Accessing your SDF Email

There are several ways to get and send email at SDF, but the different options depend on your membership(s) here. This guide is intended to describe the options simply and clearly, by membership level

Membership Levels and Email Access

Here are the membership levels that matter for email (see SDF join page for more details):

• User
  • Pre-validated User: This is before you are "validated" by either sending a nominal amount of money to SDF(enter validate at shell) or by finding a MetaARPA member to validate you
  • Validated User/ARPA
• VPM/VHOST*
• MetaARPA

The differences of the above accounts, besides the cost, is that VPM, VHOST and MetaARPA are annual memberships, so require continuing support of SDF, while User and ARPA are lifetime memberships, and only require payment once.

Ways to Get and Send Email at SDF

By default your E-mail Address is your SDF username, which by default works with a couple of domain names (you can also choose the domain you would like to use from the list of SDF domain names).

So if your username is "coffee" you can try sending yourself a mail with your existing E-mail account to:

coffee@sdf.lonestar.org or coffee@freeshell.org. Then you can try to read it.

Ways to read and send your SDF mail include the following:

Email Programs from Shell (Memberships: User or ARPA or MetaARPA)

You can always access your SDF mail account through any of several email programs installed on the server. All of these emails access your "mail spool", where your email is put by the mail server.

• mutt is available even to Pre-validated Users. Just type mutt at the command prompt. Here's a mutt tutorial
• Other programs, including pine, alpine, mailx and rmail are available to any Validated User or ARPA or MetaARPA. Pine and Alpine are related programs (Pine is older, Alpine is newer) that are both frequently considered to be the easiest shell email programs to use, with on-screen help and a menu interface. Enter pine or alpine respectively to run either of these. You can find more info on how to use them at E-mail Beginners.

(For users at the User level, to learn about your limited allowed space and the significance of the mail spool, see the difference between using mutt and alpine for Users vs ARPA)

Webmail (Memberships: Validated User or ARPA or MetaARPA)

There are two webmail interfaces:

• The old SquirrelMail, accessible for Validated Users or above, accessible from the webmail link at the top of the SDF home page
• Roundcube, a slicker experience, accessible by MetaARPA users from the link on the metaaaray home page

Client Email: POP3 and IMAP (Memberships: User or ARPA or VPM or VHOST or MetaARPA)

This section and the next include a small distinction. While User or ARPA can read mail on their own machines or devices, these memberships don't allow you to send email from your account through SDF.

You can, however, use your ISP to send mail from your SDF account. For example, if you are with Comcast on your computer at home, you can set up POP3 or IMAP in your favorite mail client as described below to read your SDF mail, and use your Comcast mail SMTP server (outgoing mail server) to send mail "from" your SDF account. On your phone, you can do the same, except you would use Verizon/Sprint/T-mobile's SMTP server (you may have to look up how if you don't know it) for sending messages "from" your SDF account. If you want to use SDF's outgoing mail server, you need to either use an email client from your shell account, or pay annual dues for any of VPM, VHOST or MetaArray, and follow the direction in the next section. That said, here's how to set up your favorite mail client to read your SDF mail:

Reading Incoming email in your computer or device client if you are User or ARPA or VPM or VHOST or MetaARPA

There are two ways to read your incoming email using a client mail program. You can choose either, except if you are using virtual mailboxes with a VPM membership, in which case your only option is POP3:

• POP3 fetches a copy of your mail from the mail spool to your local machine, and optionally deletes it from the spool. POP3 works with most any email program, and you can keep the messages on the server to be able to access mail equally from multiple machine/mail programs. However if you are accessing a POP3 server from multiple machines, having to deal with synchronizing and multiple copies and deleting mail from the server can be a problem;
• IMAP accesses mail on the server and lets you organize it into folders on the server. IMAP keeps your mail centrally located and organized so it is all equally accessible from multiple mail programs and devices at the same time.

Setting up to read mail with POP3

(from the POP3/IMAP email faq)

The mail server to connect to for POP3 is wm.sdf.org

The rest of the POP3 settings should be:

• Your security should be set to None
• Your Port should be 110
• Your user name depends on the account:
  • for your main User/ARPA/metaARPA account, it should be the same as your login name, example: user1234
  • If you are accessing mail for a VPM account, your username should be the full email address with your VPM/VHOST domain name, ex: user5678@vhost1234.org
• your password should be either your account password (for your main User/ARPA/metaARPA account), or the password you set for the VPM email address using mkvpm

Setting up to read mail with IMAP

Port 587 SSL Enabled Authentication NTLM Username: YOUR DOMAIN NAME (ex. alan8r.sdf.org) Click Re-Test and ate Account You will be prompted for your passwords when you first send/receive email. Click Add (right side) Description: SDF Server Name: mx.sdf.org Port: 587 Connection security: none Authentication Method: NTLM User Name: YOUR DOMAIN NAME (ex. alan8r.sdf.org) You have to refer to the 143 or 993 for the incoming email server and then use the 587 for the outgoing I think? If I am wrong can someone correct me. No matter what I do I cannot log in it says password failure. connectivity security: STARTTLS Authentication method: Normal Password

The rest of the IMAP settings should be:

• Your security should be set to None
• Your Port should be 110
• Your user name depends on the account:
  • for your main User/ARPA/metaARPA account, it should be the same as your login

    Sending Mail from your client if you are User or ARPA

    Sending Mail from your client through SDF(Memberships: VPM/VHOST or MetaARPA)

    Advanced Mail Topics

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