Vacation Program - Auto E-Mail Message Responding

Revision as of 20:53, 15 July 2013 by Steve410 (talk | contribs)

NOTE: This is currently for the Grad/Research network e-mail and not for Ugrad e-mail.

Introduction

Our CS Grad/Research e-mail service allows you to set and auto reply message when you are out of the office. We utilize a program called vacation that resides on our Linux systems (and our Solaris system, peregrine.cs.jhu.edu)

vacation allows you to configure your email account to send an automated reply to anyone you emails you to let them know that you will be unavailable for a time (a.k.a. a "vacation" message). (Note: Full information about how it works can be found by running man vacation It also keeps track of who has e-mailed you since you set your vacation message, so that the sender doesn't get multiple vacation replies for every e-mail the sender sends to you.


Basic Setup

The basic instructions should work for most people. The programs will inform you if you need a more complicated setup.

Enabling Vacation Messages

Log into any of the CS. At the command prompt, type: 

vacation

An editor will open with either a sample email or the last email you used for your vacation message. Edit it as you see fit and then save and exit the editor. a .forward file is created for you, which enables your vacation message auto-reply.

Disabling Vacation messages

Log into any of the CS. At the command prompt, type: 

vacation

The program will tell you that vacation messages are enabled and ask if you want to disable them. Type yes and press enter. Vacation messages are now disabled.

If you elect not to disable vacation messages, you will have an opportunity to edit your vacation message, and vacation messages will remain active.

Advanced Setup

In some cases the vacation program will not be able to automatically set up vacation messages, usually because the .forward file is already in use. You should only need the following instructions if the vacation program tells you to.

Advanced Setup: Manually Enabling Vacation Messages When You Already Use Your Own .forward File

To manually enable vacation message auto reply when you already use your own .forward file, edit ~/.vacation.msg with the auto-reply message you want to send to people. It should have a Subject: line, possibly along with other headers that you want, followed by a blank line, followed by the message body. Here's a sample: 

Subject: I'm on vacation until June 5th.

I will be away on vacation until June 5th.  If you need a response before
then, please email my colleague, Bob, at bob@email.address.

Next, edit ~/.forward and add to the line in it a comma followed by the text "|/usr/bin/forward account", where account is your account name.

For example, say your account is "cstest" and your ~/.forward file contains: 

\cstest, cstest@gmail.com

Then you should edit it so it contains the following: 

\cstest, cstest@gmail.com, "|/usr/bin/vacation cstest"

After that, vacation messages will be enabled.

Disabling Vacation Messages

Simply remove the "|/usr/bin/forward account" destination from your ~/.forward file.