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Vacation

Description

Vacation is a Unix mail program that acts like an answering machine for your emails.

MiniFAQ

Setup

If you don’t use .procmailrc or .maildelivery and all your mail goes to your inbox, all you need to do is run

vacation

on the command line, and follow instructions. The program will create all the necessary files for you.

If you do use .procmailrc, or .maildelivery, the setup is a little different.

mh and maildelivery users

If your mail gets forwarded through .forward in the following manner:
"| /usr/local/mh/lib/slocal -suppressdup -user exampleuser || exit 75"

you should do the following:
cp .forward .forward.normal
cp .forward .forward.vacation

Edit your .forward.vacation to look like this:
"|/usr/bin/vacation exampleuser"
"| /usr/local/mh/lib/slocal -suppressdup -user exampleuser || exit 75"

(And don’t forget to change exampleuser to your username.)

After you run vacation , do the following:
cp .forward.vacation .forward
After you come back from vacation:
vacation -I
cp .forward.normal .forward

Procmail users

If you do not have a .forward, you can activate vacation through a procmail recipe.
##############################
#vacation mechanism
##############################
#:0c
#* ^(To|cc).*exampleuser.*
#|/usr/bin/vacation exampleuser
##############################

To activate vacation:

  • Run vacation
  • rm .forward
  • Uncomment the three lines in .procmailrc beginning with :0

Comment out those lines again when you come back.

MiniFAQ

  • How Do I Turn Off the Vacation Program?
    Once you have returned from vacation, it is a relatively easy to turn off the vacation program. The vacation program stores information in its own special database logs. Issue the following command to clear those database logs.vacation -I Lastly, you must delete the .forward file. At the system prompt enter:rm .forward(do not do this if you are use maildelivery. Follow instructions above for mh users).

    The vacation program is now disabled.

  • How do I test if vacation is working?Its best to test the vacation program before actually leaving for vacation. Use your favorite mail program to send yourself a test message. Wait a reasonable amount of time and check your mail for both your test and notification messages.