I'll be out of town for weeks. What should I do with incoming e-mails during my absence?


  
"I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather...
Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car"
- A real bumper sticker seen on I-95 South to Savanna, GA

If you'll not be able to check your e-mail for a period of time [such as out of town for a conference or travelling abroad, etc.], there is a way that you can automatically reply, at least, to incoming e-mails using "vacation" command, saying that you're absent and are redirecting the point of contact to whom is available. Sorting and reading through the pile of e-mails when you return is a completely different story though.

Of course, if you will have an access to your e-mail at CEE Unix network from remote location such as via your ISP or will use a machine in remote location, the information in this page does not apply to you.

To set up vacation, type "vacation" at system prompt without any arguments.

$ vacation

The "vacation" command creates a ".vacation.msg" file in yur home directory, which contains the message that is automatically sent to all senders while you're out. Once this initial ".vacation.msg" message file is created, you can edit it using an text editor of your choice (i.e., vi, emacs, pico, nedit, dtpad, etc.) to reflect your own message.

While you're editing ".vacation.msg" file, you can put a "Subject:" line in the first line that will be used automatically in your reply, but you can not include a "From:" line (since you're presumingly out of network access, and if you'll have a network access you shouldn't use this "vacation" command in the first place) or a "To:" line (since "vacation" command will reply only to sender's e-mail address, "To:" field is not necessary).

For example, following ".vacation.msg" file

          Subject: I am on vacation!
          I am on vacation until March 2.  If you have something urgent,
          please contact Adam Sandler (ASandler@xyz.net).
               -- Jim Carry
will put "I am on vacation!" in the "Subject:" field in all automatic replies to incoming e-mails made during your absence.

Now, if you put the string "$SUBJECT" in the ".vacation.msg" file main body, it is automatically replaced with the subject of the sender's e-mail when the reply is sent. Thus, a ".vacation.msg" file such as

          Subject: I am on vacation!
          I am on vacation until March 2.
          Your e-mail regarding "$SUBJECT" will be read when I return.
          If you have something urgent, please contact
	  Adam Sandler (ASandler@xyz.net).
               -- Jim Carry
will include the "Subject:" of the sender's e-mail in the automatic reply.

This "vacation" command is based on ".forward" file in your home directory. If there is no ".forward" file presented in your home directory, a new ".forward" file is created . Once created, the ".forward" file will contain following one line:

\your_user_name, "|/usr/bin/vacation your_user_name"

It means that one copy of each incoming e-mail is sent to the your account and another copy is piped into "vacation" command for an automatic reply.

The "vacation" command also automatically creates ".vacation.pag" file and ".vacation.dir" directory in your home directory, which contain a list of senders when vacation is enabled. (These files will be kept in the dbm format that cannot be viewed directly with text editors)

If a ".forward" file is already present in your home directory, it will ask whether you want to remove it, which disables "vacation" command and ends the "vacation" setup. (it works like a toggle key) Thus, if you want to keep your existing ".forward" file *AND* want to use "vacation" command, you need to remane existing ".forward" file first to something other than ".forward" and re-run "vacation" command again to set up automatic reply.

When you return, you can deactivate the "vacation" setup simply by re-run "vacation" command to toggle it off by deleting "vacation" command version of ".forward" file. Then you can rename your original ".forward" file [that you renamed temporarily before activating "vacation" command] back to ".forward" to autoforward all future incoming e-mails.