TOC | Previous | Next | Documentation Home


Customizing mail settings

Electronic mail addressed to the root user on your server should be directed to a “real” e-mail account read on a regular basis by the system’s administrator.  Even if the server has been configured not to accept mail from external hosts (recommended), important notices from locally-running daemons still may be generated. 

Continue with this section if you would find it convenient to have root’s mail forwarded to another e-mail account.

Launch the Text Editor program again.  In the window that opens, click the Open button and then open the file named /etc/aliases .  Scroll to the bottom of the file and find the line that begins with the word #root .  (The leading # symbol indicates that the line has been commented out.)  Remove the comment symbol and change the line to read something like:

root:            yourname@your.university.edu

.  Click the Save button on the toolbar and then close the program.

Now it is necessary to activate the change you just specified.  From the GNOME desktop, launch the program Applications/Accessories/Terminal to get to a command prompt.  At the command prompt, type:

newaliases

.  One line of output will appear and mail forwarding will take effect immediately.


TOC | Previous | Next | Documentation Home