Q & A

Q.

It's the end of the school year, but I'll be a returning student next fall and thus will keep my Minerva account through the summer. I have heard there are limits on how much mail I can store in my inbox while I'm away. What are the limits, and what can I do to help the situation?

A.

During the summer and during the regular academic year, the rule to remember for your inbox is this: if you both have an item in the inbox that is at least two weeks old and if the total size of the items in the inbox is at least 250 kilobytes (250K), then your mailbox will be locked and you won't be able to receive any more e-mail. When your mailbox is locked, you must clear out your inbox and then wait 24 hours for an automatic auditing procedure to restore your account.

1. Obviously, you should tell people you'll be away this summer if you won't be reading your mail.
2. If you'll have access to another network account, you can forward your mail from Minerva to this other account. To do this, you must log in to your account and type the following expression at the Minerva (or Mercury or Morpheus) prompt: echo fwd.name@fwd.address > .forward. Here, of course, fwd.name@fwd.address stands for the forwarding address Minerva will use to redirect your mail. This command will create a forwarding-address file (called a dot-forward file) in your Minerva account. As long as that file is in your Minerva account, any mail you receive at your Minerva address will automatically be forwarded to the forwarding address. When you return in the fall, you can remove the dot-forward file by entering your account and typing rm .forward at the Minerva/Mercury/Morpheus prompt.

   Don't forget to put the period (.) before the word "forward"when you create and delete the dot-forward file!

3. You should unsubscribe from any mailing groups or listservs you belong to. You can do this by sending an e-mail message to the administrator of the mailing group; in this message, you should leave the subject-line of the header blank and include only the word "unsubscribe" in the body of the message. You should have received the address of the group administrator when you first subscribed to the group. (We'll look next fall into how to subscribe to listservs and mailing groups.)

For more help on end-of-the-year procedures, enter MinervaHelp by typing "help"at the Minerva/Mercury/Morpheus prompt. Look specifically for the recent announcement dated 13 Apr 1995.

Q.

I'll be away from New Haven for the summer, but will have access to network facilities elsewhere. Can I still log in to Minerva?

A.

You may very well be able to reach Minerva, depending on the network services you'll have. Basically, to enter your Minerva account, you need to have access to an Internet provider that offers "telnet"capability. (Telnet is the program that allows Internet users to log in to computers on the network. Technically, you "telnet to" Minerva, Mercury, or Morpheus every time you enter your network account, even when you're here at Yale.) If you have telnet access, you can reach your account by telnetting to any of the following three addresses: , , or .

How do you telnet to an address? That will depend on the network software you're using, so you should be sure to ask a local computer dweeb about how telnet works at that particular location. Once you've reached the Minerva, Mercury, or Morpheus login screen, though, everything will look and function just as it does when you're at Yale itself - with the exception of a little more sluggishness than usual since you're making your connection from a remote site.

Q.

When I enter the World-Wide-Web using Netscape or Mosaic or Lynx here at Yale, I'm used to seeing a Yale home page at the beginning of my session. I suspect, just maybe, that World Wide Web browsers at other places won't be set up automatically to view Yale's home page. What is the address of the Yale home page, so I can keep tabs on things around here when I'm away?

A.

The URL (Uniform Resource Locator, a fancy way of saying "addressÓ) for Yale is as follows:

Q.

A.

Also, feel free to call 432-5116 or to write <iic@minerva.cis.yale.edu>.

This month's Q&A was written by Lane Witt <Lane.Witt@yale.edu>, a graduate student in the History department and a consultant working at the Internet Information Center.