Out-of-Office Message

You can setup an out-of-the-office reply - also known as a vacation message - to notify people who send you email that you are away from the office.

To setup your out-of-office reply do the following:

  1. Log into the Shell Server using ssh.

  2. Create a file called .vacation.msg to contain the email you want to have automatically emailed. The contents of the file should look similar to the following:

Subject: Out of the office

I will be away from the office from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020.
I am unlikely to read email during this time.

I will attend to all email on my return.

Note the blank line between Subject and I will attend…

  1. Create a .forward file similar to the following:

    \username, "|/usr/bin/vacation username"

In step 3 above, replace username with your username.

The \username option tells the mail server to keep a copy of the email in your local mailbox. If you would like to forward your email to another email address while you are way, replace \username with an email address.