This appears to be a significant issue that may have been
discussed earlier but I was not aware of it. Some of our users,
including myself, were previously advised to use filtering as a way of having
the MSU email system remove as much spam as possible before forwarding the
email to local college email servers. That process has worked very well
up to now but from what I can gather, it appears that it will be removed in 19
days. If that is the case then colleges will need to significantly beef
up their spam checking capabilities and 19 days isn’t long enough notice
to make that transition seamless.
Could we have the forwarding step moved to after what is
named stage 7 in the following document so that the spam checking could
continue to be done centrally as much as possible.
http://techbase.msu.edu/article.asp?id=4733&service=techbase
-----Original Message-----
From: MSU Network Administrators Group [mailto:
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 9:44 AM
To:
Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] Autoforwarding in the new mail system
John Gorentz wrote:
> I'm wondering how to interpret this ominous-sounding item in the
FAQ for the new mail system:
>
*snip*
> That makes it sound as though autoforwarding will have to be
repaired manually when the new mail system goes on line -- that the new system
won't inherit the old's autoforwarding. *more cutting*
Users of mail.msu.edu who have set a traditional .forward will have
their .forwards "swept up" into our database where Exim will
soon read
this type of information from. A traditional forward being the one set
at http://mail.msu.edu/ within the 'Preferences' and the setting being
at the bottom left.
People who forward their email non-traditionally, that is in the
non-supported method of using a Mail Filter (seen under 'Filters' on
http://mail.msu.edu/ ) will have to correct this by going into the web
interface and changing it over to the traditional type of .forward
described above. This is mentioned in the question:
I have a filter in the legacy service that auto-forwards my e-mail. Can
I do the same in the new service?
No. Please use the e-mail forwarding function to handle your
auto-forwarding.
> And how is this consistent with the idea that the old mail system
will continue to be available for 6 months after the new one is turned on?
The old mail system will be available at http://old.mail.msu.edu/
starting on December 22nd, however certain preferences/features will be
grayed-out; namely the Filters feature and of course, the preferences.
These items will still be accessible to the mail team should problems
need to be filed regarding them.
> I understand how that is done for the web client, but
what about the mail servers?
>
The only thing of great note that is changing is the web interface. We
are deprecating some older front-end machines and replacing them with
newer hardware. We are also adding to our overall total number of
servers.
> Will users get to choose the moment when their mail is
handled by the new server?
>
The will get to choose December 22nd, 2008 :-)
./brm - MSU Postmaster