.forward
file
in your login directory
(if you have such a file)
to see how to deliver your email.
To illustrate how to create this file in your login directory,
we will go through an example for a hypothetical Willaim and Mary
student named William H. Gates.
We are assuming the following information about Mr. Gates:
| CS server login id: | billgates
|
| W&M email address: | whgate@wm.edu |
| Internet Service Provider email address: | bgates@aol.com |
prompt% cd # go to the login directory
prompt% emacs .forward & # create the .forward file
Once inside the emacs text editor, Mr. Gates would
enter the following one line
exactly as shown (the lefmost non-blank character
of the line is the first charater of the file):
\billgates@cs.wm.edu,whgate@wm.edu,bgates@aol.com
then save the file and exit the editor.
When email arrives at cs.wm.edu for Mr. Gates,
a copy will be left on the CS server, a copy will be forwarded to
the W&M mail server, and a copy will be forwarded to his email
account with his ISP.
Of course, if he didn't want a copy forwarded to his ISP, he
could simply omit the rightmost term (along with the preceding comma).
\) NOT
a forward slash (/).
The backslash
tells the sendmail daemon NOT to "expand" the given address
(that is, not to look in the .forward file --
expanding the leftmost address with the .forward file
leads to an infinite loop).
If
your .forward file
has a mistake, then every email sent to the CS server will be
bounced back to its sender.
So, you will probably want to test
your .forward file after you have created it:
prompt% mail billgates
Subject: A test
This is a test^D
Cc:
The "Subject:" string is printed by the
mail program.
When
the control-D (^D is typed at the end of the body
of the message, the
mail program types the "Cc:" line, to which
you should simply enter a RETURN.
If
your .forward file
is correct, then you should receive the test message at each
of the sites you list in
your .forward file.