LEPP Email

Cornell has migrated to Exchange

LEPP staff and faculty mail accounts were moved to Cornell's Exchange server in March, 2010. Some students may be provided accounts on the Exchange server in the not too distant future. An overview of that migration process is on the LEPP Wiki at MSOfficeEmailMigration. You should be using Outlook, Outlook Web Access, Entourage or Apple Mail to access Cornell's Exchange server, not Thunderbird, Eudora or other mail client.

If you need help configuring your LEPP mail reader, please contact the LEPP computer group using the Web page https://wiki.lepp.cornell.edu/lepp/bin/view/Computing/ServiceRequest

How-to documentation for Outlook email is available at http://www.it.cornell.edu/services/outlook2010/howto/setup-2010.cfm
How-to documentation for Outlook calendaring is available at http://www.cit.cornell.edu/services/outlook/howto/calendar/index.cfm

We are encouraging people to use Cornell's central email service.

We anticipate that the aging and overloaded LEPP email servers will be shut down in the not too distant future. Please migrate to another e-mail service as soon as possible. The LEPP mail servers are currently used only for archives of old mail. They should not be receiving any new messages.

Cornell's legal department strongly discourages the use of non-Cornell mail services for Cornell business mail.

Note that you must use your LEPP Network password to access LEPP email on the LEPP Unix mail server. Please see Accounts and Passwords for instructions on setting this password.

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This page should help you with understanding and setting up your email accounts. We provide links to other pages that may help to explain this process. If after reading through all this information, you are still troubled, feel free to contact the Computer Group. We will be happy to assist you.

Migrating from LEPP mail servers to another service

• Please read the page E-mailMigration for a description of how to migrate to Cornell's central CIT mail service. If you will be using some e-mail service other than Cornell's central CIT e-mail service, all of the steps are the same except that you will have to use the address and procedures of your actual e-mail service instead of the CIT e-mail service's address and procedures.

Setting up Email Clients - General Info

• Unix Mail Server
  • your email address = your_username@mail.lepp.cornell.edu
  • choose IMAP, NOT POP
  • incoming IMAP mail server = imap.lepp.cornell.edu
  • Under Security, check "Use secure connection (SSL)", NOT "Use secure authentication"
  • port # for IMAP server = 993
  • outgoing SMTP server = smtp.lepp.cornell.edu
  • Under Security, check "TLS"
  • port # for SMTP server = 587
• VMS Mail Server
  • your email address = your_username@lepp.cornell.edu
  • incoming IMAP mail server = lns61.lepp.cornell.edu
  • outgoing SMTP server = lns61.lepp.cornell.edu
  • port # for SMTP server = 587

For instructions on using email with SSL on LNS61, please see SSL on LNS61.

Configuring Mozilla Thunderbird to use LEPP's Unix mail server

Mac OS X Mail

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Your InBox and other Large Mail Folders

• Do not leave all of your mail in your InBox. Folders containing many messages cause the mail servers to be very slow. Sort your mail into separate folders, perhaps organized by the year. On the Unix mail server, each folder of mail, including the InBox and including all attachments, is a single file. Any operation on an individual message requires the file to be read completely and then rewritten. This will be excruciatingly slow for large folders.
• NOTE!: When using folders in your mail client, you may only have one level of folders. You may not have folders within folders. Attempting to do this can lead to loss of e-mail.
• Unfortunately, we are seeing more and more problems related to large accumulations of mail. Most mail servers and readers simply cannot handle more than 2 GigaBytes of mail. Problems related to such large accumulations usually cannot be repaired. Messages that you need to keep should be moved to external files on a backed-up file server. Do not leave them in folders in your mail reader.

Email Recommendations

Here are a few recommendations for setting up your email at LEPP. Please refer to the rest of this page for explanations, examples, and instructions for following these guidelines.

• We recommend that you use CIT's central mail server. Specifically, it is important to forward your email from all LEPP mail servers to the CIT mail server.
• To complement this, we strongly recommend using IMAP to view your email. This will allow your email to reside on the CIT mail server and be checked from any location.
• Mail sent to our VMS mail servers will be filtered for SPAM and viruses. Please take a moment to read about our VMS SPAM Filtering.
• If you already have nested folders on lns61, DO NOT just drag the nested folders to the root. Instead right click on your account name that is bolded in the left hand message pane. Select New Folder. Name it appropriately (the name of the old folder may be appropriate). Then copy the messages from your nested folder to the new top level folder. Once complete you can either delete or ignore the nested folder.

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Mail Forwarding

• To avoid having to logon to several different systems to read your email, you can set up your accounts to forward your mail to one address. Setting up Mail-Forwarding is different for each system.
• Many senior CESR physicists keep their email on and send email from CESR10. As a result, CESR and SRF people should setup their mail forwarding appropriately on three different systems.

Forwarding your LEPP VMS and LEPP Unix accounts

• Please read the page VMS and UNIX Mail Forwarding for generic mail forwarding instructions.

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Background Information

Mail Servers

• There is one Unix mail server, MAIL.LEPP.CORNELL.EDU
• There are two separate VMS mail systems; both using PMAS Spam Filteringsoftware.
  • The central one is a shared system running on LNS61. Everyone in LEPP has an account on this system.
  • The other mail system runs on CESR10, which is a VAX. CESR10 is not directly available to the outside world. All mail sent to CESR10 arrives by way of LNS61. Only some people who are in the CESR and SRF groups have accounts on CESR10.

User Accounts and Passwords

• You have a Cornell NetID and Cornell password which allow you to access certain areas of Cornell via the computer. COLTS is a good example of this. You can also use your Cornell NetId and Password to read mail on the central Cornell Exchange mail servers.
• You also have LEPP UserIDs and LEPP passwords which allow you to work on computers inside the LEPP network. When you log onto a computer in LEPP, you use one of your LEPP UserIDs and Passwords. Reading mail from the LEPP Unix mail server requires the use of your Unix network password, not your Unix interactive password. Reading mail from one of the LEPP VMS mail servers requires the use of your VMS interactive password. Please refer to User Accounts and Passwords for more information.

Email Accounts... How Many Accounts Do You Have???

• Everyone at Cornell has a Cornell email account associated with their NetID. Staff, faculty and some grad students have accounts on Cornell's Exchange server. Graduates and undergraduates have "cmail" accounts provided by Google under contract to Cornell.
• As a member of LEPP, you also have LEPP email addresses. In fact, you may have more than one: one for your VMS account and one for your UNIX account.
• For example, the author has three email accounts
  Cornell: dab66@cornell.edu
  VMS: dab66@lepp.cornell.edu
  UNIX: dab66@mail.lepp.cornell.edu

IMAP vs. POP

• We strongly encourage everyone to use IMAP and not POP. The major difference between IMAP and POP is whether your email messages are stored on the server (IMAP) or downloaded and stored on your computer (POP).
• When you use an IMAPaccount, all your mail is stored on the server. Having your email stored on the server is important for two reasons:
  1. The mail servers are backed-up on a daily basis
  2. you can view your email from any properly configured IMAP client on any computer.
• When you use a POPaccount, all your mail is usually downloaded to your computer when you read your new mail. This is inadvisable for two reasons:
  1. When your email is downloaded to your computer, it is no longer on the server. You will not be able to read your email from any other computer.
  2. Individual computers are not normally backed-up. If your computer's hard drive crashes or becomes damaged, email downloaded to your computer may be lost.

While POP can be configured to leave messages on the server, it still only allows you access to one folder. Keeping all of your mail in a single folder causes serious performance problems. When you have accumulated much mail, reading new messages will be extremely slow.

Email Size Limits

Large files should be provided on a Web server, not e'mailed. In general, this should be all files more than 1MegaByte in size.

Sending large messages is not appropriate. It fills the disks of mail servers, ties up communication lines, and often exceeds the mail file quotas enforced by most e'mail services, including Cornell's. This last problem is called "mail bombing" and "denial of service attacks" since the recipient can't receive any more messages until they've deleted the offending message(s).

Free Web space is available on LEPP and Cornell Web servers. See PersonalHomePages. Unfortunately Cornell's People Web service has been decommissioned. Some other service will have to be used. Cornell's Confluence Wiki service may be appropriarte. You should put your files on one of them and tell your correspondents where they are. Then they can download the files at their convenience instead of being forced to accept them at what could be extremely inconvenient times.

• The LEPP UNIX mail server has a 10MB message size limit.
• The LEPP VMS mail servers have a 10MB or 140,000 line limit, whichever comes first (140,000 * 72 char/line = 10MB)
• Cornell's central Exchange mail system has a limit of 50MB for individual messages, and a total mail quota of 7 GigaBytes for staff and faculty, 1GB for retirees and students.

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SPAM filtering

E-mail messages addressed to lepp.cornell.edu pass thourgh the VMS mail system and are filtered by PMAS, the "PreciseMail Anti-Spam" software. It helps to reduce the influx of unsolicited commercial e'mail, UCE, also known as SPAM. (Messages addressed to the LEPP Unix mail server at mail.lepp.cornell.edu usually do NOT pass thourgh the VMS mail system and are NOT filtered by PMAS.)

Web access to PMAS and your quarantined messages is available at http://lns61.lepp.cornell.edu This Web page can only be accessed from systems within the Lab.

Every message scanned by PMAS is given a SPAM score. That score depends on how many characteristics it shares with known SPAM. If a message's score is more than 5, it is diverted to a "quarantine area" and will be discarded automatically after two weeks. Notices are emailed three times a day to let you know if any of the messages addressed to you are being held. You can disable this, if you want.

More information about PMAS and how to control some of its actions can be read at http://lns61.lepp.cornell.edu:7633/pmas/index.html. You also can send an e-mail message to the address "PreciseMail@lepp.cornell.edu". The body of the message should contain only the word

HELP

The subject line of the message is ignored. Among other information, it will tell you how to configure a "whitelist" of addresses that should not be considered SPAM. Setting your filters by using the Web interface to PMAS is much easier, however.

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Migrating from the LEPP VMS Mail Server to the LEPP Unix Mail Server

Migrating to the LEPP Unix mail server is no longer feasable. It's at least as overloaded as the LEPP VMS mail server. Please migrate to some other mail service instead. For Cornellians, the central Cornell.Edu mail service is a reasonable alternative.

Previous instructions for migrating from VMS to Unix mail services can be read at VMSMailMigrationToUnix

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CIT Email/WebMail IMAP access

NOTE: If you are MIGRATING from LEPP to CIT e-mail, PLEASE SEE: E-mailMigration

Sometimes it is useful to access your webmail from an e-mail client, even if you normally just access it from your browser. Specifically, if you get warnings that your quota is reached, the benefits of an e-mail client for managing mail will assist you in cleaning up your webmail storage.

CIT has provided several pages about their e-mail system. A good starting page is

Cornell Personalized E-mail Addresses

Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2007 12:53:07 -0400
From: Information Technologies Special Bulletins
Subject: New CIT service for personalized e-mail addresses

(This message has been sent to all faculty and academic staff, and to individuals whose e-mail routing is set to a departmental system and who don't use their NetID in their departmental e-mail address.)

Cornell Information Technologies (CIT) is pleased to announce the new Optional Email Alias service, which enables Cornell faculty and academic staff to choose a Cornell e-mail address based on their name.

For example, the fictional Ezra Erwin could sign up for the e-mail alias "ezra.erwin@cornell.edu" and could then send and receive e-mail using either that address or "ewe1@cornell.edu".

If you do not want to use an alternate address, you don't need to do anything or read any further. Your "NetID@cornell.edu" address will continue to work the way it does today.

If you would like to use this new service, you can select your e-mail alias at http://coea.cit.cornell.edu/selection/coeaMain.cfm Please note that you can only have ONE e-mail alias.

You can also get to that web page by clicking the Electronic Mail tab in Who I Am http://whoiam.cornell.edu

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Details

CIT is now offering a new Optional Email Alias service to manage personalized e-mail addresses, also called e-mail aliases.

The existing system (fuzzy matching) only worked well for people who had a unique name, and it will be retired on December 5, 2007. At that point, the only e-mail aliases that will work are those registered through the Optional E-mail Alias service. Please note that each individual can only have one e-mail alias.

Using an e-mail alias is voluntary. It does not replace your NetID, which you would still use to access your e-mail and other services. It also does not replace your NetID@cornell.edu address; mail sent to that address or to your e-mail alias would be delivered to you.

The Optional E-mail Alias service is available to:

• • all Cornell faculty and academic staff
  • all individuals whose e-mail routing is set to a departmental

system and who don't use their NetID in their departmental e-mail address

• • individuals who were already using an e-mail alias

To find out more, visit http://www.cit.cornell.edu/email/alias/

Thank you. Cornell Information Technologies E-mail Messaging Services

OutsideE-mailProviders