Ok, You are ready for the one and only lesson that is necessary to resolve this mail alias question.
First of all, I can see how you can be confused by the idea of a mail alias. In my search last night to prepare for this, I found that at least three things call themselves mail aliases. The first of these is given in an example from the University of Hawaii, where one can create what looks like a listserve without the associated archive. All he has to do is to log into a Unix server on the campus and get permission from the administrator to set up what they call a mail alias, which is no more than a limited, scaled-down, version of a private listserve. This is, obviously, not what you want. The second thing that calls itself a mail alias comes from an example from the University of New Hampshire where they have a system set up to forward a message to any mail address you want from an on-campus-sounding address which is no more than a forwarding service. This is not what you want either. Now, having eliminated the two culprets in the confusion case, we can get on with the real thing. What you want is a regular BSD-style mail alias in which you can just enter a name or other reference code, send a mail to this and it will go to whatever point on the globe it should ultimately reach. Here's how you do it. You can try one on me. I will give you the information you will need to get a message to me if you get the alias file to work. Here's what you do. Just construct a file in your home directory called .mailrc. Please make sure that the dot is in front of the word mailrc. Just in case you want to know, mailrc stands for mail run commands. These are things that need to be done before a mail session can really get going. They can range from minor housekeeping tasks to what we want to do here. Now, all I want you to do is this, for the time being, until we can see if it all works right. In this mail run command file, just put this line. alias Doug [EMAIL PROTECTED] Now, we can analyze the three components of the line. The first word, alias, in all small letters, tells the mail software, in this case, the mail mode of emacs, that this is to be a mail alias, or reference to an address you don't want to always have to remember or keep written down somewhere. The second component of the line is my name, Doug. This tells the mail mode software that, if this is in the to line of a message, it is to "expand" this into the right mail address, just as though you wrote it on the line yourself. The third part of the line is my actual e-mail address. This tells the software where to actually send the mail when you write it and finish with it. Now, let's look at the expansion process. It is what is actually referred to as a string substitution. My address is substituted for my name if you just put my name on the to line of the message. When the mailer gets ready to deliver the program to the MTA or Mail Transport Agent on your machine, it substitutes the address for the name and the mail transporter, whatever program it might be, is not even aware of all the behind-the-scenes hocus pocus, it just sees a message ready to go out with the right address on it. Now, to construct this file, all you need to do is this. control-x control-f and when the system tells you that it is ready to "find" a file, and gives the ~/ directory in which it is to construct the file, just enter .mailrc and put in that line. Then save the file and open vm. Now, on the to line of a new mail message, just put my name, Doug and that's all. If all works as I believe it should, the message will go out with my address on it just as though you put it there and I should get the message. I will be sitting here at my lab machine for a while, reading my Bible and finishing up some more mail for a little while. I will check my mail to see if I got the message, and, if I did, reply to it. You will not be communicating on the list, the message will come directly to my oralux.org mailing address and my mail system will pick it up. Hope this helps. -- Doug Smith: C.S.F.C. Computer Scientist For CHRIST! Oralux: http://oralux.org _______________________________________________ Oralux mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freearchive.org/mailman/listinfo/oralux
