E-Mail

This is a brief introduction to using e-mail at Eastern. All Eastern students have free e-mail; just sign up in the Computer Center (basement of Inlow Hall).

All e-mail at Eastern passes through the "Emily" computer. When e-mail arrives for you, it waits there; when you send mail it first goes to Emily which then redirects it to its destination.

There are two different ways to handle your e-mail:
  1. If you are running on a mac or windows computer, you can use a program like Netscape to fetch your mail from Emily and read it with a mouse-based editor,
  2. You can run a text-based mail program ("elm" or "pine") right on Emily, calling in from any kind of computer.

This page discusses option #2. Why use elm instead of a cute point-and-click interface? Keeping your mail account on a central computer means that you can use any mac or pc on the campus network, or call into Emily from home or dorm using a modem, and get and send mail the same way. Do keep in mind that you're communicating with another computer when you use elm---in particular, it doesn't know anything about your mouse!

Connecting to Emily

(The instructions for pcs have not been checked---use with caution!) You first need to login to Emily. From any mac or pc on the campus net, run the Telnet program (on the macs in the Physics lab, Telnet is visible in the main disk window; on the pcs in the library, type telnet at the prompt). Open a connection (cmd-O on macs, opt-A on pcs (?)).

At the login prompt type your user name and password, and you will be logged-in. You will often see a message from the operators, and you may see a message about new or old mail.

Starting Elm

Type elm at the prompt ("$"), and the mail program will run. Elm will display any messages in your "mailbox", new messages are marked N, and ones you've already read are just listed.

Reading Your Mail

Press the up- and down-arrow keys to move the highlighted message, or type the number (if you've marked a message for deletion, you can select it again only with its number). Pressing <return> will display the first page of the message.

After reading a message, you can delete it, reply to it, or save it. These choices are not exclusive; you could reply and then delete, for instance. Saving automatically marks a message for deletion, since you've just saved a copy of it.

Sending new mail

Type m and elm will ask you a couple of questions before starting an editor to compose your message. In the to: field you need to enter the user-id of the person. If they are at Eastern, you need give only their user-id (i.e. to: npreyer ). If they are off-campus, you will need to give a "full" address, giving the computer on which they have their mail account (i.e. peter@pearly-gates.heaven.org ).

You will then be asked for the subject, and if you want to send copies to anyone. I personally like to keep copies of most of the mail I send, so I send a copy to myself by putting my own user-id here.

The Pico editor is pretty straight-forward: type and your letters go in, press the delete key and letters go away. Other options are listed at the bottom. Remember that a command listed as ^F means "control-F", and that the editor (running on the unix computer) doesn't know anything about your mouse.

When you're through typing, type ^X to exit the editor. You now get a final menu letting you send the mail, re-edit the text, or edit the header (i.e. the to:, subject:, and cc: fields).

After the mail is sent, you will be returned to the main menu, from which you can read more mail, quit, etc.

Replying to mail

Replying to mail is just like sending new mail, except that elm will fill in the to: and subject: fields for you. It will ask you if you want a copy of the original message; if so, the message is inserted as 
>Hey Dude,
>	This is some real cool stuff, eh?
>--Me
so no one gets confused about who said what.

Saving mail

This isn't an option on the menu at the bottom of the screen, but is a most useful command. If you select a message (or are reading it) and type s, elm will save the message for you and remove it from the mailbox you're looking at.

By default, elm will make a file with the name of the sender of the mail and put that file in a folder called Mail. (You need to know this to read your saved mail--see Reading saved mail.) If you've previously saved mail from this person, the new mail is appended (added to the end) of the file. When you read this file, elm will keep the individual messages separated.

When you type s, elm will suggest a name at the bottom (i.e. =snarba if your mail was sent by Arnold Snarb). You can just hit <return> if that name's okay, and a copy is saved. The original message is marked for deletion (see Deleting mail).

Deleting mail

You can delete mail you've read in either of two ways: In both cases a "D" will be placed to the left of the message number, indicating it is marked for deletion. You can undo this, if you wish. The messages will not be deleted until you quit.

Reading saved mail

You can read one of your mailboxes by starting elm with a "command-line option". If you want to read the mailbox named "snarba", you would give the unix command elm -f Mail/snarba

Elm will behave quite normally, but the list of messages you see is not your new or unsaved messages, but just the ones in this mailbox.

Quitting

You quit elm by returning to the index screen and typing ^X (control-X). If you've marked any messages for deletion, you're asked if you want to really delete them. If you've read any unsaved messages, elm will ask if you want to move them to a folder called received. You probably don't want to do this; save the messages in named mailboxes instead.

You should now see the unix prompt ("$"). Type the "end-of-transmission" code ^D, and you will be disconnected. Telnet will show this by changing the title of the window to (Emily) or closing the window completely. You can now quit Telnet (and ignore the message about open windows).

Go to Physics Dept. Home Page.

Have any comments, bug reports, additions, or suggestions?
Please feel free to leave me a quick email message (npreyer@eou.edu).