Email Frequestly Asked Questions

I got a virus, what do I do?

a. Do not click on any part of the email. You may report it to help@math.unm.edu if you like. You may also report back to the person that sent it to you if you feel so inclined as they may well not realize they have sent you a virus. Many virus's spread by sending themselves to everyone in a given persons mail box. Delete it. Not just put it in the trash, but delete it in its entirety.

How do I save an attachment in Pine?

a. While reading the message containing an attatchment, enter > (shift .) to view the attatchments. Use the up and down arrows to select the attatchment you want to save. Enter S (or s) to save. You are prompted to give a name or path/name to save the file. Give the attatchment an appropriate name and enter return. If the attatchment is a word document, the you will have to open it with soffice, koffice, or Microsoft word in order to see it. If the file is an image such as a jpeg or gif, it can be viewed with a web browser or with xv in unix, or paint in windows.

Why is Unix Pine safer than Windows clients?

a. Many virus's are transmitted via email. Most 'traditional' virus's are windows programs that are malicious when executed. If you run Pine on a Unix machine and it contains an executable program (or even a Visual Basic Script) which is for windows, if it tries to 'execute' on the unix machine it will fail because its compiled or designed to run on windows. Thus if a person were truly paranoid about windows virus, they would read their mail on a unix machine first. Delete the suspect messages, and then continue reading their mail using a windows client to make opening attatchments and reading html easier.

I sent a message an hour ago and the recipient still hasn't gotten it!

a. Electronic mail is much like snail mail. It was built to absorb delays (such as the mail truck getting stuck in a mud puddle). The protocol is designed to continue to try and send a mail message several times an hour, even if the recipients mail server has crashed. After about 24 hours you should get a mail message that there has been a delay. After 4 days, if the server is still unable to deliver the mail message, it should be returned back to you. Unfortunately this is not the bottom line, there are some ugly varations to this theme that servers designed to send out spam emails can cause.

Can I forward my mail to another account?

a. In order to forward your mail, all you have to do is place a file named .forward in your home directory. The support staff at the math department can do this for you if necessary. If I were to place the following in my .forward, I would get mail at UNM as well as the math department.

\yourlogon@math.unm.edu yourlogon@unm.edu

and if I were to just place the unm address in the file I would only get my mail at UNM, and I would get no mail at the Math Department. In this case the contents of the file would look like

yourlogon@unm.edu

If you want other questions and answers listed here please email help@math.unm.edu.