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Auto-Line-Break [010630]

Q: My mailer automatically breaks the lines in my text after the Nth character; how can I prevent this?

A: Many programs cannot be configured to prevent this "feature". Use this workaround: *Compress* the text. The mailer should not recognize the compressed data as text any more - and thus send it on as is. Just attach the compressed file.

Q: My mailer does not allow to attach files. What now?

A: You lose. Use a better mailer.

Q: But my boss tells me to use this mailer!

A: Your boss loses. Get a better job!

Filenames [010630]

Q: What filename should I use for attachments?

A: Compose filenames of letters and numbers, dots, dashes and underscores. This should work with all systems. Try to fit the name in 31 characters (the limit for older MacOS filenames). As for DOS systems - they allow "8.3" names only; almost no names fit into this space, anyway. *Never* use other punctuation other than that. You'll run into problems with either of these: Colons, slashes or backslashes, asterisks, exclamation marks or questions marks, hashs, dollars, percent, caret, ampersand, brackets of any kind.

Mail Filter - Definition

Q: What is a mail filter and why do you need one?

A: A mail filter handles incoming mail automatically according to "actions" or "rules".

• A mail filter does not handle outbound mail.
• A mail filter does not require interactive use.
• A mail filter should be configured by yourself.

Mail Filter - what does it do?

Q: What can I do to incoming mail with a mail filter?

A: The actions that a mail filter take on incoming mail are either to delete mail, or save mail to a "folder", or hand it over to another program. This includes the following special cases:

Sort out mails from mailing lists

Save each mail from a mailing list to a special folder. The advantage is that mailing list mails will not interfere with personal mail and mails from other mailing lists.

Delete junk mail

Most junk mail is bulk mail to many people which does not show the list of address it was sent to, especially not your own address. Thus junk mial usually identifies by mails which do not include your address. Exceptions are the mails from mailing lists - that's why you should filter them out before throwing them away. ;-)

Auto-answer

There are many scenarios where you might want mail to be autoanswered. The most often occurring scenarios are: You may want to let some people know that you are away or make it possible to request some data by email.

Hand to program

Well, this could be anything - weed away unwanted header lines, turn mail into HTML for presenting them on web pages, add headers with more information (eg included pgp mails) - it's all in your head!

Mail Filters Info Pages

ELM's filter

http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/elm/filter.html

How to use the "filter" that used to ship with the mailer "Elm". Advantage: Easy "rule language". Disadvantage: Slightly buggy, and no support by the Elm Development Group. Has been dropped in favor of procmail.

Exim [980217]

http://www.exim.org/docs/filter.html

procmail

The mail filter par exellance. More info on an extra page:

http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/procmail/

Mail Filtering - Related Pages

JunkBusters

http://www.junkbusters.com/

Mail Filter FAQ

see below

No Name in From: Line

Your name should be in the From: line. For these reasons:

Mails "From: address" look bad in the mailbox. Yes, this might sound like a silly reason, but it isn't. Or do you like receiving letters from anonymous people?

Spams are usually sent without a name. So mails "From: address" are an indicator for spam. Do not let your mails look like spam - add your name!

It is easier to remember a name than an address. Especially when some people have more than one address. Besides, your mailer could file mails more easily when it sees the same name. (Yes, this is not fool proof as different people can have the same name - I know. ;-)

HTML Mails to FAX? [000110]

Q: How can I send HTML mails as fax?

A: Just pipe the email to such a command:

lynx --dump --force_html | a2ps -Email -o - | faxspool

The text browser can render the HTML as text (hence the option "-dump"), then a2ps will format is nicely as Email with PostScript output, and faxspool sends it away as a fax.

Headerline "Sender:" [981030]

Q: How do you configure the contents of the header line "Sender:"?

A: You don't. "That's not what Sender: is *for*. You are the sender; thus it shows the address from which it was sent. It's not a vanity header for you to show off your domain." [Rich Lafferty rich@vax2.concordia.ca 981012 on comp.mail.misc]

User-Agent:

Q: What meaning has the header line "User-Agent:"?

A: The header line "User-Agent:" is used by programs such as mail user agents and news user agents to identify themselves. This line should give info about program name and version, and, if possible, its release date and contact address, such as an email or home page address.

Mailing List Creation [980303,980508,990831]

Q: How do I create a mailing list?

A: There are many ways to create a mailing list. But if do not want to install any software for this then you should use some public service for this.

Examples:

http://www.egroups.com

http://www.coollist.com/

See also the FAQ about "comp.mail.misc Internet Mailing List Providers" by Brian Edmonds edmonds@cs.ubc.ca : http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/edmonds/usenet/ml-providers.txt

Receipt Note

Q: How can I request a return email that states that my mail has been read?

A: See "Delivery Status Notification" [RFC1891 and RFC1894]. This must be supported by the receiving MTA, eg sendmail 8.8.x.

Free Email Accounts

Q: Is there any company that offers email account for free?

A: See the page on Free Email Accounts.

Minimum/Maximum Lengths of Objects

Q: What is the minimum/maximum length of object?

A: The minimum/maximum length of objects are defined in RFC0821 (4.5.3. "Sizes"), eg for text lines there is a minimum of 1000 characters.

Mail Notification [970410]

Q: Which programs are there to notify me of new mail (in special folders)?

A: See the page about Email notification:

http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/mail/notification.html

Mail Folder Management

Q: What programs exist for managing emails and folders?

A: [todo]

Message-ID: <545vin$m76@quasar.dimensional.com>

Mail to domain in IP number

Q: How do I send a mail to an address where the hostname cannot be resolved but the IP number is known?

A: Enclose the IP number of the host in brackets. Example: root@[127.0.0.1]

General Documents

E-Mail Security [000518]

http://www.ja.net/CERT/Linn/E-Mail_Security.html

Aktuelle E-Mail-Viren-Warnungen [000519]

http://www.tu-berlin.de/zrz/dienste/netz/mail/viren.html

HoaxKill [000221]

http://www.hoaxkill.com

Email Virus Hoaxes -> hoax-info.de [980303,000513]

http://www.hoax-info.de (in German)

Author: F. Ziemann f.ziemann@tu-berlin.de

Case Study: Horns of a Dilemma

Horns of a Dilemma

"A case study should have a neat ending, rather than this Perils-of-Pauline-tune-in-next-week closing. While this is not fiction, we do have to wait for the sequel, hoping that the hero will step in to rescue the fair Organization from the run-away train."

Editing Emails

Editing Emails

A guide to editing Emails. Summary: Use quoting - but dont overdo it!

Signature Etiquette

Signature Etiquette

A guide to using signatures in Email and News.

Software Authors [970110]

Email Addresses of Software Authors

The Email addresses of the authors of my favourite programs.

What you can do with Email [970129]

Accessing the Internet via Email

Size: 58548

Accessing the Internet via Email (compressed with gzip)

Size: 22370

Last version: 970123

Reply-To munging considered harmful [..,990831]

http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html

Author: Chip Rosenthal chip@unicom.com

Reply-To Munging Considered Useful [990831]

http://www.metasystema.org/reply-to-useful.mhtml

Author: Simon Hill simon@metasystema.org

RFCs about Email and MIME are:

Common Internet Message Header Fields [010118]

Revision of RFC2076

http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/ietf/mail-headers.html

"This memo contains tables of commonly occurring header fields in headings of e-mail messages."

Author: Jacob Palme

RFC822 [1982-08-13]

Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages

ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/doc/rfc/rfc822.txt

son-of-RFC1036

RFC1123

Requirements for Internet Hosts -- Application and Support

ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/doc/rfc/rfc1123.txt

RFC2045 [November 1996]

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies

ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/doc/rfc/rfc2045.txt

Obsoletes:

RFC1580 (March 1994)

RFC1521 and RFC1522 (September 1993)

RFC1341 and RFC1342 (June 1992)

RFCs about POP (Post Office Protocol)

RFC1081 - POP3 - Post Office Protocol Version 3

ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/doc/rfc/rfc1081.txt

RFC1082 - POP3 - Extended Service Offerings

ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/doc/rfc/rfc1082.txt

RFC1725 - POP3 - Post Office Protocol Version 3

ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/doc/rfc/rfc1725.txt

Obsoletes:

RFC1460

RFC1734 - POP3 - AUTHentication command

ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/doc/rfc/rfc1734.txt

MAIL - Scripts

Situation  User switches from one mail client to another.
Problem:   The old and new mail client use different mailbox formats.
Solution:  Conversion Scripts.

URL:         http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/mail/
Created:     Wed Jan  1 00:00:00 CET 1997