Subject: Q: Auto-Reply

From: [email-masked] (Giedke)
Date: 14 Aug 1995 11:27:04 GMT

If I will be unable to check my email for a couple of weeks - is there a way to tell
pine to respond to every mail I receive with a short note, saying how long I don't read 
my mail?

Thanks for your help.
 Geza Giedke

---

From: Don Sugarman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 08:47:08 -0400 (EDT)

> pine to respond to every mail I receive with a short note, saying how long I don't read 
No,  but you can tell Unix to do that with a .vaction file

HOWEVER!  Please don't do this, I believe every message you get from 
the pine-info list will result in a message to the list that you are on 
vacation, which will result in a message to the list that you are on
vacation, which will result in a message to the list that you are on
vacation, which will result in a message to the list that you are on
vacation, which will result in a message to the list that you are on
vacation, which will result in a message to the list that you are on
....

Or you could unsubscribe from the list while you are away and then set up 
your vacation message.

Have a good vacation.

Regards,
Don Sugarman
[email-masked]

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From: Ed Greshko <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 22:44:38 +0800 (GMT)

> vacation, which will result in a message to the list that you are on

	Looking at the man page for vacation:

     No message is sent if the To:  or the  Cc:   line  does  not
     list  the  user to whom the original message was sent or one
     of a number of aliases for them, if the  initial  From  line
     includes  the  string -REQUEST@, or if a Precedence: bulk or
     Precedence: junk line is included in the header.

	On good lists, pine being one of them, your name will not 
appear in the To: or Cc: which should prevent vacation messages going
to the list.  In addition, vacation will keep track of who it sent
a notification to and will not send another notification until a
predetermined time interval has expired.

	So, it is generally safe to use vacation without unsubscribing
to the many lists for which you have subscriptions.

	Regards,

				Ed

Edward M. Greshko                       Technical Manager, Electronic Commerce
                                        Control Data Asia/Pacific Region
Voice: +886-2-715-2222 x287             6/F, 131 Nanking East Road, Section 3
FAX  : +886-2-712-9197                  Taipei, Taiwan R.O.C

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From: Don Sugarman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 12:24:32 -0400 (EDT)

On Mon, 14 Aug 1995, Ed Greshko wrote:

> < S N I P >
Thanks, Ed.  I've been afraid to use .vacation, since I've seen some 
vacation messages distributed through a couple of lists.  Those 
vacationers must be using a substandard mailer. <g>

Don

---

From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 12:24:45 -0400

On 14 Aug 1995, Don Sugarman wrote:

| On 14 Aug 1995, Giedke wrote:
| 
| > If I will be unable to check my email for a couple of weeks - is there a way to tell
| > pine to respond to every mail I receive with a short note, saying how long I don't read 
| > my mail?
| > 
| No,  but you can tell Unix to do that with a .vaction file
| 
| HOWEVER!  Please don't do this, I believe every message you get from 
| the pine-info list will result in a message to the list that you are on 
| vacation, which will result in a message to the list that you are on
| [...]

| Or you could unsubscribe from the list while you are away and then set up 
| your vacation message. [...]

    An alternative, if it is available to you, is to use procmail.  You 
can set up filtering recipes which will ignore any postings from mailing 
lists and only send a vacation message to what is left.  You can fine 
tune it to any degree desired.  If formail is also installed on 
your system (this assumes you are using Unix, by the way), you can 
even set things up so that any given sender receives only one 
vacation notification.  However, I must admit that using procmail is 
not entirely trivial.

    This whole queston is not really a Pine question at all, but it, as 
well as incoming mail filtering questions, comes up so often that I think 
it would be helpful if a FAQ could be posted periodically to deal with 
them.  (No, I am not in a position to write such a FAQ -- I currently 
have other irons in the fire.)

Paul
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Paul O. Bartlett         <[email-masked]>
P. O. Box 857     Vienna, VA 22183-0857     U.S.A.
Finger, keyserver, or email for PGP 2.6 public key
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