center. An email address has been created for you. This address, attach to your account is like account@in2p3.fr. You can use this address to send, receive and manage emails with AFS. To do so, you should first be connected on an interactive workstation at Computing Center and having a valid session.

2. The definition of your prefered email address

This information is crucial for the Computing Center to be able to contact you. For having more informations about that, you can consult the corresponding article.

3. The configuration of your mail under AFS

Your mailbox (place or physical file where you receive your mails) is defined by the environment variable ${MAIL} as showned below for the toto account:
> echo ${MAIL}
/afs/in2p3.fr/mail/t/toto/spoolfile
It is important to not modify this variable because AFS will always put the mails you receive at this place. To send a mail with AFS, you should use the sendmail server (SMTP server): ccmail.in2p3.fr

The Computing Center propose you two utilities under AFS to receive, send and manage emails:

3.1. To manage your AFS mailbox with pine

To be able to use pine as a mail agent, type:
> pine
in a valid interactive session (with a valid AFS token). The standard version of pine is 3.96. This version was modified by the Computing Center staff to be able to work with AFS and to manage the "locks". By default, pine is correctly configured.

3.2. To manage your AFS mailbox with mozilla

Mozilla is a web navigator also allowing the possibility to manage your emails. To use it, type:
> mozilla&
in a valid interactive session (with a valid AFS token). Take care to activate the redirection of the X11 protocole of your client when you establish your connection to the Computing Center (made by default).

In the "Window" menu of your mozilla main window, select "Mail & Newsgroups". A new window appear: it is the window of your mail agent. Select "Mail & Newsgroups Acount Settings ..." in the "Edit" menu and configure your mail agent: add or create an account of type "movemail" and finish to fill the information. Your mail agent is now complete and working.

4. Comments

Due to the evolution of the technologies since the first AFS deployment at Computing Center at the beginning of the 90's, it is now better to use some other technologies to manage your mails. The Computing Center propose you to use a mail server using the IMAP protocole. You can access, manage and send your mails from the world though a web interface (http://webmail.in2p3.fr). With your mail agent, for security reasons, you should, actually, be in the in2p3 domain name.