CISE Mail Information

The CISE email setup is based on IMAP. Limited support for POP is also available for historical purposes. For more technical information on these two setups, go here.

How do I Read CISE Email

The following are the typical configurations required by IMAP clients, with the exception of CISE-installed webmail clients:

Server       : imap.cise.ufl.edu
SSL Required : Yes
Port       : 993 (imap over SSL port)

Other common tips for reading mail through IMAP:

See the notes below on recommended clients below for more information per client.

Here's a short list of the IMAP clients CISE recommends for reading mail. Before selecting a client, please read the notes regarding the particular client.

Mozilla Thunderbird

Thunderbird is an open-source, cross-platform mail client, renowned for its message filtering capabilities. It is installed on most CISE machines, and is available for free download from the Mozilla Thunderbird homepage.

Pine

Pine is a well known text-based mail client. Pine was supported under the old CISE POP mail scheme, and is supported for IMAP. The differences are listed below.

How do I read CISE email on the web?

Roundcube

Roundcube is the preferred web-based mail client of System Staff and the eventual replacement for SquirrelMail. It is locally installed and can be accessed at: https://webmail.cise.ufl.edu/roundcube.

SquirrelMail

SquirrelMail is the older of the two web-based email clients installed locally. It is being phased out by Roundcube. It can still be accessed at: https://webmail.cise.ufl.edu/squirrelmail

Note: Roundcube and SquirrelMail might be slower than most of the other clients, as it requires the browser to talk to the web server, and the web server to talk to the IMAP server. CISE recommends using web-based clients only when other clients aren't readily available, such as when traveling, especially if the user has a large INBOX.

Gmail

Gmail is a free e-mail service provided by Google, with a web-based mail client, whose quick, robust, and intuitive interface makes it a popular choice among webmail users.

For more information on acquiring a free Gmail account, or setting up Gmail to work with your existing CISE email account, see the Gmail Help Page.

How do I send mail through mail.cise.ufl.edu?

There are two ways to configure your email client to send email through our SMTP host "mail.cise.ufl.edu".

Using a Client that supports SMTP Authentication

CISE requires the use of SMTP Authentication for mobile CISE users. You will need a client that supports SSL as well as SMTP Authentication.

To enable SMTP Authentication, edit the preferences for your mail client and select

Typically, you will be prompted for your CISE username and password once per session when you first send mail, and not again until you restart your mail client. Some clients may allow you to use the same settings for both incoming and outgoing mail.

Problems sending

There are two types of problems related to sending mail. Local issues typically result in an error popping up immediately. Remote issues occur when it appears that the message is sent correctly, but a short time later, you get a bounce message.

Some of the local errors you might get when sending email include:

Relaying Denied
CISE does not relay email as an anti-SPAM measure. For more information on this error, as well as information on how to propertly send email, refer to the secion How do I send mail through CISE above.

Almost without exception, if you get a bounce message, the problem is either with you user you are sending email to, or the system their account is on. In either case, there is nothing that can be done locally to fix the problem. If you want to try to resolve the issue, read the bounce message carefully. Typical error messages that are due to the user include:

User's mailbox is full or user is over quota
The user you sent to has exceeded his quota. Almost all sites impose quotas on the amount of disk space a user is allowed to use. The user has exceeded that limit, and until they clean up, they cannot receive new email.
Invalid address or no such user
You have probably mistyped the email address. Check it carefully. If it is definitely a known email address, try resending the message. If it still fails, most likely the user's account has been removed for some reason.

Please do not report these types of errors to system administrators (either local or remote). These types of errors should be reported to the user you were sending email to (either by phone or an alternate email address).

Errors that are due to the remote system include error messages similar to:

Content denied
Most sites do some kind of SPAM/Virus filtering, and this message often means that your message was caught by the filters. If you are using HTML email, this might be the cause. Most email clients allow you to send HTML or plain text. HTML mail is sometimes treated as SPAM. If you sent an attachment, this could be the cause of the problem. Many sites won't deliver messages with any type of runnable attachement (an executable, visual basic script, etc.). The best solution to this is to send the email in an alternate form (plain text with no attachments).
Message too large
If you have a large attachment, some sites will block it. In general, no email should be sent with a large attachment. Instead, put the attachment on your web site and send an email with the URL to the file.

If you get a bounce that indicates a problem with the remote system, you can report it to postmaster at the remote domain. i.e. if you sent email to foo@bar.baz.com that bounced, typically the proper place to report problems would be postmaster@bar.baz.com, but only do this if you are certain that the bounce indicates a problem and NOT simply a remote policy (for example, reporting that an email you sent with a executable attached bounced is not useful... their policy is to block that type of email, and notifying them that it bounced isn't going to change anything).

Problems receiving email

There are several circumstances which may cause this problem. Please check the following causes, and if you are unable to resolve the issue, contact a consultant or system administrator immediately.

Over Quota
Probably the most common cause of not being able to receive email is that you are over your mail quota, or that an email you have received would cause you to go over quota.

To check this, log into cise webmail and look for the quota used readout. On roundcube this is the precentage bar in the lower left, on SquirrelMail it is the percentage bar in the upper left.

If you are very close to your quota, or over your quota, this is likely the reason you cannot read email. The best solution is to keep your usage at 90% of your quota or less.

If you are trying to delete mail using your mail client, and get an error like the following:

"ERROR : Could not complete request.
Query: COPY 1017 "INBOX.Trash"
Reason Given: [ALERT] COPY failed -
  no write permission or out of disk space."

You are over your quota, and will need to remove some old mail. First, try emptying your Trash second, empty you spam folder. If that fails to resolve the problem, try the following steps.

Log into CISE's roundcube webmail system and look for messages you want to delete. Select the messages you want to delete from the message list (hold ctrl and click for multiple messages, or shift to select a range), then hold the shift key and hit the delete button on your keyboard. Click yes in the confirmation box.

Repeat the above procedure for any of the other folders with high usage.

Once you're back under quota, normal mail deletes should work again.

Forwarding Email

Mail forwarding is handled using a mail forward file. The forward file is:

$HOME/.forward

for each CISE user.

The format of the mail forward file is covered in the aliases manual page.

Typically, the mail forward file should be blank or non-existant.

The most common problem encountered when forwarding email is that the permissions on the forward file get corrupted.

Make sure that file exists, and is world readable, but NOT world writable.

Examples

To forward your email to another account, simply put the address to which you want your mail forwarded into your forwarding file (determined above). For example, if you wanted to forward your mail to

user@foo.bar.com

edit the forwarding file and put that address on a line by itself. If there is already an address of the form USER@mail.cise.ufl.edu or USER@cise.ufl.edu in the forwarding file, just replace that with the address to which you wish to forward your mail.

To forward your email to another account while leaving a copy on your CISE account, replace the current line of one of the forms:

USER@cise.ufl.edu

with a line of one of the following forms:

user@foo.bar.com, USER@cise.ufl.edu

Receiving a large file

If you need someone to send you a file that is too large to send as an email attachment, we provide an alternate method using the web. Click here for more information.

Vacation auto-reply

Use the Unix vacation program to create an auto-reply which replies to incoming messages. The vacation program will only send an auto-reply to each person who sends you mail only once, so it's best to include your return date. Also, vacation will not send auto-replies to mailing lists (it only replies to messages that have your address in the To: field)

Reading gatorlink email

All UF students can have a Gatorlink account. If you don't have an account and are eligible for one, get one. See help.gatorlink.ufl.edu for more information.

Reading your Gatorlink email

You can read your gatorlink email in your normal email client, or on the web. To read it on the web, go to the Gatorlink webmail site here.

To configure your email client to read gatorlink email, you can follow a similar procedure as the one used to configure your client to read CISE email. More detailed instructions are available at the Gatorlink Help Site. To read IMAP, select the server imap.ufl.edu, and the type is IMAP. Other options can be set as desired. Be sure to use your Gatorlink username and NOT your CISE username.

Your outgoing (SMTP) server should be either smtp.ufl.edu (if you are on a campus network) or the outgoing mail server of your ISP.

Anti-SPAM/Anti-Virus measures

CISE uses UF's proofpoint automated spam prevention mechanisms. This system imposes the following requirements:

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