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Updated information at: Classic Linux.

Also please see: https://discourse.rahul.net/.

The server oxygen.rahul.net is running CentOS 5.3, a Linux distribution. This server is now available for testing to all users who have shell accounts in the classic_linux_old environment. Please read the following carefully, including especially the Warnings section, before logging into this server.

Other equivalent servers are listed on the classic_linux_old page.

All the information below should be equally valid for those servers.

The following programs are available:

• trn.
• rn, a non-threaded mode for trn.
• nn.
• tin.

Please see the page Mailbox Changes for definitions of the terms old inbox and new inbox. Also, on the same page, you will find directory names reserved by the new mail system.

This machine does mail delivery into a new inbox, which is a mailbox in the Maildir format.

No mail is currently delivered on this machine. (It will be after our upcoming mail system migration is completed.)

If you wish to test mail delivery on this machine, you will need to first forward your mail to USER@only-oxygen.rahul.net where USER is your login name. Once you do so, your mail will arrive at oxygen.rahul.net and will be delivered into a new inbox which resides in the Maildir directory within your home directory. This mailbox has a directory structure with each message being stored as a separate file.

To forward your mail to only-oxygen.rahul.net, you can't just use a .forward file, as it will cause an infinite loop. Instead, use conditional forwarding as described on the Procmail page.

Once mail has been delivered as above, you can read it locally by the following methods.

• Mutt mail program.
• Alpine mail program. This is an improved Pine by a new name. For details see its own page Alpine 2009.
• Mailx. (For documentation, see: http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/mailx/mailx.1.html.) To see your old inbox, invoke Mailx as: “mailx -f imap://mauve.rahul.net/inbox” and enter your login name and password when prompted.
• Nmh. (See instructions below.)

Also, you can read mail on oxygen.rahul.net and other newer machines remotely with any POP or IMAP client. See ports_and_protocols.

For processing and filtering mail:

• Procmail.
• spamassassin.

For checking to see if incoming mail was rejected by one of the machines:

• scan.logs.

If using nmh (previously known as mh), have a file called “.mh_profile” in your home directory containing these lines:

  Path: MH
  inc: -file Maildir/ -truncate

The Path: line sets your nmh directory to MH, which will help prevent any conflict with directory names used by the IMAP and POP servers on the new machines.

With these settings, when you use the inc command from the command line, it will incorporate mail from your new inbox, i.e., Maildir mailbox, into nmh's own mailbox in the Mail directory. These messages will become visible when you use the scan command.

If you do not have the “inc” line in your “.mh_profile” file, then explicitly use the command like this to get new mail:

  inc -file Maildir/ -truncate

To incorporate mail from your old inbox, you must not have the “inc” line in your “.mh_profile” file. Then use one of the following commands:

  % inc -host mauve.rahul.net -notruncate
  % inc -host mauve.rahul.net

Use the first one (with -notruncate) to just get a copy of the mail while leaving the original inbox unchanged. Use the second one (without the -notruncate) if you want to empty out the old inbox.

In either case, you will be prompted for your password.

Please point your web browser to the URL below:

• Usermin control panel on oxygen.rahul.net: https://oxygen.rahul.net:20000/

(An analogous control panel is available for each CentOS 5 machine. Simply use its hostname instead of oxygen.rahul.net.)

This will let you log into the Usermin control panel, where you can perform a number of activities on oxygen.rahul.net, including:

• Reading mail. Reads your Maildir mailbox by default, but can be configured to read any mailbox(es).
• Adjusting procmail options for mail forwarding and mail delivery.
• Creating and editing “cron” and “at” jobs. (Temporarily, for testing only, any user can create “cron” and “at” jobs.)
• Adjusting Spamassassin options. For more hints about this please see spamassassin_to_identify_spam.
• Java-based ssh login into the server.
• Linux commands from a web browser window.
• List your processes if any and kill misbehaving processes if any.

Configuration file conflicts. Most of the programs listed above will try to read or write various configuration files in your home directory and subdirectories. These may conflict in unpredictable ways with the same or similar program that you have used on the older Classic Linux machines. Thus you should save backups copies of appropriate configuration files as needed.

Bugs. This is a newly-deployed machine, and it might not always behave in the same way as our older machines. Some of the commands available might take slightly different options or produce different results. The software installed on this machine might be updated or reconfigured with little or no notice.

Please follow the problem-reporting procedures described on our mail system migration page.

This is beginning of our next-generation shell-oriented Linux environment. Once oxygen.rahul.net is functioning reliably, we will migrate all processing to it and other similar machines.