If you are going to be away from work for an extended period and you would like to inform people who send you email that you are away, the Unix mail system has a vacation message facility. The default behavior of this facility is to send one vacation message per week to each person who sends you email.

Starting and stopping a vacation message requires some familiarity with a Unix like operating system, in this case Linux. If you are unfamiliar with Unix or uncomfortable using it, please contact the AOC help desk. Its people will help you start a vacation message.

As mentioned below, starting a vacation message requires access to a Linux system. (Not Solaris or another flavor of Unix!) If you do not have a Linux system on your desk, you can remotely log into a system that we call linux.
 

Starting the Vacation Message System.

There are two possible ways to start a vacation message; you can have the system do it for you or you can create all of the necessary files yourself. Having the system "do it" for you requires that you know how to use one of the standard Unix text editors, emacs of vi.

First you need to log into a Linux system. If you do not have a Linux desktop system, log into the system linux.aoc.nrao.edu using whatever terminal emulator you have on your desktop system. When you log into the Linux system, you are at the top level of your home directory on filehost. There is no need to change directories. At this point you type the Linux command vacation with no arguments. The program will start a text editor and display a sample message(1) which you can edit to say what you want. The editor started depends on a Linux environment variable called EDITOR. The current default for this is emacs. When you are finished with the message, quit the editor. The vacation program will create your all necessary files for the vacation message and initialize it for you. You are done and can log out.

The second way to do this is to create all of the files yourself in your Unix/Linux home directory. Except for the final step, you do not need to log into a Linux system. You need to only to access your Unix/Linux home directory on the server filehost.

To start the vacation program you need to do three things. First you need to create your vacation message. This should be created with a simple text editor. Do not use a word processing system such as Microsort Word. The message can say whatever you wish, but it is best to keep it short. If you use the symbol $SUBJECT in the message, it will be replaced by the subject line of the email the vacation program is replying to.

This message must be named .vacation.msg and must be placed in the top level of your Unix home directory.

Next you have to create a .forward file in the top level of your Unix home directory. The contents of this file *must* be in this format:

      \gmartin, "|/usr/bin/vacation gmartin"

You of course replace both instances of gmartin with your Unix account name. Your Unix account name is also your email alias.

Next on a Linux system you initialize the vacation facility by typing the command "vacation -I". (The quotes are not needed in the command.)
 

Sample vacation message (if you do not already have a file named .vacation.msg):

     Subject: away from my mail

     I will not be reading my mail for a while. Your mail concerning "$SUBJECT" will be read when I'm back.
 

Stopping the Vacation Message System

Stopping the vacation message system is very simple. Just delete or rename the .forward file. That's all it takes and it can be done from any system which allows you to write in your Unix home directory.

Author, George Martin

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

Content reviewed on: 16-October-2006
Reviewed by: George Martin

Page maintained by Gayle Rhodes