How do I setup an automated E-mail response when I am on vacation?
Enabling vacation is as easy as creating/editing three files.
- Ensure you have a .forward containing "| /usr/common/bin/procmail
-f-" including the quotes (you may already have this for filtering spam into your junk folder)
- Create a file called .vacation.msg with the content of the auto-reply
- If you have accounts other then
<username>@chemistry.ohio-state.edu (for example aliases or you
osu.edu) for which you would like reply then create a file called
.vacation.aliases with one address per line.
Note: The .vacation.aliases is necessary and care needs to be taken with address listed in it.
Vacation will not respond to other address on purpose. If you accidently list a mailing
list address, then the reply will go to the whole list.
Also, vacation will respond only once to each sender until it is re-initialized.
Anytime your edit the .vacation.msg file, the list of senders is
reinitialized. You may also delete the address cache by deleting
.vacation.cache
Creating files in your Unix home directory
Windows (on the chemistry network)
If you are using a windows computer on Chemistry network, then the easiest way to creat the files is via Samba:
- Open notepad, and type the contents of the file.
- Go to File->Save As
- In the filename, type \\unixfs\username\filename where
- username is your chemistry username
- filename is the file you want to create (.vacation.msg or .vacation.aliases if attempting to configure vacation)
- Change Save as type tp All Files
- Click the save button
Other
If you need to enable vacation from outside the department you can ssh
into the main chemistry server and use any editor to create the files.
In order to keep this simple, the examples will use pico, a basic
editor.
- SSH into chemistry.ohio-state.edu
- Type pico filename where filename is the name of the file you would like to create
- Type the contents of the file
- Hit ctrl-x
- Hit y to save the changes
- Hit enter to save to the file name specified
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