Ask SIPB - December 11, 2007

This week, we will attempt to convince you to back up your data, as well as explore several ways in which to access MIT email accounts and the various advantages that various email clients offer when compared to webmail.

My hard drive is making weird noises. Can you fix it?

Probably not. We will try everything we can without opening the disk in a dust-free room (which DriveSavers will do for you for $2000), and our success rate has been pretty low.

Should I back up my data before my hard drive starts making funny noises?

Yes. By the time you notice anything, it's probably too late.

Is copying files to Athena sufficient for backup?

Yes -- your AFS home directory is maintained by IS&T; they provide professional-quality data integrity.

You have a full gigabyte of space available -- use it!

Will my hard drive make funny noises at some point?

Yes. Prepare for it now, rather than being caught by it, later.

Why should I use something other than webmail?

webmail is slow
webmail is often inaccessible when the rest of the mail system is still working
webmail has been known to lose its preferences database, so that sent messages are not saved
webmail was designed to be an occasional-use client, not an everyday client
other clients have more features that are very useful

Non-webmail clients offer the ability to group messages by thread (topic), advanced searching features, offline access to old emails, and more!
Furthermore, if you have become wise to the fact that keyboard control is faster than mouse control, you also have the ability to define keyboard shortcuts to navigate in your mail client.

The webmail service that MIT provides (at https://webmail.mit.edu/) is useful for when you are travelling and don't have your own computer handy, but it depends on your network connection for everything you do, from going to the next message to deleting or sorting. Also, using webmail puts another server between you and your mail, so there's another link of the chain that could (and does) fail.
Furthermore, there are local mail clients (more properly known as MUAs, for Mail User Agent) that are more feature-rich, customizable, and faster.

What's a mail client?

In a nutshell, a mail client is a program that allows you to read your mail, whether it's stored on your computer or a remote server. More precisely, a mail client is what is better referred to as a Mail User Agent (MUA), the software that the user (you) utilizes to talk to a mail server and read mail.

Okay, you've convinced me. What other client should I use?

Your favorite client may depend on what operating system you are using. Mozilla's Thunderbird client is available in precompiled versions for all common OSes, and it's free software, so you can grab the source and build it yourself, too! Mac OS X ships with an MUA called just "Mail"; Microsoft Outlook seems to be a common choice on their Windows operating systems.

On Athena itself (or other linux systems), you can also use the text-based clients pine and mutt. Pine is in the default Athena configuration, and mutt is in the SIPB locker (add sipb).

What infrastructure does MIT have for email?

MIT's email infrastructure involves several different servers, including the outgoing.mit.edu server, the portal for email sent from MIT accounts, commercial spam-filtering appliances, mailhubs to transfer all these emails around, and individual post office (PO) servers to store users' mail. In order to use a mail client, you will need to tell it where to go to send mail (outgoing.mit.edu), and also where to find your mail (your PO server). To find out the name of your PO server, use hesinfo:

athena% hesinfo username pobox

For example, my PO server is po11.mit.edu.
However, when users' mail needs change, one can occasionally be moved to a different mail server. IS&T has recently implemented a system where username.mail.mit.edu will always direct you to the correct mail server.

I've got my client installed. How do I get it to talk to MIT's mail?

The main things you need to know are the name of your servers for outgoing (outgoing.mit.edu) and incoming mail (username.mail.mit.edu). Once you have those, walking through the steps in IS&T's article will be easy.

We recommend using the IMAP protocol with SSL encryption to access your mail; IMAP leaves a copy of your mail on the server, so you can access it from more than one computer and still have all your messages available.

There are several tutorials listed on this page: http://web.mit.edu/ist/topics/email/imap.html
For setting up Microsoft Outlook on Windows, use these intructions: http://itinfo.mit.edu/article?id=7876

If you are using Outlook, Eudora, or Apple Mail, you should also configure secure SMTP outgoing mail, using the relevant walkthrough from IS&T found here: http://web.mit.edu/ist/topics/email/smtpauth/ [an error occurred while processing this directive]