What
to expect once you get a dragon mail account:
- Your email address stays the same.
There is no need to change your email address. You can continue to use
the same email address you use now. The only change is where you read your email from. Instead of
reading your email from multiple places like aramis, paul, remus,
research, etc, now all your email will arrive in one mailbox.
- Modern Mail Client is required
It is important to note that: Dragon
mail system will NOT work with emacs, rmail, mm, /usr/ucb/mail and other mail
client that is over 5-10 years old. If you want to read your
email using a text only mail reader, use Pine set for IMAP to read email. We
recommend that you pick one of the standard modern mail clients
such as Thunderbird, Outlook/Express,
AppleMail, Entourage, Mozilla,
etc. These mail clients were designed to be easy to use and support all
newer technolgy including ability to read multimedia mail. Please
follow Setting up Your Mail Client section below to configure your mail client.
You can also read your email via an Internet browser such as
Internet Explorer, Safari, Netscape and Firefox. This allow you to read
email securely from anywhere there is a browser without any need to
setup a mail client. Dragon requires
newer Internet browsers with current SSL certificate. Most browser created before
year
2000, may not work because the Certificate authority
embedded
inside the browser has expired.
-
Mail Account password
To access the
dragon mail account, use the same password you use
to create it. (Hint: your CS password.) If you ever forget your password, remember that Dragon also works with your RCI
or Eden username/password.
If you would like to change your local dragon password, you will need to do
this via the web
interface or simply change your RCI / Eden password.
- No Direct access to mail file.
Because dragon is a central mail server with mail only access, you will
not have access to any unix shell. The only ways to access Dragon are
via a web browser or via a mail client.
- Mail
Forwarding
It may be a good idea to forward your mail from your previous
mailserver to dragon.rutgers.edu so you only need to read mail from one
location. To do this on our unix systems, add a file named
.forward (known as dot forward) in
your unix home directory containing:
your_username@cs.rutgers.edu. You
will need to do this for each machine you previously read mail from.
If you decide that you don't want to use dragon for your mail server
and would like to forward all your mail to other mail system, you can
set forwarding using the web interface.
IMPORTANT: Do Not forward mail from
dragon.rutgers.edu to CS machines, as it will generate a
mail loop.
- Spam filtering
Dragon mail system tags all mail after analysing it for spam
content. All dragon users who created their accounts themselves
automatically get this feature turned on. If you would like to modify
this feature, see: spam rules at http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/resources/howto/ under mail related section.
- Support username+folder email addres
Dragon mail system support RFC standard that allow one to
gives out different email address for different people and with Rules,
one can automatically file incoming email to specific folder.
For example: If you would like to automatically direct
all email from your CS211 students to a folder named CS211, simply
tell your student to email you at:
your_username+CS211@cs.rutgers.edu.The addition of
+CS211 to your email address can be detected by individual user
account Rules which can
be used to automatically stored to the CS211 folder, assumming one
already exist. This feature is quite useful when you want to trace
your spam source or organized your email automatically.
An example of such rule is as follow:
Data Operation Parameter
Header Field is X-Real-To: <username+CS211@cs.rutgers.edu>
--- is
Action Parameter
Store in CS211
Discard
---
Previously this features does not requires Rules to be created for
each +foldername used. However due to this fact, we later found out
that spammer can force spams to be delivered to your INBOX simply by
sending your email to: username+INBOX. This change is effect as of
May 25,2006
- Different Skins
Dragon webmail interface supports many user selectable skins providing
more visually rich interfaces. A primitive skin, providing the very
basic and simple HTML, is set as the default webmail interface to
allow support for old browsers. If you prefer to have an
Outlook/Outlook Express/Thunderbird look a like interface, try a skin
named: LookOut (interactive), Simplex(non interactive). To change
skins, simply click on Settings and change your Layout
from the web interface. For more help, see: Settings Guide.
Please note the visually rich interface
requires more CPU power and bandwitdh due to complicated javascripts
used. If you have Flash installed, you may also want to try the Pronto client. Just click on the Pronto picture on the login window
- Vacation Settings.
If
you ever need to enable an auto response when you are going on a trip
or won't be answering your email for a period of time, you may want to
look at the vacation setting. The vacation setting is set up using the web interface.
Warning: For privacy, It may not be a good idea to tell people that you wont be at home in a long period of time. You may be surprised to find out when your return from vacation that your house was emptied.
- Mail Quota.
Mail quota on this central mail system is set at 1 GB by default. When you reach 80% and 85% of your quota, you
will receive a notice and a warning. This quota is completely separate
from your research work or other account you currently have on other CS machines. If you need more disk quota,
please send email to: help@cs.rutgers.edu
- Migration.
Due to the many mail systems we run today, there is no automatic
migration of mail from other system to dragon. If you are running a
modern mail client today, once you setup your dragon account, you
should follow a separate migration
instruction to move mail from older systems to dragon.
- Account Deletion
In an effort to easily manage this system, all accounts that
remain dormant after one year (365 days) gets deleted automatically
by the system.
All CS email accounts will be continued for a period of at least one year after a user leaves. One year after a user leaves all email services will be terminated unless
a) the user retires, in which case their CS email will be maintained for life*;
b) a student graduates with a PhD, in which case the user will have CS email forwarding for life.*
For the first nine (9) months after leaving user email will continue to work without change. Beginning in the tenth (10) month each incoming message for the users will be delivered along with a warning message reminding the user that their email service will be closed and that they should inform everyone contacting them of these changes.
*If a new user is assigned the same netid/username as yours, The new user will own that netid/username and you will have the option to choose a new netid/username.
- Your mail is backed up. Sort of!
Dragon emails except those stored inside 'Spam', 'Trash', 'Deleted Messages', or 'Deleted Items' Folders, are backed up every 90 minutes. If you deleted an email that
has not been backed up, you will loose it forever, otherwise, a
certain rules are in effect. Here is the backup schedule.
| Type | Scheduled | Number kept |
|---|
| hourly | Daily at 0400, 0800, 1200, 1600, 2000 | 10 |
| daily | Tuesday thru Sunday at 0000 | 12 |
| weekly | Monday at 0000 | 8 |
In other words, we have
- snapshots taken every 4 hours kept online
for 2 days.
- snapshots taken at 12:00am each morning kept online for 2 weeks.
- snapshots taken at 12:00am Monday mornings kept online for 8
weeks (2 months).
No snapshots or backups of files are available beyond
the 8 week timeframe.
(This is a new policy in response to the recently enacted
law regarding public access to government records.)
- Automatic Cleanup of 'Spam', 'Trash', 'Junk','Junk Mail', 'Deleted Messages', or 'Deleted Items' Folders
All email older then 40 days stored in folder named 'Spam', 'Trash','Junk','Junk Mail', 'Deleted Messages', or 'Deleted Items' will automatically be deleted and will not be backed up. All names will be case insensitive. If you would like to opt-in/out certain or other directories to this 40 days clean up process, please email: help@cs.
|
