To configure the vacation program so that it will automatically return a message to each person who sends you mail, you will need to take the following steps:

1. This must be run on one of the Linux computers so you must log onto either emperor, pelican or puffin.

2. Type at the command line vacation
     This will create three files in your home directory:
      .forward -- which tells the mail system so save the incoming message and to reply to the sender.
      .vacation.msg -- the message which will be send back.
      .vacation.db -- binary data base containing a list of what addressess were sent the vacation message.

      .forward file
          It will contain something similar to the following:  \smith,  "| /usr/local/bin/vacation smith"  
          \smith means save the incoming mail for smith
          The " | ..." part says to autoreply with the .vacation.msg file for any message sent to smith.

     .vacation.msg
         This is the message in email message format which is sent back to the sender.
         When you invoke vacation you are put into the vi editor with the following message:
             Subject: away form my mail

             I will not be reading my mail for a while.
             Your mail concerning "$SUBJECT"
             will be read when I'm back.

             This is the default message and you can you can modify it but you must include the Subject: line
             at the top.  You need not include a From line as it will be generated automatically if it is not present.
             (Hint: if you set the environmental variable to another editor it will use that one instead of vi.)
              setenv EDITOR nedit    will invoke the nedit editor instead of vi
              The "$SUBJECT" variable is replaced by the vacation program with the subject line of the message.

     .vacation.db
         This is a binary database in which is kept the address of all messages senders and the time at which the
         vacation messages was sent to them.  If a second message is received from the same sender the program
         will not send back another vacation message to that sender until seven days after the first vacation message
         was sent.  The contents of this file can be examined by invoking vaclook on one of the above mentioned
         Linux computers.

Stopping the program when you return:
    You can either remove (rm) the .forward file or rename it (mv) to something else.
    To resume using the program again you just put the .forward file back.  It you want to change the message
    you can edit the .vacation.msg file .  If you just invoke vacation again it will reinitialize all three files and
    rename the previous ones filename.bak

A word of caution:
   If you subscribe to mailling lists you should unsubscribe to them before setting up vacation to autoreply.
   Recipients are none to happy about receiving your vacation message for each posted message to the list.