Psychology Mail Server Technical Info

• The Mail System


The Psych mail server, cyrus.psych.uiuc.edu, is a dedicated server running a mail management system called "Cyrus" developed at Carnegie-Mellon University. This system offers many advantages over traditional Unix mail systems, including:

- Increased Performance

• The nature of the Cyrus system, combined with the faster computer system, results in increased performance in reading and manipulating mail.

- Better Quota Management
• A person's INBOX and other mail folders fall under a single quota. On the Cyrus system, if somebody exceeds their mail quota, their messages are not bounced back to the senders as with the old Unix-type mail system. Messages are queued until the account goes back under the quota, and then delivered. However, after a certain amount of time (3-4 days), the queued messages will bounce if they have not been delivered.
  
  

  Default Mail Disk Quotas for some Psych Account Types
  Psych Faculty	2 Gigabytes (2048 MB)
  Full-time Staff	1 Gigabyte (1024 MB)
  Psych Graduate Students	.5 Gigabytes (512 MB)

  Because these allocations are quite large, and are based on the total available disk space on the server, increases will be granted only under extraordinary circumstances.

- Shared Mailboxes

• The Cyrus system allows the creation of shared mailboxes. For each such mailbox, there is detailed list of who can access it and what functions can be performed. These mailboxes must be created by the system manager.



• Web-based Account Management
  
  Most mail-related functions will be performed by going to a new web-interface. Attach to the web interface to check your disk usage (for mail only), to set up forwarding or vacation messages, or to set up spam filtering. The URL for the mail management pages is: http://cyrus.psych.uiuc.edu/mail_options.



• Mail forwarding and the Vacation Feature
  
  Under the new system, forwarding and vacation must be set up via the web interface. .forward files on the unix server (stat.psych.uiuc.edu) will have no effect.



• Mailgroups
  
  Psych mailgroup coordinators can update their mailgroups via the above-mentioned interface.