Forwarding mail

If you have another account, and would prefer to pick up mail there, you can forward mail from mail.sas to that other computer. The simplest way is to use the mail.sas account management tool. (See also this section for keeping messages that you forward.)

You can also do this "by hand." All you have to do is create a file called .forward (the dot is important) in your home directory, which contains the new network address you want the mail to be forwarded to. If more than one addresses (recipients) is desired, they can by separated by commas. You can do this with an editor, such as pico or emacs.

Suppose your username on Mail.Sas is flintstone and you have another account on other-system.com where your username is fred. To forward mail to your other account, and also keep the mail on Mail.Sas, create a file called .forward consisting of one line, for example:

fred@other-system.com, \flintstone

You can also do this without an editor by typing the following at the command prompt, with "enter" at the end of each line:
cat > ~/.forward fred@other-system.com, \flintstone ^D
Here ^D stands for ctrl-d (hold down ctrl and push d). And "cat" is a unix command.

The file, .forward will now send all your incoming mail to an account called fred at a system called other-system and also keep one copy on your local account (assuming your username is flintstone). You can deactivate this automatic forwarding simply by removing (or renaming) the .forward file. (The \ character before your username is a safety feature to prevent loops.)

Comments to baron@psych.upenn.edu