Setting up email
From Space Science Theory Group
Artemis provides access to your mail only via the IMAP and POP3 protocols, no local access to UNIX mailbox folders/files is possible.
The simplest way (no setup required) is to access your email on the web, at https://artemis.sr.unh.edu/horde/. That's particularly useful when being on the road or using someone else's computer.
For regular access, you probably want to set up an email client, like pine or Thunderbird on your local machine.
The basic settings for your email client are:
- IMAP server: artemis.sr.unh.edu (POP3 is possible too, but untested and not recommended)
- SMTP server: artemis.sr.unh.edu
Please set your email client to use SSL/TLS for secure connections. Artemis will accept outgoing mail from local (sr.unh.edu) machines without authentication, but if you plan to send mail while away (ie on your laptop / home machine) you will need to setup SMTP authentication.
Artemis offers SPAM / virus filtering, to be described in the Maia Mailguard section.
In the following, specific instructions on how to set up some email clients are provided:
Contents |
Setting up pine
You may use the email program pine, but you'll need to tell it to use IMAP to access your email.
Note: When using pine with IMAP, you don't need to run it on the mail server (artemis), you can run it on your local machine, and that's recommended, so that e.g. you can save/read attachments directly on your local box.
Configure .pinerc
The easiest way to set up pine is to run it once so that its configuration file .pinerc is created, and then edit that file. If you know what you're doing, you can use the pine's settings menu to configure it, but it's easier to just make the following changes in .pinerc:
--- .pinerc.orig 2006-02-20 09:42:32.000000000 -0500
+++ .pinerc 2006-02-22 09:46:10.000000000 -0500
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@
# Path of (local or remote) INBOX, e.g. ={mail.somewhere.edu}inbox
# Normal Unix default is the local INBOX (usually /usr/spool/mail/$USER).
-inbox-path=
+inbox-path={artemis.sr.unh.edu/tls}INBOX
# List of incoming folders to be checked for new mail
incoming-folders-to-check=
@@ -43,7 +43,7 @@
# Over-rides default path for sent-mail folder, e.g. =old-mail (using first
# folder collection dir) or ={host2}sent-mail or ="" (to suppress saving).
# Default: sent-mail (Unix) or SENTMAIL.MTX (PC) in default folder collection.
-default-fcc=
+default-fcc=Sent
# Over-rides default path for saved-msg folder, e.g. =saved-messages (using 1st # folder collection dir) or ={host2}saved-mail or ="" (to suppress saving).
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@
# Over-rides default path for postponed messages folder, e.g. =pm (which uses
# first folder collection dir) or ={host4}pm (using home dir on host4).
# Default: postponed-msgs (Unix) or POSTPOND.MTX (PC) in default fldr coltn.
-postponed-folder=
+postponed-folder=Drafts
# If set, specifies where already-read messages will be moved upon quitting.
read-message-folder=
@@ -71,7 +71,9 @@
# List of features; see Pine's Setup/options menu for the current set.
# e.g. feature-list= select-without-confirm, signature-at-bottom
# Default condition for all of the features is no-.
-feature-list=
+feature-list= enable-lame-list-mode,
+ separate-folder-and-directory-entries,
+ quell-empty-directories
# Pine executes these keys upon startup (e.g. to view msg 13: i,j,1,3,CR,v)
initial-keystroke-list=
@@ -265,7 +267,7 @@
sending-filters=
# A list of alternate addresses the user is known by
-alt-addresses=
+alt-addresses=kai.germaschewski@unh.edu
# A list of keywords for use in categorizing messages
keywords=
@@ -368,7 +370,7 @@
# List of directories where saved-message folders may be. First one is
# the default for Saves. Example: Main {host1}mail/[], Desktop mail\[]
# Syntax: optnl-label {optnl-imap-hostname}optnl-directory-path[]
-folder-collections=
+folder-collections="Imap Folders" {artemis.sr.unh.edu/tls}INBOX.[]
# List, only needed if nntp-server not set, or news is on a different host
# than used for NNTP posting. Examples: News *[] or News *{host3/nntp}[]
@@ -502,7 +504,7 @@
personal-print-category=
# Patterns and their actions are stored here.
-patterns-roles=
+patterns-roles=LIT:pattern="/NICK=kai.germaschewski@unh.edu/FLDTYPE=EMAIL" action="/ROLE=1/FROM=Kai Germaschewski <kai.germaschewski@unh.edu>/RTYPE=NC/FTYPE=NC/CTYPE=NC"
# Patterns and their actions are stored here.
patterns-filters2=
Description of those changes:
- Instead of using a local INBOX folder (default), use the INBOX from the IMAP server (artemis.sr.unh.edu).
- Save sent messages into the folder "Sent". (Optional, but useful for interoperability with other IMAP clients).
- Save postponed messages into the folder "Drafts". (Optional, but useful for interoperability with other IMAP clients).
- artemis' IMAP server supports combined Folder/Directory entries, ie. you may have a Folder "Sent" which contains messages but also a subfolder like "Sent.Old". pine has some trouble with this, but with those features enabled it seems to work okay.
- alt-addresses lets pine recognize mail sent to that address as sent directly to you (that's what the leading '+' in the message index means). That's useful if you forward other addresses to your artemis account (see also the last item).
- Instead of using the local directory ~/mail (default) to store a folder collection, use the collection from the IMAP server.
- The last line configures pine to use a default role with a different email address. This is useful if you have your email forwarded to artemis and want your messages/reply to appear to be sent from the original email address. Specifically, if you have your <firstname.lastname@unh.edu> address forwarded to artemis, you will most likely want to use that address as your "From:" address, not the <userid@artemis.sr.unh.edu>. This line configures pine to do just that (obviously, after replacing kai.germaschewski@unh.edu with your email address).
TODO: Nothing has been said about outgoing mail. By default, pine will still send out email using the local sendmail on your machine. You can configure pine to use artemis' SMTP service instead.
Configure TLS (secure access)
The settings above configure pine to use a TLS secured connection. Since artemis' SSL certificate is signed by our own UNH SSC CA, pine will not trust it by default but bring up a message about it. Unfortunately, it is not particularly simple to add a CA certificate to pine's list of trusted CAs.
The easy way out is to add "/novalidate-cert" behind "/tls" in the two artemis.sr.unh.edu IMAP server entries above. Then, pine will not authenticate the server it connects to, but you will still get encryption.
The "right way" is for the system admin of the machine running pine to get a copy of the UNH SSC CA cert (see Setting up secure access) and install it into /etc/ssl/certs (that's where they go on SuSE). Then, run
kai@artemis:~> openssl x509 -in /etc/ssl/certs/artemis-cacert.pem -noout -hash 8e09c261
and create a symbolic link from artemis-cacert.pem to 8e09c261.0.
Setting up Thunderbird
Setting up Thunderbird should be pretty much straightforwarding, using IMAP and authenticated SMTP (outgoing mail). You should set your from address to your <firstname.lastname@unh.edu> alias, if you have one, so that people see and use your "offical address".
The only bit which is a little tricky hides under Edit/Account Settings/<account>/Server Settings/Advanced, where you want to set the "IMAP server directory" to "INBOX" in order for your mailboxes to be listed properly (as opposed to them appearing all as subfolders of your Inbox).
For more detailed information, see the following screenshots.
- Replace "kai" with your artemis username
- Replace "kai.germaschewski@unh.edu" with your UNH alias, if you have one, otherwise use "<username>@artemis.sr.unh.edu".
- Put in your real name instead of mine ;)
Setting up the Apple Email client
Launch the Apple email client from either the Dock or by navigating to the Applications folder and double clicking the Apple Email icon. Select the new account option from preferences and follow the procedure shown in the following images. Obviously use your own account name.
