Migration of departmental email system to CalMail

On April 1, the Mathematics Department will switch over its incoming email system to the campus's email system, CalMail. This is being done in order to free up departmental staff time for other duties, and because increasing volumes of spam are making it harder and harder for us to properly manage an email system in-house.

Advantages for users are that the CalMail system will be more reliable than the departmental mail system has been in recent weeks, spam may be more effectively reduced, and storage for mail (on the CalMail server) will be substantially larger. (Note, however, that some mail clients move incoming mail from the server to your home directory right off the bat, so this consideration may not apply to you.)

The main change for users is that the way that they read incoming mail will change. The extent of this change depends on which mail client they use for reading mail.

• Users of mutt, alpine (formerly pine), Thunderbird, Apple's Mail.app (also known as Mail) and other IMAP-capable mail readers will see minimal changes. Although Eudora may work, its use is strongly discouraged. In fact Eudora has been abandoned by its developers and does not meet the minimal security standards required by IS&T, so you should not be using it on campus at all. There is an article by Tom Holub here with a discussion of this, including pointers on how to switch. (FIXME: Steve or Tom, please flesh this out.)
• Users who read mail using the department's SquirrelMail interface will need to point their browsers to CalMail's web client instead, at https://calmail.berkeley.edu/ .
• The Unix mail program does not directly support the IMAP protocol. Users can either switch to one of the above mail clients, or make some changes in how they read mail. See the wiki page on CalMail conversion and Unix mail.
• The mail client dtmail will no longer be supported. (This is the client that you get when you click on the mail icon in the Solaris CDE environment). Users of dtmail will have to switch to one of the mail clients listed above.

Watch this space for further information on procedures to follow during the transition (e.g., getting your CalMail password).

Questions

Here are answers to some questions you may have about the transition.

Will my math.berkeley.edu email address go away after the transition?

No, you will still have the same math.berkeley.edu email address as before. The only difference is that it incoming mail will be handled by CalMail instead of by Math Department computers and staff.

Will I need to create my own CalMail account?

No, you will not need take steps on your own to create the CalMail account. Note that if you go to CalMail's web site and create an account for yourself, you will have a different email address, username@berkeley.edu, instead of username@math.berkeley.edu. Of course, you can do that, but it is probably not what you want to do, since you will then have two CalMail accounts after the transition.

Do I already have a CalMail password?

No. Your CalMail account username@math.berkeley.edu (and its corresponding password) will only exist after the transition on April 1.

Will the "quota for incoming mail" still be in effect after the transition?

No. Incoming mail will no longer be stored in the directory /var/mail presently used for incoming mail and subjected to the 25-megabyte departmental quota limit. Mail will either be stored in your home directory, where it will be subject to your usual quota, or on the CalMail server, which has its own limit of 1GB per user (with provisions for larger quotas).

What will happen to the current contents of my inbox?

Contents of your inbox as of the time of the transition will be moved over to the CalMail server, as if they had been received by CalMail. (This refers to the file /var/mail/username. Some mail clients immediately move incoming mail into the file mbox in your home directory. The transition will not affect that file (or anything else within your home directory).

What about mail forwarding?

It will be possible to forward mail from your CalMail account, either keeping a copy also on CalMail or not. Forwarding will no longer be managed by editing a file .forward within your howe directory, however. Instead, you will need to log in to the CalMail web page to set this up. (FIXME: Will users' .forward files automatically be transitioned? Steve or Tom, please answer this.)

What about outgoing mail? Will the process of sending mail change?

There will be no changes in how mail goes out.