How can you read and send mail at SSRL?

1. Outlook/Exchange

Most SLAC staff get accounts on SLAC's Exchange server, and use Outlook on their desktop PCs or Outlook Web Access from remote PCs to read their email. Read the SCCS documentation for how to do that. The rest of this document describes using the SSRL VMScluster to read and send mail.

2. Host-based solutions

   These options assume you log in to SSRL using Reflection 4, Reflection X, F-CRT, SSH, or some other VT emulator.

   1. PMDF MAIL

      This is a character-based mail program which requires learning a few commands to be used effectively, and which can deal with MIME attachments. Incorporates your choice of standard VMS text editors: TPU, EDT, TECO. This is the recommended character-based mail client. (PINE is also acceptable, and very easy to use, but we have no local expertise in it and can't help if you get into trouble.)

      PMDF MAIL is the program you will get if you type MAIL at the command line.

      Click here to read the PMDF MAIL VMS Users Guide.

   2. PMDF PINE

      A VMS version of the popular Unix-based character-oriented mail client, PINE, which incorporates a very simple full-screen editor. PINE can be an IMAP client to read mail from other IMAP servers. Click here to read the PMDF PINE VMS Users Guide.

   3. DECwindows MAIL

      A graphical X Windows interface to your VMS mail store. Point-and-click functionality. (One drawback is that it's too easy to delete entire folders by accident.)

   4. VMS Mail

      See the VMS Mail handout for details. Briefly, this is a character-based mail program which requires learning a few commands to be used effectively, and which can't deal with MIME attachments. Incorporates your choice of standard VMS text editors: TPU, EDT, TECO.

      While you can send to users on other machines using VMS Mail, it isn't really internet-aware. As a result, if you send to some people who read mail on VMS and some who read it on SLAC's Exchange server, the Exchange users will see incomplete headers which don't include the VMS users, and won't be able to respond to the entire distribution. This can cause confusion and duplication of effort. Many users with VMS email addresses actually have their mail forwarded to Exchange, so the problem can occur without the sender even being aware of it. The computer group recommends switching to PMDF MAIL if you need to use a terminal-interface mail program, and otherwise recommends a secure IMAP-TLS client like Netscape Communicator.

      The computer group discourages the use of VMS MAIL altogether and encourage the use pf PMDF MAIL instead.

3. Web-based solution

   soymail, at http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/soymail, gives you cryptographically secure access to your VMS mail store. Reads and sends messages, handles receiving and sending attachments. Does username/password validation, and works from any https-capable browser in the world.

4. Desktop solutions

   1. POP clients

      POP is a protocol that uses clear-text passwords. We have disabled POP.

   2. IMAP clients

      Thunderbird, Eudora, and Outlook/Outlook Express support IMAP. PMDF-TLS enables us to do encrypted IMAP, which is a secure protocol. IMAP allows you to file mail on the server in different folders, and recover the whole structure from other machines. Your mail stays on the server where it's automatically backed up, rather than going to your loal disk. Use MAIL-SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU as the IMAP server name.

   3. SMTP service

      The SSRL cluster offers encrypted SMTP connections for sending mail, so your mail will not go in plain text from your desktop to the server. You'll use MAIL-SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU as the SMTP server name.