automatic mail reply

[Ed Schwalenberg]

    Date: 22 Feb 88 12:08:20 PST (Mon)
    From: Kevin Cosgrove 627-5212 <kevinc at bearcat.lim.tek.com>

    John,

    > I just sent mail to someone and got a (generic) reply immediately.
    > When I did a finger on the person, I noticed they hadn't logged on
    > since yesterday.
    > 
    > She is on vacation (so I can't ask her how she did it).
    > 
    > Does anyone know how to set up an account to automatically send a reply
    > without having to log on?
    > 
    > John L Bergquist
    > 
    >       ->bard   ->c164-2ag
    > ucbvax->zooey  ->c162-ba
    >       ->franny ->c8-rd
    >       ->seymour->c9d-af

    It sounds like you have 'vacation' installed on your system.  What 'vacation'
    does is send the mail on to the mail spool while sending notification of
    the recipient's absence to the originator.  It's great for when one leaves
    town and can't get to their mail right away.

    If yours works like ours, then an entry of the following in your ~/.forward
    file will work fine -- of course you'll have to change the "kevinc" to your
    login name.

    \kevinc, "|vacation kevinc"

    If that doesn't work, you might try consulting the manual pages for 'mhook'
    and 'vacation'.  I haven't had to resort the 'mhook' approach since
    the 'vacation' scheme works so well for me.
    _____________________________________________________________________________

	    Kevin Cosgrove           	Tektronix, Inc.
	    11K Plug-Ins Project Leader	PO Box 500, M/S 47-092
	    LIM Product Test Engineering 	Beaverton, OR  97077
	    kevinc at bearcat.LIM.TEK.COM	(503)-627-5212
    _____________________________________________________________________________

Before doing this, of course, remove your name from mailing lists such
as UNIX-WIZARDS.  A random contributor to mailing lists is not particularly
interested in the information that J. Random Hacker is in Disney World
until Thursday, but you can call his mother at 1-800-555-1212.