UNT Internet Service E-mail Upgrade News

By Dr. Ty Young, UNIX Systems Administrator and Dr. Philip Baczewski, Associate Director of Academic Computing

Please make sure and read the important upgrade information in the box below also. -- Ed.

We began talking about it in January, said some more in February, and had to back-off in March. But the month is now May and the upgrade we've been promising all semester is here. At midnight on May 14, the process to move Internet E-mail inboxes and folders to a new mail server began. By the time you read this just about everyone's mail that once resided on the server 'jove.acs.unt.edu') should have been converted and copied over to our new, faster and more reliable server 'imap.unt.edu'. If you are one of the people affected by this change we highly recommend that you check out the E-mail Service Migration FAQ , which details what you can expect of the new server and what it can expect of you. It is especially important for you to read the FAQ if you use Outlook Express, Netscape, or something else other than Simeon to read your mail.

A few things you should be aware of:

• Your E-mail address hasn't changed at all.

• The mail folders ("saved-messages", "sent-mail", etc.) you had on the old server Jove (in ~username/mail/) have been copied and converted on the new server. They're still on Jove, however, so you'll want to delete those at some point down the road to free up more space for your personal web page. Check the FAQ, mentioned above, for details on how to do so.

• Mail folders you may have in any other directory than ~username/mail/ (including subdirectories of the mail/ directory) have NOT been converted. Same goes for any binaries or executables you may have in that directory.

• Mail folders which use 'special characters' on the old system have been renamed on the new system. A special character will be converted to its ASCII representation, in octal, preceded by an underscore. Special characters are basically everything except letters, numbers, the hyphen ('-'), and the underscore ('_').

• There is now a quota on all inbox/folder storage on the new server. The quota is 15 Megabytes for inbox and/or folder storage. This quota is in addition to the 10 Megabytes of storage space already provided to you on jove.acs.unt.edu, the current mail server. Imposition of a quota should be noticeable by only a small percentage of users. It will require, however, that you delete unwanted messages or save mail to local folders in order to stay under quota and be able to continue to receive Internet E-mail.
  
  This quota policy is necessary because we have been asked to extend the student E-mail system to the entire student population [see Campus Computing News in this issue]. Because GroupWise is the official E-mail system for active faculty and staff, budgetary support for Internet IMAP E-mail has been provided primarily to develop this system for student use. We are investigating the implementation of a faculty/staff UNIX system which could support faculty/staff Internet IMAP E-mail separate from the student system and its policies, but in the meantime, policies developed for the student E-mail system will apply to all accounts managed on that system.

If you have any questions about usage of the new E-mail system, please direct them to helpdesk@unt.edu or call (940) 565 2324.