Forwarding your email

Joseph C. Slater


Forwarding from the WSU email system (accounts that look like slater.2, or are formed like s123abc): These are the accounts that you pick up in CATS in the library basement. Instructions can be found at http://www.wright.edu/cats/info/email/emailoptions.html#forward. You can use the same interface to stop mail forwarding.

Forwarding from a unix account (from an engineering account): If you have accounts on more than one computer it is often convenient to have all of your mail delivered to just one of the computers. For example, if you have accounts on machines named gamma and unixapps1, you can have all of your gamma mail automatically forwarded to your unixapps1 account (or vice-versa). Let's say that the place you like to get your email is at me@aol.com, and you want all mail sent to your college (gamma) account to be sent there. (This procedure works for any Unix machine. Just replace the word gamma with the complete URL of the Unix machine (i.e. the complete URL for gamma is gamma.cs.wright.edu).

If you want to forward mail that goes to gamma on to me@aol.com, then:

  • log into gamma. (gamma if you are trying to forward email from your engineering account)
    • To log on, you must either:
  • Click on the link: gamma (corresponding to the name of the computer that you want email forwarded from..i.e. the computer you don't want to read your email on). This works for forwarding from a WSU engineering account. It should automatically perform one of the following for you if your machine is configured properly.
  • Sit at an X-terminal on campus, either in the Russ center or in the basement of the library. Log in with your user-name and password (gamma is the represents all of the WSU engineering machines for the purposes of forwarding email).
  • If you are connected to the Internet through a MS Windows machine, select 'Run Program' from the start menu. Type telnet gamma.wright.edu. Enter your user-name and password when prompted.
  • On a Mac running MacOS X, run the Terminal Application located in the Utilities folder inside the Applications Folder. Type telnet gamma.wright.edu. Enter your user-name and password when prompted.
  • On a Mac running the older MacOS, download Nifty Telnet from http://www.versiontracker.com. Use its menus to telnet to gamma.wright.edu.
  • When you are connected
  • type (exactly):
    • cat > .forward
  • type the full email account you want email to go to. For instance, for our example account of me@aol.com type:
    • me@aol.com
  • Type a control-D (hold the control key and hit the 'D' key, then release the 'D' key, then the control key.). This will bring you back to the UNIX prompt. Caution: if you hit control-D at the Unix prompt, you will be logged out!
  • Type:
    • cat .forward
  • You should see email address that you just typed.
  • Send yourself a test email to the account you want email forwarded from (nuser@wright.edu where nuser is your engineering account - usually first initial, last name). Check your email on your other account. If it didn't get there, repeat these instructions.
  • Alternatively, if you're not able to get these instructions to work for you, you can use an editor (like pico) to edit your .forward file. Just place your email address as the only item in the file, and save the file. The '^' symbol in the menu below (when running pico) means hold the control key and press the letter shown. For example, after typing your email address, you press control-X to exist (hold the control key, press X, then release). You will be asked if you want the file to be saved. Answer 'y', then type in .forward when prompted for a file name.


    • If you want your email to be forwarded and stay on the local machine, you will have make the contents of your .forward file look like the following:

    \s###lll,me@aol.com
    where s###lll is the account name that you are logged into. The first part, before the comma, tells the machine to keep a copy, the second part tells it to forward a copy to the account me@aol.com.

    To stop mail forwarding, just delete the .forward file using the rm command (man rm will give you help on that command if you are interested):

    This page was last modified onWednesday, January 26, 2005 at 08:33:19 .