IMAP

For reasons of robustness and reliability, we are moving towards an all-IMAP email configuration. IMAP mail messages are stored on a central server, thus can be accessed from different computers at different locations, without having to move the messages between those machines.

Currently, CS users either have IMAP store their mail, forward it to an off-site address, or have it stored on /var/mail/[username], which is accessible over the network by NFS. This NFS mail will eventually go away, users must switch to IMAP or forward their mail elsewhere.

To see if you are using IMAP, or forwarding your mail:

cat /stage/forward/[your-username]

If this file contains |imap, then IMAP will store your mail. If this file doesn't exist, or you are not forwarding your mail to IMAP or elsewhere, or if you see: \your-username
then you are using NFS mail, and will have to change how you access your mail.

Switching to IMAP

  • To use IMAP, you must configure your mail reader.

  • To filter IMAP mail, you must use sieve.

  • You may want your existing mail transfered to our IMAP server.

    • On our Linux machines, you can upload your current mbox to the IMAP server with /opt/techstaff/bin/mbox2imap

    • You can download IMAP mail into a mbox file with programs such as fetchmail