Service Desk Knowledgebase: Mail Support

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This is the Mail Support content page of the CL Wiki Service Desk Knowledgebase. Its purpose is to provide information to the Service Desk team on how to handle problems and requests about this CL service. If you are involved with the provision of this CL service please feel free to add to the knowledge about that it.

If CL staff need to tell the Service Desk team about problems with this service please email
sys-admin-aside@cl.cam.ac.uk.

Return to the Service Desk Knowledgebase SERVICE PORTFOLIO

Key Service Description & URLs

CL Customer Documentation

Further CL Sys-Admin Resources

Underpinning Services

  • ??? - Any supporting or underpinning services

Customer-base for this Service

  • All staff and students of the Computer Laboratory

Costs

  • Free to all current staff and students of the Computer Laboratory

SLA

  • N/A

Service Desk Call Handling Procedure

  • Process email-admin RT queue tickets for spam and held messages (See Hints, Tips & Known Issues below for How-to details). Some of these will be held items to mail lists. If these come from members of staff they should normally be sent. It is best to check if they are replies to a message to a list in which case you might wish to check with the sender that they meant to reply to everyone! Any spam to the mailing lists should be removed.
  • RT tickets can be escalated from the sys-admin queue to the Postmaster team by changing the Queue to email-admin with the Owner set to Nobody & Status set to new AND emailing postmaster@cl.cam.ac.uk. Tell the requestor:
    I am passing this request over to our Email team who, I'm sure, will be in contact shortly.

Contacts

Primary

Availability

  • N/A

Hints, Tips & Known Issues

Processing the Three Mail Server Queues

Vince Woodley (9/1/2014)

This requires your CL account and PuTTY on your desktop computer account to have been setup with the correct CL.ppk private key file before hand...

When the see an RT ticket on the email-admin queue To: email-admin@cl.cam.ac.uk From: exim@cl.cam.ac.uk about a Message being frozen for moderation take the following steps:

  1. Use a web-browser to go to Running tools to view the queue
  2. Make sure Pageant is running and has your private key - by double clicking on CL.ppk or similar.
  3. With it running in the system tray launch PuTTY and go to the CL's ssh-remote-0.cl.cam.ac.uk
  4. Type kinit & press [Enter]
  5. Enter your CL Password for CRSid@AD.CL.CAM.AC.UK & press [Enter]
  6. Type ssh -K laira & press [Enter] to get the laira:~$ prompt
  7. Copy the command for h in $(cl-hosts exim_server); do sudo ssh -t $h /usr/exim/setup/cmds/mailproc -Lf; done (NB: best to take it from Running tools to view the queue in case it gets modified)
  8. Click back in the PuTTY window and right-click to paste the above command & press [Enter]
  9. Give your CL [sudo] password for CRSid: & press [Enter]
  10. You will now start scrolling through the pending email one (of the three) mail server at a time. Some will simply be passing through the mail server at the time whilst others will be marked as ** message frozen ** and require action based on assessing the email. When you Thaw a message it will be a while before you can continue to process the queue.
  11. At the Action: prompt the commands are single characters and case sensitive (the full range of commands are listed here) most useful are:
    1. n for next (e.g. for non ** message frozen ** email passing through)
    2. R for Remove, followed by yes or [Enter] to confirm or use no to cancel. (NOTE: email to abuse@cl.cam.ac.uk is very commonly spam. Most of the email marked ** message frozen ** will be spam BUT some may not be!)
    3. T to Thaw and send a ** message frozen **, followed by yes or [Enter] to confirm or use no to cancel
    4. v to view the full headers (spacebar to scroll & q to quit)
    5. V to View the message body (spacebar to scroll & q to quit)
  12. When you see the prompt Message ID: press [Enter]
  13. You may be asked to re-type your CL [sudo] password for CRSid: & press [Enter]
  14. When you finally return to the laira:~$ prompt you have finished going through the three mail queues so type exit & press [Enter]
  15. At the ssh-remote-0:~$ prompt type exit & press [Enter]



Categorising Keywords

  • Mail Email E-mail Exchange Outlook
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