Email on the Road

Question: I went to a conference recently where they provided courtesy Internet connections, but I was unable to check my mail back at UIC. What's up?

Answer: I presume you routinely check your mail on CMS, and had trouble making a telnet connection to our mainframe. When the telnet program starts up, the client (you) and the server (us) negotiate on what terminal emulation to use. Some telnet programs are quite flexible about using different terminal types, but CMS is not it only accepts 3270-style emulation. (3270 is the model number of an old IBM terminal.) This is not a problem on campus, because the telnet software in the public labs and in the Network Services Kit can handle 3270 emulation as well as other types. But some telnet software cannot, and CMS will absolutely refuse to make a connection any other way.

One possibility is that you had access to 3270 emulation, but didn't realize it. Sometimes the software goes under a different name, such as tn3270 or tn rather than telnet , or there might be an option to use on the telnet command. You'd have to experiment or ask a local expert at the conference.

Another possible solution would be to telnet to uicvm-7171.uic.edu instead of uicvm.uic.edu, and to use VT100 emulation. (The DEC VT100 was a very popular terminal, and is sometimes referred to as ANSI standard. Our jargon is clearly shackled by historical accidents.) In this case, you will actually be telneting to an IBM 7171 minicomputer that is, in turn, connected to CMS. The 7171 is programmed to accept a remote VT100 session, to translate it into 3270 lingo, and to relay the translation to CMS.

Be aware, however, that there may still be problems. The biggest problem is getting the keyboard maps to work right. Somehow, your client program at the conference has to translate a key press on your real keyboard into a key press (or possibly several presses) on an emulated keyboard. The emulated key press is then translated again into something CMS will understand. I wish you the best of luck figuring out where your Clear key is. You're welcome to try the gray + key (on the numeric keypad), Pause, Ctrl-z, Esc . (that's a period), or Esc , (and that's a comma). Any of these might work, but you pays your money and takes your chances.

To my mind, here's the best solution of all. Why use CMS in the first place? Get an account on tigger, our public UNIX workstation, and have your mail delivered there. Then, whether you're on campus or off, you can either use Eudora (on your PC) to download your mail from tigger, or telnet to tigger, log in, and use pine to read your mail. When you're out of town, you will be able to telnet back to tigger; since tigger is a UNIX platform, standard VT100 emulation will work just fine, and all the conferences will provide that.

Taking your mail to tigger is pretty easy, at least if you're listed in the faculty staff phonebook. Obviously, you first need to have an account on tigger; the box below explains how.

Here's how to get an account on tigger

Next, you need to get your friends to send their notes to tigger instead of CMS. Have I got a solution for you! It's a two step process. (1) Ask your departmental phonebook contact person to set your real email address in the online phonebook to netid@tigger.uic.edu, where netid is your netid. This will redirect any mail addressed to netid@uic.edu to your tigger mailbox. (This procedure requires an overnight step, so don't worry if it doesn't work right away.) (2) Log onto your CMS account and enter this command:

tell mailer set forward netid@tigger.uic.edu

Once you have your mail sent to your tigger account, to read it, log onto tigger, and enter the command: pine

You can get some documentation on how to use pine from the Client Services Office (the same people that gave you your account on tigger) or from INFORM (use the search word pine), but the fact is, you can probably figure out 80% of it (or more) just by trying the obvious.

If you prefer to download your mail with Eudora, just reconfigure Eudora to use pop3serv7.cc.uic.edu [no such machine anymore, but seeing as CMS email is about to be turned off too, I guess no one cares! --Ed] as your POP host, use smtpserv1.cc.uic.edu as your SMTP server, and use your netid as your POP login name (and your tigger password as the POP password). No need to set up anything more on tigger; you're ready to roll.

That's it! Well, one caveat. If anyone uses sendfile to send a file to your CMS account, that is not counted as mail and will not be forwarded. If that happens, you have to log onto CMS to get the file. Still, this happens rarely these days. I think you'll find pine, and particularly Eudora, easy to deal with, and you'll have the added advantage of a no-sweat connection from out of town.

Comments are appreciated; send them to
Bob Goldstein, bobg@uic.edu