Vacation messages

When you are not checking your email regularly, for whatever reason, please use the program called vacation. This will inform people what you are doing. If you expect a lot of mail, please read on: the next section describes how to store your mail so that you do not exceed your mail quota. The last section describes how to start and stop your vacation message automatically.

The simplest way to do this is to use the Account management tool for mail.sas.

Make sure you have a large enough quota to store the mail you will get. If you do not, mail will not be stored, and it will not be returned to the sender either.

How to start and stop a vacation message

You can also make the relevant files by hand. For example, if you want your vacation program to start at a particular time, use the "at" command. Here's how.

Make the vacation file as described above. Then say (at the mail.sas prompt):
mv .forward .fwdbak

This renames the .forward file that is needed for the vacation message to work.

Then, with an editor like pico or emacs, make a file called (for example) .startvac, which has one line:
mv .fwdbak .forward

When .startvac is executed, it will restore the .forward file.

Then say (at the prompt), for example,
at -t 02081905 -f .startvac

This will run the file .startvac (starting your vacation message) at Feb. 8, 7:05 PM. (It is military time.)

You can stop the vacation message the same way. Say
at -t 03046000 -f .endvac

and make a file called .endvac with the line
mv .forward .fwdbak

This will stop the vacation message at 6 AM, March 4.

Comments to baron@psych.upenn.edu