How to Set up Mail Forwarding in Unix

The UNIX operating system contains many useful features that are not immediately apparent to the new user. Unless you read a considerable quantity of books and tutorials on the subject, the vast majority of the shell terminal's capabilities will remain unknown. One example is the UNIX mail program's forwarding feature. If you prefer to read all your mail from a single client, you can set up your UNIX mail account to forward all messages elsewhere by typing a few commands.

• 1

  Log in to your UNIX account with your user name and password. Type the command "pwd" (no quotation marks) to confirm that you are in your /home/directory.

• 2

  Enter the command "cat > .forward" (no quotation marks) and type the email address to which you want your mail to forward, on the next line. This will store your forwarding address in a file named ".forward," the default location the mail program checks to see whether to send received email elsewhere. Press "Ctrl" and "D" to close the file and save.

• 3

  Type the command "cat .forward" (no quotation marks) to list the contents of the file, confirming that it contains the correct address.

• 4

  Change the permissions of the file to those required by the mail program with the command "chmod 644 .forward" (no quotation marks).