.vacation: I'm away from my desk

The mail system may be set up to automatically respond to incoming mail with a specific message. This is usually done when gone for an extended period of time of longer than a few days.

This is done using the vacation program:

1. Create file .vacation.msg, in your main directory. That file would look similar to

   Re: away until May 4th.
   
   I am out of the office from April 26 until May 4th.
   
   Your mail has been received, and will be read upon my return.
   
   Regards,
   
       Claude
   

2. Create file .forward, in your main directory:

   \your_login_name, "|/usr/sbin/vacation login_name"
   

   where your_login_name is your login name on your system.
3. As soon as you have created .forward, initialise the vacation procedure:

   vacation -i -r interval

   where interval is the reply interval, in days. This is the interval in which a user will receive your reply (content off your .vacation.msg file), no matter how many message he sent you.

   Default is 7 days (2 or 3 is fine). 0 is for every message - NOT RECOMMENDED as it would interfere with mailing lists, discussion groups, etc.

To disable the facility: remove .forward.