SCS Email

The email server mail.scs.carleton.ca can be accessed using the SSL and the IMAP protocol as well as through the school’s web-mail client. A common email application that uses IMAP is Mozilla Thunderbird (available free of charge).

INCOMING MAIL SERVER SETTINGS

• Server Name: imap.scs.carleton.ca
• Email Protocol: IMAP
• Incoming Username: <your username>
• Secure Connection: use SSL protocol (encrypted connection)
• Authentication method: Normal Password
• Port: 993

OUTGOING MAIL SERVER SETTINGS

• Server Name (smtp): mail.scs.carleton.ca
• Outgoing Username:  <your username>
• Connection Security: SSL / TLS
• Authentication Method: Normal Password
• Port: 465

• Largest incoming mail size: 75Mb
• Largest outgoing mail size: 75Mb
• Mail Quota: 1 Gb

SCS uses the following spam protection:

• Greylisting ((Greylisting is set to a 1 minute delay))
• Spam Assassin

Spam Assassin

You can enable personal spamassassin settings by adding the following to your homedirectories .procmailrc file:

SHELL=/bin/sh

# Enable personal spamassassin settings:0fw: spamassassin.lock
:0fw: spamassassin.lock
* < 256000
| spamassassin

Once you receive your first message a default .spamassassin directory will be generated. There you will find a user_prefs file that you can edit. The file also allows for personal blacklists and whitelists, and you can alter the spamassassin-score.

What does Spam Assassin do?

Spamassassin will tag an email as spam in the email header and on the Subject line. The Subject line will have [SPAM ++++++] where the + signs indicate the spam level. Now its up to the user (you) what you want to do with those emails. There are email clients that can identify emails labeled as spam and can remove them.((Thunderbird has spam filtering options))

Deleting blacklisted emails

You can add a procmail rule that will delete all your personal blacklisted emails. Here are the steps to enable it:

• Add a .procmailrc file on [[http://www.scs.carleton.ca/nethelp/doku.php?id=services:external_access_host_access | access]]/lambda (see code below)
• Once you receive an email with the procmail code enabled, it will generate a file called .spamassassin/user_prefs. Edit this file and add your blacklisted email of the form “blacklist_from somewhere@somesite.com”
• Check the logfile .spamassassin/procmail.log if your procmail script deleted any messages

Here is the ~/.procmailrc file that can delete blacklisted emails using a combination of spamassassin and procmail filtering:

SHELL=/bin/sh
TRASH=/dev/null
LOGFILE=$HOME/.spamassassin/procmail.log
VERBOSE=no

# Enable personal spamassassin settings
:0fw: spamassassin.lock
* < 256000
| spamassassin

# Remove all spamassassin spam scored 50 (blacklisted emails)
:0
* ^Subject:.\[SPAM \+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\
+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\+\]
$TRASH`

You can add this file in your SCS account accessible through access or the lambda linux network.

Deleting all emails above a certain spamassassin score

You can delete all emails above a certain spamassassin score. This is done by adding the following code to your .procmailrc file:

SHELL=/bin/sh
TRASH=/dev/null
LOGFILE=$HOME/.spamassassin/procmail.log
VERBOSE=no

# Enable personal spamassassin settings
:0fw: spamassassin.lock
* < 256000
| spamassassin

# Removes all spam higher than level 15
:0
* ^X-Spam-Level: \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*
$TRASH

You can forward mail by logging into access.scs.carleton.ca and creating .forward file.

The .forward file can have a single forward:

John Doe <jdoe@hotmail.com>

or you can deliver a copy in your inbox plus forward a copy:

/jdoe
John Doe <jdoe@hotmail.com>

You can also create a list of forwards (one entry per line):

John Doe <jdoe@hotmail.com>
Jane Smith <jsmith@gmail.com>
Homer Simpson <hsimpson@yahoo.com>

Make sure your .forward file has perms ‘-rw-r–r–‘:

chmod 644 ~/.forward

Make sure your homedir has perms ‘drwx–x–x’:

chmod 711 ~

Vacation Message

Do you want to send an auto-reply to who-ever is sending you email? Using procmail, you can set up an auto-reply with a vacation message of your choosing. It will only send one reply for any particular user ((this is done using a vacation.cache file that stores email addresses that received your vacation message, they won’t be emailed a second time)).

Here’s how to set it up:

• Create a .vacation message/file (chmod 644 .vacation)
• Create a .procmailrc file (chmod 644 .procmailrc)

The .vacation file is a plain text file that contains the vacation message that will be sent to the sender.

Here is the .procmailrc file (you can cut and paste it) ((Make sure to replace any references to hsimpson with your SCS account name)):

# Replace hsimpson with your account name

# This is actually two recipies. This is meant to go at the END of your .procmailrc
# so it doesn't trigger on mailing lists that you're filtering above.

# Will add the sender to the vacation cache if not already in the vacation cache
# FROM_DAEMON is a macro for a lot of "system" addresses. see the
# procmailrc man page fordetails

:0 Whc: vacation.lock
* !^FROM_DAEMON
* !^X-Loop: hsimpson@scs.carleton.ca
| formail -rD 8192 vacation.cache

# Only run this rule if the last rule didn't match, meaning it will only mail each
# user once.

:0 ehc         # if the name was not in the cache
| (formail -rA"Precedence: junk" \
   -A"X-Loop: hsimpson@scs.carleton.ca" ; \
cat $HOME/.vacation; \
echo ""; \
echo "-- "; cat $HOME/.signature \
) | $SENDMAIL -oi -t

To disable the vacation message rename the .procmailrc file.

There are two different mail formats:

• mbox – single file that holds many emails
• maildir – directory of separate mail files

The SCS server stores files in maildir format on the server INBOX and can read mbox files on your local account.