[H-GEN] Email auto-forward and auto-respond utility wanted

[Greg Black]

On 2004-04-13, Edwards_Ewan_B at cat.com wrote:

> I've been looking for a utility I can put on our mail server for users 
> to set up auto-forward and auto-respond on their email accounts while 
> on leave or overseas etc..  This utility needs to be really, really 
> simple to use because most of the users are Windows operators who, 
> seemingly, can only handle 'gui clicky' things.

There used to be several tools that could be setup easily to
handle this sort of thing, but they were all invented before the
spam and virus plague that is now infesting the Internet.

Unless you can guarantee that you will never deliver either spam
or viruses to your users, these tools are a Bad Thing [tm]
because they will be busy sending out replies to the (usually)
forged addresses in their incoming spam and you really don't
want them to be doing that.

If you can guarantee that nothing nasty will get to the users'
inboxes, the standard Unix utility for this is vacation(1) and
it's trivial to set it up, as per the man page.

Cheers, Greg