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Mail:  Automatically replying to mail received while you're away


Q.  I am going out of town for a few days.  Is there a way to put a hold on
    my mail or automatically reply to people get telling them not to expect a
    reply until I return?

A.  While there's no way to put a "hold" on mail, it's easy to automatically
    send your correspondents a reply message by using the "vacation" program.

    To activate vacation, type:

    	    vacation

    ...at the shell prompt and answer the questions.  You'll have a chance to
    compose your message using your favorite editor.

    To turn vacation off when you return, type:

    	    vacation

    It'll print a list of all the folks to whom it sent vacation replies.


Q.  If I just let it pile up so I can read it when I get back, is there
    a limit to how many messages my mailbox will hold?

A.  You can have as much e-mail accumulate for yourself as will fit in your
    5 Mb disk-space quota.  Most folks won't get enough mail while they're
    gone to come anywhere near close enough to this limit, but if you already
    have a lot of mail in your mailbox, you might want to clean it out before
    you leave.


Q.  Can vacation be used with SLIP or PPP accounts?

A.  Remember, your mail goes to your maildrop on halcyon, and waits there
    for someone to pick it up.  vacation will work happily, no matter how you 
    eventually do or do not read your mail.  So the answer is that vacation
    has nothing to do with SLIP accounts, one way or the other.


Q.  I don't want to send automatic replies to mailing lists, because they'll
    then remove me from the list.  Can I tell vacation to not send replies to
    these folks?

A.  To avoid sending vacation notices to mailing lists and well-known users,
    vacation will not send a reply if any of the following conditions are met:

       - The initial From: line includes the string -REQUEST@.

       - A Precedence:bulk or Precedence:junk line is included in the header.

       - The To: or the Cc: line does not list your login name or one of a
         number of aliases for it.

       - Mail is from one of these well-known users: daemon, postmaster,
         mailer-daemon, mailer, operator, or root.

       - Mail is from one of the users listed in the optional exemption
         file, specified with the -f option.


    For more information, at the shell prompt type:

         localman vacation
                                                 
                                                                                (30-Oct-94/maiartmr/MJT)
______________________________________________________________________________
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