If you will not be checking your e-mail for a while (going on vacation, about to begin an epic lab project, etc.), you might wish to enable an auto-reply message, so that people e-mailing you will know that their messages might not be read for a while. This can be accomplished via the “vacation” program. This program will read incoming messages and generate automated replies to the senders.
By default, the vacation program will keep track of addresses to which it has already sent replies, to avoid repeatedly sending automated replies to the same person over and over (if that person sends you several messages). It also attempts to avoid sending auto-replies to known mailing lists, junk mail purveyors, and other users’ own vacation messages. However, it does sometimes get things wrong, so it is wisest while you are away to temporarily suspend delivery of mail on any mailing lists that you might be on.
To enable a vacation reply, first log in to one of the PCG GNU/Linux machines with your Physics account. (See the grad lab page for a list of machines.)
The vacation utility will create its own .forward file. If you already have a .forward file that you wish to preserve, you will need to temporarily rename it to something else and then switch it back after you disable the vacation responder when you get back. (For more information about the .forward file, see the page on forwarding your mail.)
Now run the vacation program: From the command line, type “vacation” (no quotes) and press Enter. This will create the necessary files in your home directory, and will then open a text editor so you can edit the auto-reply message to be used.
The default message will look something like:
Subject: away from my mail
I will not be reading my mail for a while.
Your mail concerning "$SUBJECT"
will be read when I'm back.
The “Subject:” header line (which is required) specifies the subject line of the auto-reply message; the remainder of the message will be used as the message body. If the string $SUBJECT is present (as it is, by default), it is replaced in the actual reply by the subject line of the message it is replying to.
To disable the vacation auto-responder, log into your account and remove the .forward, .vacation.db, and .vacation.msg files. If you had saved an old .forward file, you can now put it back into place.