Email 101: Email on ACCC Unix

Using email at UIC is not necessarily tied to your ACCC Unix account; Email at UIC Quick Start explains how to get started.

WebMail is the simplest of the ACCC email programs. Everything is done through a Web browser. You don't need to install or configure anything, just point your browser to: https://webmail.uic.edu/
login, and go. Yes, it's that easy. Want more information? See Using WebMail at UIC.

Pine is like WebMail in that you don't need to install anything if your email account is on the machine that you are using pine on , but if you want to do your email on mailserv, where email is the best, you will have to configure it.
Pine is very easy to use. There's enough information on pine's screens and in its online help to learn how to use it without much additional information. And it has lots of features (managing multiple notebooks, address books, and so on). But it uses text-based menus, doesn't do graphics, and doesn't use a mouse. (Is that good or bad?) Since this is Unix 101, there's a bit more about Using Pine Electronic Mail below. (Want more information? See Using pine Email.)

Eudora has a graphical user interface and runs on Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh personal computers. Eudora is a versatile and elegant email program, but it is meant for use by people on their own personal computers and is a bit less easy to learn than WebMail. (Want more information? See Eudora Email for Macs and Windows.)

Which should you use?

• If you know how to use a Web browser, WebMail is the easiest and in its new incarnation is reasonably fast, too. Try it. If you're happy with it, it's probably your best bet.
  
• Pine has the most features, but it's a Unix program so it doesn't have "windows" in the personal computer sense. You also have to login to your Unix account to use it. And if your account is on mailserv, you have to configure it to use mailserv. (Logging in easy to do in the ACCC public labs; there are icons in the main menus.)
  
• You can also use the ACCC's supported personal computer email program, Eudora, or any other personal computer email program that you want. Eudora is a standard Windows/Mac program; if you're good with Windows or Mac OS and if you have a personal computer handy to run it on (it's not available in the ACCC public labs), you'll probably like it best. The ACCC has a new POP server now, which makes Eudora or any other personal computer email program compatible with WebMail, regardless of whether it is set up to use POP or IMAP.

The ACCC Unix machines have both the standard Unix mail command and the significantly more user-friendly Unix mail system Pine, which uses the command pine. For more information, enter man pine on Unix (tigger (AIX) pine man page; icarus (Solaris) pine man page) or see Using pine Email.

About Pine

Pine allows you: to read, reply to, send and manage electronic mail; to enter and maintain a database of electronic mail addresses and nicknames; and to read Usenet/Netnews newsgroups. Pine is available for public use on the ACCC Unix machines; login to your Unix account and then enter the command: pine
Pine is quite easy to use; there's enough information on its screens and in its online help to learn how to use it without much additional information.

To "login" to icarus or tigger:

Open an ssh window to icarus or tigger. (There are icons in the main menus on the personal computers in the ACCC public labs or see SSH SFTP Secure Telnet and FTP.) Type your netid and press Enter when it asks for you to login, then type your password and press Enter.

To start pine:

At the Unix prompt, type: pine and press Enter.

To get help in Pine

Pine displays a table available commands at the bottom of each screen; to execute one of these commands, just type the indicated character(s). If the character in the table is preceded by a ^, press Ctrl and hold it down while typing the character. Type ? (or Ctrl-g when composing a note) to get help while using Pine.

To send an electronic note with Pine

enter:  pine address

where address is email address of the account to which you want to send the note. Or type c ("Compose message") in the Pine main menu screen.
Use the Down arrow to highlight "Subject:" then type a brief subject for the note. Use the Down arrow again to highlight "Message Text", then type the text of the message, pressing Enter to add each additional line. To send the note, type Ctrl-x then type y to confirm.

To read your incoming mail with Pine

enter:  pine

The Pine main menu is displayed. In most cases, you can then just type i ("Folder Index") to open your INBOX. Or press Enter to select the highlighted "Folder List", then press Enter again to select the highlighted entry "[Select Here to See Expanded List]", and then press Enter a third time to select "INBOX".

In the menu for any Pine folder (including the INBOX), use the arrow keys to move to the note you want to read, then type v or press Enter to read it.

To Delete, Save, Reply, or Resend mail

While you're reading the note (either in your INBOX or in one of your other mail folders), the commands you'll need to Delete, Undelete, Reply, and Forward the note are displayed in a table at the bottom of the screen. But there are more command choices available than there is room in just one table. There are, in fact, three tables of available commands; type o (Other commands) to step through the lists. Type s (Save) to save the note into one of your folders (notebooks).

To leave Pine

Except when you're composing a note, type q (Quit) and then press y (for Yes).

Now that you know how easy it is to use pine to do email, maybe you'll be willing to set it up to read your mailserv email. (Because you do want to use mailserv for your email).

There is a hard way and an easy way. The hard way is by hand; it's described in Fixing mailserv quota problems with pine . The easy way is to have the move to mailserv utility do it for you. Go to the Move to Mailserv page and select the route for icarus or tigger -- whichever machine you want pine reconfigured on.

If you haven't made the switch yet, use the utility to do the switch. If you have, just click Skip or Continue on all the screens until you reach the last one, Final Step: Re-configuring your email reader. Then click the Reconfigure Pine button.

Move to Mailserv

It is important to keep in mind that you have a limited amount of space on your ACCC email account to store email. As mail addressed to your account comes in, it is placed in your Inbox mailbox, which is kept in system storage. It will stay there indefinitely, until and unless the total amount of email you have in your Inbox exceeds your account's Inbox allotment, when new incoming email will be bounced. (Returned to its sender.) Each account has a reasonably large allotment, but if you get a lot of email messages with large attachments, your Inbox can fill up pretty quickly.

You will receive a series of automated messages as the size of your Inbox approaches your Inbox quota.

For the current email quotas for ACCC email servers (including icarus and tigger) and instructions on how to find out how big your Unix inbox is, see the Web page Email Space Limits for ACCC Servers.

So regardless of where your mail is sent, or how you receive it, it is important that you check on a regular basis to see whether you have new mail, and when you do have mail, it is important that you read and either save or discard it. If you don't check your mail regularly, you might miss something important; and if you do check on and take care of your mail regularly, you'll be helping to conserve the limited quantity of space available on each of the ACCC systems for the storage of incoming mail.