Forwarding Email

Automatic email forwarding means that when someone sends email to your LIU account, instead of receiving the email message, your LIU email host system will pass it on to another email host. This is a brief overview of how to set up automatic email forwarding on LIU's UNIX host systems including hornet, phoenix and titan.
 
Start forwarding email
Stop forwarding email
Change forwarding address

LIU Email Services

 Start Automatically Forwarding email

To start forwarding your LIU UNIX system (e.g. hornet, phoenix, titan) email to another account, you need to know the exact email address to which you will forward your email.

  1. Login (telnet) to your UNIX account.  Use your usual telnet program such as EWAN Telnet, Microsoft's Telnet etc.
  2. Once you have logged in, open up a text editor program and create a file called .forward. At the $ prompt type: 'pico .forward' exactly as it appears below and then press <Enter>.
      3. $ pico .forward
  3. Beginning in the upper, left-most corner of the text file, carefully enter the email address to which you wish to forward all incoming email. 
      4. username@your.address
    Note: If you do not type in the email address correctly, your incoming email will be lost. 
  4. Once you have entered the email address, press <Ctrl>+<o> to write out (save) this file.
  5. File name to write : .forward, should appear in the command bar at the bottom of the screen, press <Enter>.
  6. Press <Ctrl>+<x>, to exit the Pico editor.
  7. Now test it. Send an email message to your LIU account address and then check to see if the other account received the message.  It may or may not take a few minutes to forward your test message depending on how busy the Internet connections are and how busy the other host system is itself.
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Stop Automatically Forwarding email
  1. Login (telnet) to your UNIX account.  Use your usual telnet program such as EWAN Telnet, Microsoft's Telnet etc.
  2. Delete the .forward file. At the $ prompt type: 'del .forward' exactly as it appears below and then press <Enter>. Then, if prompted, press <y> or the <Enter> key to confirm the deletion.
      3. $ del .forward
  3. Verify that the .forward file has been deleted from your account. At the $ prompt type: 'ls .forward' exactly as it appears below and then press <Enter>. 
      4. $ ls .forward
    You should see an error message which says, "The file .forward does not exist."
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Change Automatic Forwarding email address

To change the forwarding address in your LIU UNIX system email account to another account, you need to know the exact email address to which you will forward your email.

  1. Login (telnet) to your UNIX account.  Use your usual telnet program such as EWAN Telnet, Microsoft's Telnet etc.
  2. Once you have logged in, open up a text editor program and edit the .forward file. At the $ prompt type: 'pico .forward' exactly as it appears below and then press <Enter>.
      3. $ pico .forward
  3. Beginning in the upper, left-most corner of the text file, carefully edit the email address to reflect the new account to which you wish to forward all incoming email. 
      4. username@your.new.address
    Note: If you do not type in the email address correctly, your incoming email will be lost. 
  4. Once you have entered the new email address, press <Ctrl>+<o> to write out (save) this file.
  5. File name to write : .forward, should appear in the command bar at the bottom of the screen, press <Enter>.
  6. Press <Ctrl>+<x>, to exit the Pico editor.
  7. Now test it. Send an email message to your LIU account address and then check to see if the other account received the message.  It may or may not take a few minutes to forward your test message depending on how busy the Internet connections are and how busy the other host system is itself.
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Email Services | Information Technology | Long Island University

updated 12/18/1998 - MLS