Table of contents:


1.Using e-mail.

1.1 The basics

The first thing you need is an email client (also known as an application or program). There are many such programs, and the one you will use is dependent on the features you need or want, and personal preferences. Some programs come with the computer's operating system, such as Outlook or Outlook express with Windows 95, 98 and NT 4.0. Others, like Eudora and Pegasus can be downloaded from other sites, which will be discussed later in this FAQ. All of these programs need to be configured with the right servers, so that they know where to look for your mail, and where to put the messages you want sent. Mail that comes to you from the Internet at large is collected by our mail server, and is accessed by your mail client when it logs in to the POP3 (Post Office Protocol) server. POP requires that your username and password match its records. That way, only you can get your mail. The best analogy is that of a mailbox key. Your password is your key. Don't lose your key, or we'll have to change the locks...
Mail that comes from your system for delivery another Internet user is sent to the SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) server first. This machine is the centralized hub for all outgoing mail for the ISP. SMTP does not use the username and password, but is often restricted to users of the ISP who are dialed in over a modem or have a connection like ISDN or ADSL. The idea is to prevent abuse of the server from outside sources, who may use open SMTP servers to spam others (See section 4).

DCN mail servers are as follows:

Incoming mail: pop.dcn.davis.ca.us
Outgoing mail: smtp.dcn.davis.ca.us

Notice a pattern?

1.2 Configuring your client

1.2.1 Your username and password

The username and password are the same as the ones that you use to login to the DCN system.  Ideally, you should have them written down somewhere, just in case. Your username, also known as UserID or login ID, is a unique identity within the DCN network, so it is used as the first part of your email address. If your username is joeq, then joeq@dcn.davis.ca.us is your email address.

1.2.2 Various mail client configurations.

Find the configuration for Eudora, Netscape mail and Outlook for the PC here.

1.3 Making sure it works.

If you've just signed up with the service, you will receive two pieces of mail welcoming you to the service. If you get those messages, you can be certain that you can receive new mail. You can test if you can send mail, too. Just send yourself a message, then check for new mail. You should be able to see your test message in the inbox of your mail client. If you are a long time user, and configuring a new mail program, mailing yourself a message is a good test of both the sending and receiving of email.

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2. Troubleshooting

2.1 I can't get my mail. It said "bad login" or password or some such.

Make sure that your username is entered in lowercase letter. The mail servers care about capitalization. If you enter your name as JOEQ, it won't work, you are joeq. Next is the password, make sure that the password is entered correctly. Capitalization is important. Make sure that if there's a symbol like $, it wasn't entered as a 4, and vice-versa. Since most programs will display passwords as asterisks, like *******, make sure that you enter the password carefully. Since most mail programs can be told to store the password, you won't have to enter it after the first successful mail transfer.

2.2 My mail could not be delivered

You sent a message to joe@asdf.com. Now there is a message in you inbox from postmaster@asdf.com or admin@asdf.com. It probably has a subject like "Delivery Failure" in your inbox. In the body of the message, you should see something like this at the top:

Your message has encountered delivery problems to joe@asdf.com
550 ... User unknown

Then the rest of your message.

All this means is that the email address your provided is invalid, and the user that it points to can't be found on that system. If the part of the email address after the @ symbol is bad, then the server will return the mail to you, with the notice that the domain could not be resolved. There's only two ways to prevent these messages, [1] make sure that address that you type in is valid, and [2] type the address in correctly. Nothing can be be done about bad email address. Variants on the "return to sender" theme include nasty sounding things like "Permanent Fatal Errors have occurred". This is worse than it sounds; bad mail addresses never killed anyone.

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3. Advanced email use and techniques

3.1 Can I have my mail forwarded to/from another address?

If you want your email forwarded to another service to your DCN account, you would contact the support department of your other ISP and ask them to forward for you, all they will need is the address to send mail to.

If you want to forward your mail from DCN to somewhere else, here's what you need to do. You can either call technical support at 750-0101, or you can do it your self.

You'll need a telnet client. Open it up, and connect to wheel. Enter your username and password, the you see something like this prompt:

user@wheel ~ >

The system awaits your command. Type this command and hit enter:

user@wheel ~ > pico .forward

Make sure the period is in there, it's important. Hit enter, then you'll be in a UNIX text editor. Type in the email address that you want your mail sent to (all in lowercase letters), then hit Control-X. You'll be asked if you want to save the changes, hit "y", then hit Enter. You should be back at your home directory.

Next, type the command ls -las, and hit Enter. You should see something like this:

user@wheel ~ > ls -las
	total 76
	
	1 drwx--x--x   7 user       512 Oct 19 14:55 .
  	19 drwxr-xr-x 994 root     19456 Oct 18 16:29 ..
   	0 -rw-------   1 user         0 Sep 16 13:59 .addressbook
   	3 -rw-------   1 user      2285 Sep 16 13:59 .addressbook.lu
   	0 -rw-r--r--   1 user         0 Jul  1 09:18 .cshrc
   	1 -rw-------   1 user         8 Oct 19 15:23 .forward
   	3 -rw-------   1 user      2054 Oct 15 09:41 .history
   	0 -rw-r--r--   1 user         0 Jul  1 09:18 .login
   	1 drwx------   2 user       512 Oct  7 07:39 .ncftp
   	2 -rw-r--r--   1 user      1136 Oct 15 09:41 .newsrc
   	2 -rw-------   1 user      1183 Oct 15 09:04 .oldnewsrc
   	8 -rw-------   1 user      7314 Oct 14 11:53 .pine-debug1
   	7 -rw-------   1 user      7129 Oct  8 16:51 .pine-debug2
   	8 -rw-------   1 user      8001 Oct  8 14:25 .pine-debug3
   	7 -rw-------   1 user      7129 Oct  7 13:33 .pine-debug4
  	11 -rw-------   1 user     10327 Oct 14 11:52 .pinerc
   	1 drwx------   5 user       512 Oct 15 09:41 .tin
   	1 drwx------   2 user       512 Sep 22 14:54 Mail
   	1 drwx------   2 user       512 Sep 22 14:54 News
   	1 drwx------   2 user       512 Oct  8 14:25 mail

You should see the line above that is highlighted in teal, only it won't be teal on your screen.

3.2 Listserve & Majordomo

This section is under construction.

3.3 Webmail

There are web sites that allow you to have mail access from anywhere you can get internet access. However, you have to have an account with the site, so your mail address would look like "username@hotmail.com". The only site that would allow you to read any mail that has been sent to your DCN account is MailStart.

3.4 Filtering

This section is under construction.

3.5 Multiple Users

Most mail programs were designed for use by one person, and make it difficult to be used by two people who share the same connection, but have different mailboxes. The biggest issue is when the secondary user sends mail, the message looks like it comes from the primary user. With a little time and effort, you can separate mailboxes and user information from one or more people, and still maintain a degree of sanity.

The most straight forward way to setup to different mailboxes on the same computer is to have two different mail clients. For instance, if user A has Outlook as his mail client, user B can use Eudora as her's. This prevents one inbox from having the messages sent to both people, but requires a one time duplication of effort on the users part to get things up and running.

If you want to keep things centered on one mail program, there are ways to configure them for multiple mail users. Here's a way to do it with Eudora on the Mac:

Step 1: Create the primary mail account. Chances are you've already done this, or had this done for you. Quit Eudora, and locate the Eudora Folder in the System folder, and drag it to the Desktop. Name it something like "Joe's mailfolder". This is important, or you may get confused later.

Step 2: Run Eudora again. You've done this before, it asking for the settings of a mail account because it didn't find the Eudora Folder in the System folder. Go through the setting again, only this time with the information relevant to the mail account of the second person with a mailbox. After you've completed the second round of configurations, quit Eudora (Command-Q), and go back to the System folder. Look, it's the Eudora folder, didn't you just move that? Yes, Eudora creates a folder in the System Folder if it doesn't find one, and presents you with dialogues to create a new mailbox each time. Since this procedure can be used to handle more than two mailboxes, you can have three or four Eudora Folders if you're not careful.

With Netscape Communicator, there is a straight forward way to handle multiple users if you have to. In the later versions, 4 and above, there are profiles, and you can create a different profile for each person that needs to use Communicator's mail facility.

Using the Profile Manager: Click the START button -> Program Files\Netscape\Communicator\Utilities and run the Profile Manager. This is where you can create multiple profiles, and start Netscape for different users.

3.6 I can't open an attachement.

For Windows 9x/NT: First go the My Computer icon and double click to open it up, then double click the icon labeled (C:), the double click on the folders you see in the following order Program Files -> Eudora -> Files -> Attachments. This order is typical, and may vary with your installation of Eudora.

You should be able to see a file labeled with the name of the attachment. Click on the file using the right-side mouse button, and there will be a popup menu. The first option is "Open with...", select that. You will see a list of applications, choose Notepad. If it complains that the file is too large, use Wordpad. If you see gibberish, you'll need to use another application.

For Macintosh: Open the Hard disk icon, the follow the folder path System Folder -> Eudora Folder -> Attachment Folder. That's where you will find any attachments you have received. Double click, and there should be a dialog box that pops up asking you which application you want to open the file with.

Depending on the file, you'll want to open it with either a text editor or a graphics program. If you don't have a graphics program, a browser like Netscape or Explorer can be used to view graphic files.

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4. Abuse of email systems.

4.1 Spam

New! Server side spam tagging: Detailed at http://www.omsoft.com/support/support.shtml in the E-mail Configuration section, software on the DCN and Omsoft mail servers are tagging spam based on certain criteria and gives you the option to use your mail programs filter capability to help maintain your inbox. * No messages are deleted until you delete them. * Suspect messages can be eaily dropped in to another container other than your inbox for quickly sorting mail.

Junk mail. No one likes it, and when you get it at home in the mail, you can just throw it away, and sometimes there something useful every once in a great while, like coupons, or a cereal sample. And you don't pay for the postage, people who want to mail you things, it's done with funds out of their pocket. Junk email is different. You pay for it as the recipient. You have to download it, delete it, and waste your time on it. Most email spams promise something fraudulent, illegal, explicit, or all of the above. There are ways to fight it. Spam has become something that just cannot be ignored anymore, it has hit everybody's mailbox at least once. There are several types of spam, and while there are listing far more extensive out on the net, these are the kinds you are most likely to encounter.

  • Opt - in. Also known as MultiLevel Marketing (MLM). These are like Amway salesmen, they have you mail them to confirm that you want in on a money making scheme. This does two things, it opens the floodgates of spam to your email address with has been verified as valid, and involves you in an illegal pyramid scheme.
  • Opt-out. This is more insidious. The message comes with a line that states that if you send a message to request that you be removed from their mailing list. Sending the message actually just tells the spammer that he has another valid address, and your email address will be placed on another list, one of valid addresses. Requesting to be removed from one spam list places you on many more.

4.1.1 I've been spammed, what do I do?

First thing, get the full header of the message. This is stuff you usually don't see in the email message, like the path the particular email took. It'll look like this:

Received: from dfg.poi (ABD4C442.ipt.aol.com [171.212.196.66])
	by wheel.dcn.davis.ca.us (8.9.3/DCN8.9.3.1) with SMTP id JAA22909;
	Thu, 16 Dec 1999 09:57:59 -0800 (PST)
	Message-ID: <91185.66914@dfg.poi>
	From: "[deleted]@itcnet.ro" <[deleted]@itcnet.ro>
	Bcc:
	Reply-To: 
	Subject: WANTED 97 Peoplle (20290)
	Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 14:01:06 -0400 (EDT)
	MIME-Version: 1.0
	Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
	Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset="US-ASCII"
	Content-Length: 882
	Status:

Usually, the From: line is bogus, the only thing you can really trust is the Received: lines. These describe the path the email took to get to your mailbox. On this particular message, it's pretty straight-forward; it came from AOL (Sounds like a B movie title...).

At this point, there is two things you can do.

[1] Forward the offending mail and the complete header to help@dcn.davis.ca.us. The full header is important, otherwise nothing can be done about it.

[2] Mail the abuse department of the ISP where the spam originated. This can be done in this particular case by sending the full message and header to abuse@aol.com with a polite message asking that action be taken against the offending user. Remember, the there is a real person at the other end of the abuse mailbox who likes spam just as much as you do. The abuse departments can usually be reached at abuse@domain.com and/or postmaster@domain.com. Send the spam to only one of the addresses, and only one complaint per instance of spam. Multiple complaints about multiple spams are acceptable, however.

It is important that the full and complete message be sent, otherwise the offender can't be tracked down.

4.1.2 'People' is misspelled...

Yes, I know, that's how I got it. The other spams I received from this guy had the same word spelled 3 different ways. You make the call.

4.2 Viruses, chainletters, and hoaxes.

4.2.1 Email viruses

Given that there are quite a few viruses out there, it is natural to be a bit paranoid to getting a virus on your computer. There are a few important things to remember. Viruses are like any other piece of programming code, and needs to be run to do any damage. What this means for email is that while the plain text that makes up each and every email message cannot harm your machine or data, there can be an attachment that can be run, and that is where the virus would be hiding. Recent notable email attachment viruses that have made headlines are Melissa and the new Bubbleboy. Bubbleboy is an exception to the rule, in that it exploits the system integration of Microsoft's Outlook programs with the Windows operating systems. In any other environment, it can be harmlessly deleted.

If you get an attachment, and you don't know what it is, or you don't know who it's from, feel free to delete it first, ask questions later; better safe than sorry.

4.2.2 Chainletters.

Chainletters really just amount to an annoyance, and are probably leftovers from the first time some one had the bright idea to transpose the paper version to email. The issue is, like spam, you are paying to receive these messages. Also, some people get literally hundreds of email message a day, these just add to the download time for them, and usually get deleted sight unseen.

They also represent a strain on the finite resources of the internet. After a few iterations, a single piece of mail can become 1 billion. If a chainletter asks for anything of value, then it's illegal. The US Postal Inspection Service has their own take on those.

One final consideration, here in the states, we benefit from flat rate service for local calls. Europeans do not, they pay per minute irrespective of where they call, which means that if they have more email to download, it literally costs them more to get irritations like spam and chainletters.

4.2.3 Hoaxes.

Rather than write a whole paragraph on these, I'll just direct you here. Some of these are actually a funny read.

4.2.4 General Internet security information.

  • CERT, for genuine Internet security concerns.
  • CIAC, the Computer Incident Advisory Capability site, a repository of known hoaxes and chainletters.

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