Computing Resources

Email on the Math & Stats Mail Server

The department has its own mail server, mathmail.mcmaster.ca, on which all faculty, staff, post-docs, graduate students and long-term visitors have accounts.

For information about univmail and the campus email service, see the UTS web site.

Note that your departmental email address will be posted as public contact information.

Your Email Address

You can advertise either of the following for your departmental email address:
yourmathusername@math.mcmaster.ca
Firstname.Lastname@math.mcmaster.ca

You can request an @mcmaster.ca alias to your @math.mcmaster.ca mail account - for example Firstname.Lastname@mcmaster.ca, firstname@mcmaster.ca, or nickname@mcmaster.ca (provided that it isn't already reserved, of course). You can request an alias via email from uts@mcmaster.ca.

Reading Your Mail

Web Mail

Read your mail in your browser at: http://mathmail.mcmaster.ca

Pine

Pine is a quick, simple and very nimble text-based mail reader (still quite popular in Math & Stats). Enter the command pine in a terminal window on your linux workstation or mathserv.

IMAP/POP Client

Use the following settings for POP3 or IMAP clients (e.g. Thunderbird, Mozilla, Mail.app or Outlook):

POP3/IMAP/Incoming	mathmail.mcmaster.ca - turn SSL on - (do not select Secure Password Authentication; SSL will suffice for encryption)
SMTP/Outgoing (on campus)	mathmail.mcmaster.ca - do not turn SSL on - do not authenticate (use id and password)
SMTP/Outgoing (off campus)	- use the sever provided by your ISP from home - use mathmail.mcmaster.ca only are on campus or are connected using the McMaster VPN service Note that most mail clients will allow you to specifiy multiple outgoing mail servers.
Mail Directory/Prefix	mail Some clients need the name of your mail folder. In Apple Mail, look under Preferences, Accounts, Advanced, "IMAP Path Prefix"; in Thunderbird, look under Edit, Account Settings, Server Settings, Advanced, "IMAP server directory"; in Outlook and Outlook Express, look for "Root folder path" under advanced mail settings or IMAP settings (the .

I strongly recommend IMAP over POP: the former allows you to see all of your mail folders; the latter only gives you access to your inbox.

Some IMAP clients (e.g. Evolution, Thunderbird, OS X Mail) need to be told that your "server mail directory" or "IMAP mail prefix" is mail; if you omit this setting, you may see the entire contents of your home directory in your IMAP folder list.

Spam Filtering

We use a combination of SpamAssassin (to identify spam) and procmail (to filter spam). Spam filtering is turned on by default for accounts created after April 1st, 2008 but not on older accounts. You can activate spam filtering by running this command

activate-mail-filter

... or by adding these lines to a file named .procmailrc in your mathserv home directory:

INCLUDERC=$RHPCS_MAIL_CLEANER/procmailrc-clean

See Spam Filtering on the Departmental Mail Server for more information.

Campus Email - Univmail

University Technology Services runs a campus email service on a system called univmail.mcmaster.ca. See the UTS web site for details.

Frequently Asked Questions

Other mail questions are addressed in the Email section of the FAQ page.