Vacation

Using vacation to have auto-responded messages sent when you recieve email is still available on the new PCN systems, as it was previously on london. Some differences are important to note:

1. Put your message in a file called .vacation.msg. Users that are used to the vacation program on london might notice a couple of differences, most notably, the version of vacation installed does not expand variables in the vacation.msg file, like $SUBJECT. This file should be in the following format:

From: username (via the vacation program)
Subject: away from my mail

TEXT OF MESSAGE HERE

The From: and Subject lines are important!

2. Initialize your vacation database by typing at the shell prompt, vacation -i .

3. Create a file called .forward in your home directory. It should contain something like the following line:

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

This will cause your mail to be delivered to your mailbox as usual, (\username), and the vacation program to be run for that message.

Be sure to mv your .forward away when you return, or people will continue to get vacation messages when they send you email.