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• Reading Campus Email from UNIX

Reading Campus Email from UNIX

If you prefer not to log in to a Remote Computing facility machine to read your campus email but do use a UNIX or Linux system to access your mail, you have several options for accessing your campus email.

Use an IMAP Client

Most users on UNIX systems use an IMAP client just as they would on a Windows or Mac OS X system. Just as with a Windows or Mac OS X system, you can configure your client to use the central IMAP service and authenticate with Kerberos.

For help, see Configuring Your Email Program.

You can also use the campus webmail service from a UNIX system as you would from any other system with a web browser.

Forward Your Email

Some people forward their email to their own UNIX system, since UNIX systems can receive and deliver email to local accounts (if configured to do so). You can then just login to that machine and read your mail locally.

This option will only work properly if your machine is powered on and connected to Stanford's network all the time. Forwarded email cannot be restored from backup.

To forward your @stanford.edu mail to an account on such a machine, go to Stanford.You, follow the "Change settings for account" link, and scroll down to "Forward email to another address." Follow the "change" link and forward your mail to your email address on your UNIX system.

Use fetchmail

Fetchmail is a widely-used program for downloading mail from an IMAP or POP server and forwarding it to your local UNIX system. The version of fetchmail that comes with many Linux distributions supports Kerberos. This is a good option if you don't want to send mail directly to your UNIX system and instead want to download it whenever you're ready.

For more information, see the fetchmail documentation. Configure fetchmail to use Kerberos via GSSAPI if possible, as this is the most secure way to authenticate to the central mail servers.

Note: Stanford's Remote Computing facility uses a different, locally-written version of fetchmail that predates the program that comes with many Linux distributions. It is a very simple program that downloads mail via GSSAPI-authenticated POP and writes it to a local file. This program was intended to be internal to the UNIX clients available in the Remote Computing facility. For your own system, using the standard fetchmail program is recommended.

Getting Help

For more information about using kerberos authentication with your email, you may want to post to one of the su.computers.* newsgroups (su.computers.unix, su.computers.linux, su.computers.bsd) to reach folks familiar with your operating system. You can also submit a HelpSU request.