Physics and Astronomy Computing Services - PACS

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Info-->Physics Mail Server:

The Physics Department has recently upgraded their mail server and hardware. Included in this upgrade are two methods to reduce the amount of spam we receive on a daily basis. We provided the following information to help ease the migration:

HOWTO setup mail clients

The PACS team currently supports three mail clients on the Physics computers: Thunderbird (Windows XP, Linux, Mac OS X), Apple Mail (Mac OS X), and Pine(Linux).  Other mail clients (such as Eudora, Outlook, and Evolution) should work as well, but we do not provide desktop support for them. (If you're curious as to why, check the FAQ section for an explanation.)

Quick guide:

On campus:
IMAP Server: mail.phys.washington.edu
Server Port: 993
Select "SSL" in security settings

SMTP Server: mail.phys.washington.edu
 Off campus/laptop/wireless:
IMAP Server: mail.phys.washington.edu
Server Port: 993
Select "SSL" in security settings

SMTP Server: smtp.washington.edu
Server Port: 587
Login: Your UW Net ID
Password: Your UW Net ID Password
(Click here if you've forgotten it)

Pine configuration:
  1. Start pine
  2. (M)ain menu -> (S)etup -> (C)onfig
  3. Set the following fields:
    user-domain = phys.washington.edu
    smtp-server = mail.phys.washington.edu
    inbox-path = {mail.phys.washington.edu/user=your-username/ssl}
  4. (E)xit Setup, pressing "Y" along the way to save your changes.
  5. Return to the main pine menu.
Thunderbird specific:

  1. First time setup:
    • Follow along the initial setup setting your email address, IMAP server, and SMTP server as shown above.
    • After you've completed the setup, change the account preferences:
      • Windows:
        • Under the new account you just created, select
              "Server Settings" and verify the following
              information:

              Server Type:        IMAP Mail Server
              Server Name:        mail.phys.washington.edu
              Port:               993
              User Name:          <Your Physics account name>
              Security settings:  Select "SSL"


           3) Select "Outgoing Server (SMTP)" and verify:

              Server Name:            smtp.washington.edu
              Port:                   587
              User Name:              <Your UWNetID>
              Use secure connection:  TLS only
      • Mac OS X:
        • On the menubar select Tools->Account Settings...
        • Select "Server Settings" under the account for Physics.
        • Be sure that the security settings the radio button SSL is selected.
        • Click OK and you're done!
Apple Mail specific:

  1. First time setup:
    • Follow along the initial setup setting your email address, IMAP server, and SMTP server as shown above.
    • After you've completed the setup, change the account preferences:
      • On the menubar select Mail->Preferences.
      • Click on the icon for Accounts.
      • You'll see accounts listed to the left. Select the Physics account you just set up.
      • To the right, click on the "Advanced" tab.
      • Be sure that "Use SSL" is checked and that the server port is 993.

Technologies employed

Newer hardware:

The original mail server was a dual Pentium III 1.2 GHz, with 512MB of memory, and around 30GB of disk space for email. The new mail server is a dual Pentium Xeon 2.8 GHz with 1GB of memory, and over 100GB of disk space dedicated for email.
SPAM Assassin:

http://spamassassin.apache.org

Our mail server is set up to automatically run spamassassin on any message accepted for delivery on our system.  Spamassassin applies various rules and heuristics to try to identify "spam"-mail.  Spamassassin itself only marks incoming messages as (potential) spam, and does not itself *do*
anything to suspected spam. This is currently set up to tag messages messages as spam. If the likeliness of the message being spam is high, it will put [SPAM] in the subject. For more information on filtering these spam messages in Thunderbird, see the FAQ item below.
Greylisting:

http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/whitepaper.html

This service is an opt-in service in Physics. If you'd like to participate, please email us!

Bulk spamming software (currently) does not retry on temporary failure/rejection, so respond w/ a "temporary fail" the first time a sender tries to contact a recipient: proper MTA's will retry later, spammers usually won't. For Astronomy's mail server, we saw a 80% reduction in the amount of spam accepted by the mail server.

What this means is that we tell the sending mail server to send a message 30 minutes later. If it does, Greylisting allows all future email from the person sending it and that mail server to pass through. So, the first email you receive from someone not in the database takes 30 minutes to arrive, otherwise it comes right through to you.

Vacation messages, mail forwarding, and advanced options

.vacation.msg file:

(If you're on a Windows or Mac OS X machine, ssh to weasel.phys.washington.edu with you Physics mail username and password before following these instructions.)
  1. cd /phys/mail/users/<your username>
  2. Create a file called .vacation.msg using either emacs or vi editors
  3. Make sure that file has a Subject:, From:, followed by the message body as shown below.
  4. Save and exit.

Subject: away from my mail
From:  smith@phys.washington.edu
I will not be reading my mail for a while. Your
mail regarding "$SUBJECT" will be
read when I return.

(Note the $SUBJECT is a variable representing the Subject line from above.)
.forward file:

(If you're on a Windows or Mac OS X machine, ssh to weasel.phys.washington.edu with you Physics mail username and password before following these instructions.)
  1. cd /phys/mail/users/<your username>
  2. Create (or if it already exist, edit) a file called .forward using either emacs or vi editors
    • emacs .forward
  3. Type the email address you wish to forward your mail to.
  4. Save and exit.
  5. Our mail server will now forward your email to that address.
Advanced options:

You can configure Spamassassin on a per-user basis via the file
/phys/mail/users/<username>/spamassassin/user_prefs.  The most useful setting is the "required_score" which is the threshold value for considering something to be spam.  For info on other settings, confer with the documentation.  Change configuration parameters at your own risk.
Spamassassin documentation: http://spamassassin.apache.org/doc.html

In /phys/mail/users you can also create a .procmailrc file. Type "man procmailrc"for more instructions on how do move messages automatically or filter email.

FAQ

Q: Has anything significant changed in the configuration of this mail server?
A:From the user's standpoint, no. PACS simply moved the IP address associated with mail.phys.washington.edu to the new mail server. Internally, the mail server quite a bit has changed.  We've added features such as Spamassassin and Greylisting to try and reduce the amount of spam that folks receive in Physics.

Q: Can I connect to the mail server from home and work (or desktop and laptop) simultaneously?
A: No, PACS does not provide desktop support for people who run multiple mail clients simultaneously. If you have a client running on your machine at work and at home, there may be synchonization problems between the two clients. IMAP clients behave differently based upon user settings and programmatic design. Many IMAP clients, for instance, wait to perform tasks such as deleting of messages until the client is exited. This would be why users would delete messages out of folders at work and they would magically reappear at home. If you read email at home and at work, simply log out at work and log back in again at home.

Q: Why doesn't PACS support other mail clients like Eudora or Outlook?
A: While Eudora and Outlook are very powerful clients, they both have limitations that can interfere with the workflow of the users in the department. Eudora does not like to share control of the IMAP directories. Sometimes this can result in loss of email out of these directories. Eudora occassionally loses entire mail folders, unpredictably. Mail servers have to specially tuned for Eudora. Outlook, on the other hand, has many security holes that need constant attention. Some of the features that make Outlook powerful must be disabled in order to prevent viruses from spreading. Maintaining these updates is extremely difficult and time consuming.

Q: How do I configure Thunderbird to filter tagged SPAM messages?
A:

1) Select(click once with the left mouse button) the account where
   the message filter will be setup from the left "Folders" pane of
   the Thunderbird window.

   After selecting the account, the right pane should show
   the following options:

   Email
     Read messages
     Write a new message

   Accounts
     View settings for this account
     Create a new account

   Advanced Features
     Search messages
     Manage message filters
     Manger folder subscriptions
     Offline settings


2) Select "Mangage message filters" under the "Advance Features" option.
   A new window "Message Filters" should open, click with the left mouse
   button on the "New" button.


3) A new window "Filter Rules" should open with the following
   options:

   Filter name:
   For incoming messages that:
   Perform these actions:

   Fill in the options with the following:

   (a) Filter name:  Phys SPAM


   (b) For incoming messages that:

       Choose the option  "Match any of the following"

       Click on the first pull down menu and choose the "Customize..."
       option.  A new "Customize Headers" window should open,
       enter:  X-Spam-Flag  in the space below "New message header:".
       Click the "Add" button, then click the "Ok" button.

       The new header "X-Spam-Flag" should now show up when you
       (again) click on the first pull down menu, choose
       "X-Spam-Flag".

       Leave the middle pull down menu as "contains".

       Fill in the blank(right of the middle pull down menu)
       with:  YES  (all CAPS).


   (c) Perform these actions:

       Leave "Move Message to" as the first pull down menu option.

       Choose "Junk on Local Folder" as the second pull down menu option.

       Click on the "Ok" button.


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