Q: How do I make the printer print single-sided?

Most printers will print on both sides of the paper by default -- to make the print-out single-sided, try adding s at the end of the printer's name. 

Q: How do I add StatNet printers to my personal laptop/ desktop?

Update Mar 2018
Please use TCP/IP printing method

Do not use CUPS method below until further notice

Printers Info:

NOTES: Must be using wired to connect to local StatNet internal network in order to use our printers. 
You can not print from UBC wireless.
Alternate how to add printer usingTCP/IP HPJetdirect Socket printing.

Print server: cups.stat.ubc.ca
http://cups.stat.ubc.ca:631/printers

I) Windows Setup
Step1:
Find out which printer you want to add here:
http://cups.stat.ubc.ca:631/printers
Look at "Description" for the printer Model.
Download  PCL6 or PCL5 or Postscript driver from the Vendor site.
If your printer's Vendor doesn't have one, Windows/MacOSX/Linux operating systems comes with print drivers
installed.  You should choose one of these drivers that is as close as possible to the name of the printer.
Some "Generic Postscript" driver would work but you might lose some special functionality such as Duplex, Booklet.

Do not use "Universal driver"
Install the driver and notice where you install it "c:\....)

Step2:Click on Start -- Setting -- Printer and Faxes
    1.  Select add a printer
    2. Select add a network printer
Click on "Connect to a printer on Internet or home or office network.
    3. Put in for the URL :
       http://cups.stat.ubc.ca:631/printers/Printer_name
       Substitute the name of the printer for Printer_name.
Click Next
    4. For the print driver select correct driver which you have just
   installed.
Click "Have Disk" -- Browse --
Find location of your new printer driver, Select it and OK

II) Mac Leopard / Linux /Unix:
1) Add one printer: ( Mac OSX only)
Open "Systems Preferences" -- Print & Fax
Click on "+" to open 'Add Printer' window
Click "IP" icon then enter:
   Protocol: Select Internet Printing Protocol - IPP
   Address: cups.stat.ubc.ca
   (* "Printer_name" is the name of StatNet printer )
   Queue: printers/Printer_name     [ e.g. printers/hp5      ]
   Name: Printer_name                     [ e.g. hp5, Duplex       ]
   Location:                                           [ e.g. ESB mail room ]
   Print Using: Select Printer Softwares  (ie.  HP Laserjet Enterprise M605 with Duplex option)
                         Check:  Duplex Unit
Click Add

Repeat for each new printer.

2) If you want to have ALL StatNet public servers
WARNING Mac OSX: it will remove ALL your old printers and the removal of the previous printers is not undoable.
Add the following line to /etc/cups/client.conf as root:
     ServerName cups.stat.ubc.ca

Q: How do I bogofilter out spam?

Bogofiltler needs train/retrain often to make it works 100%
See this URL for how it works
http://www.bogofilter.org/

We use the term "ham "for email you want, "spam" for email you don't want.  We also assume you save your ham/spam and others email in mail/ folder.  See Notes below of you only have Mail (uppercase) folder.

  1. Login to  SUN Unix server only.
  2. ssh your_login@stat.ubc.ca  (Be.stat.ubc.ca)

I have have a copy of spam folder for you to start training bogofilter manually.

First step, you need to save lot of spam email to train bogofilter. 

          bogofilter -sM < /usr/local/data/etc/bogofilter/spam
 

Second step, you need "ham" email to train bogofilter. 
You can use any saved email (good known emails) as ham.
          bogofilter -nM <  mail/ham  
or 
          bogofilter -nM < mail/tha

NOTES: If you only see Mail (Uppercase) folder, do this 
          ln -s Mail mail
        
Bogofiler will store your database in your home dir ~/.bogofilter/wordlist.db

Edit your .procmail file using vi or emacs or pico by typing 
         vi ~/.procmailrc

  1. Add to content below:
    :0fw

    | /usr/local/bin/bogofilter -u -e -p

    :0e

    { EXITCODE=75 HOST }

    :0:

    * ^X-Bogosity: Spam, tests=bogofilter

    mail/Bspam

    :0:

    * ^X-Bogosity: Unsure, tests=bogofilter

    mail/Bunsure

    # Used during vacation: forwards to vacation, then makes a cc for # myself

    # Unhash 2 lines below to turn on your vacation

    #:0 c

    #|/usr/bin/vacation -t1d $LOGNAME

    Notes:  "Bunsure" and  "Bspam" are two "spam" and "not sure" spam files that bogofilter saved for you in the mail folder.  You need to check them often to make sure you don't have false positive or false negative. You need to sort  "Bunsure" and  "Bspam" into real "ham" and "spam" and "re-train "your filter to update your bogofitler database (wordlist.db)
                         

To enable the filter type

           vi ~/.forward

and add this line (Note: include the double quotes " ")

"|exec /usr/local/bin/procmail"
When you need to turn on vacation, do not use the "vacation" command to turn your vacation command. Instead add this line to your .procmailrc
# Used during vacation: forwards to vacation, then makes a cc for myself

:0 c

|/usr/bin/vacation -t1d $USER

Automation:
If you setup your as describe above, you can setup a cronjob to update your wordlist.db hourly
   crontab -e     (crontab editor = vi mode.  You can changes by edit your shell environment EDITOR=emacs)
               0 * * * * /usr/local/bin/bgupdate > /dev/null 2>&1

Manual update:
  After saving your new spam/ham form Bspam and Bunsure, run this
         bgupdate

You may need to run it twice the first time.

Advance option: Personalize your bogofilter:
If you want personal configuration for bogofilter, just copy this file /nfs/packages/bogofilter/etc/bogofilter.cf.example to your bogofilter directory.

cp /nfs/packages/bogofilter/etc/bogofilter.cf.example ~/.bogofilter/bogofilter.cf
Q: My email did not arrive or I did not receive the email, where did it go?

Reasons

There are many reasons that would prevent an Email from getting to its destination (whether that be your mailbox or someone else's). Here are some common reasons:

  1. Wrong Email address: either the username portion or the domain portion may be wrong. A common mistake is to include specific hostname to an Email address, such as "user@host.mail.domain" when the correct Email address is "user@mail.domain". You ought to get a notice of this ("bounce message").

  2. Mail too large: most places have restrictions on the size of a single piece of Email they will accept. Exceeding that limit will result in the mail being rejected. You ought to get a notification when this happens.

  3. Mailbox is full: our site enforce storage quotas. If your mailbox size exceeds your allotted limit, no Email can be delivered until you make more space available (i.e. delete some Email). See elsewhere in our FAQ to see how to check quotas.

  4. Mail server is busy or not operational: a mail server (either sending or receiving) may not always be available to immediately deliver mail. In these cases, mail will be queued and delivery retried at periodic intervals until the receiving mail server is available. If the mail server does not respond in a reasonable amount of time, the mail will be deemed non-deliverable, and a bounce message will be sent back to the sender.

    The retry interval and the total retry time policy is set by the sending Email server: at our site, mail will be retried every 4 hours for a maximum of 24 hours.

  5. Blacklisting or spam/virus filtering: some sites use blacklisting, or spam or virus filtering to try to detect unwanted mail and reject them. Depending on the mail policy at the offending site, the sender may or may not be given notice that mail has been filtered.

    At our site, we do employ blacklists and do virus filtering. The sender always gets a notice stating the reasons why their Email was rejected, but some Email users are not techically savvy enough to understand what's going on. If you suspect that Email being sent to you is being blocked, contact the IT staff (see below about reporting mail problems) and they may be able to suggests workarounds or remedial actions.

  6. Mail being forwarded incorrectly or mail loops being formed.

  7. The user has set lax permissions on their home directory. Our mail server, for example, will refuse to deliver mail to a user with a home directory that is world writable.

Most of these problems are apparent when an error message occurs (either from your mail reader or from a Email rejection notice).

How to report problems

When reporting mail problems, it is important to give as much detailed and accurate information as possible. Sometimes the only way to diagnose these problems (especially when the problem is days or weeks old) is by looking through the mail logs, and precise time/sender/recipient details are required to track the problem down. Email headers (envelope information) from Email (if available) is usually useful, and should also be included when reporting problems.

Q: Why is the practice of emailing large attachments to many receipients discouraged?

Sending large attachments via Email is an inefficient and wasteful way of disseminating information to a large group of people, as one copy is made for each recipient. It taxes the network, mail servers, disk storage of both the sender and especially the recipients, and sometimes the recipient's patience if they use a dial-up modem for their internet connection.

The typical scenario is that someone will broadcast information (and sometimes committing the double sin of formatting it in a proprietary format) to a mailing list that may contain hundreds, or even thousands, of recipients. A copy is then made for each individual recipient. So, for example, if 4 megabyte attachment is sent to a department mailing list with 250 people, an aggregate of 1 gigabyte of mail storage is used by this one message.

Some Email accounts (e.g. Hotmail, Yahoo) have size quotas, and sending large attachments to them will either fill up or severely reduce the available space for new mail.

It is also typical that not all of the recipients need or want the attachment, yet these recipients have already expended the considerable computing overhead to receive, scan or filter for spam and viruses, and store the large attachment.

A far better strategy is to post the information or file onto a web site (or FTP site if you have access to one), then Email out a short message that describes the contents and refers interested parties to the URL. This will allow people who want the data to pull the data off the web site at their leisure, and those who don't can delete the message without having incurred the overhead of receiving all the data in the first place.

Using this method with the above scenario, a 1K blurb instead of a 4Mb attachment will mean a three-orders of magnitude (1/4000th) reduction in computing resources.

Q: What is phish and why you should never divulge private information over email?

http://www.math.ubc.ca/MathNet/FAQ/?Phish.html

Q: How do I send email with forbidden filename extension, ie: .exe?

Our mail server rejects Email with attachments that have filename extensions which can potentially carry malware (i.e. viruses). Any attempt to receive or send Email with such an attachment will generate an error message, along with a reference to a URL which explains the situation:

http://www.stat.ubc.ca/php/Reject/?Attach=bad.exe

Going to that URL will give an explanation of why this is done, as well as some methods to work around this restriction.

Q: How do I read my StatNet email or setup incoming IMAP server?

How do I set Outgoing SMTP server?

I. Webmail:
    http://webmail.stat.ubc.ca

II. Pine/Alpine or Elm/Mutt via SSH login

  •    If you have a SSH (secure shell) capable host, you can login to any of our blic unix hosts (e.g. be.stat.ubc.ca) and use the command line mail reader (e.g. pine).
  •    If you don't have SSH, but you do have network access and the ability to install software, you can download SSH from our FTP archives and install it. For example, to get the Windows SSH client, go to

http://www.math.ubc.ca/~ftp/clients/Win/Ssh2/
ftp://ftp.math.ubc.ca/client/Win/Ssh2/

III. If you have a PC with network access, you can use an Email reader such

  • PC-Pine
  • Thunderbird
  • Apple Mail
  • Outlook

to connect to our remote mail service and retrieve your Email, You must configure your Email reader to use one of 2 remote Email protocols:

1. The IMAP protocol is the preferred choice. IMAP will do operation on a remote mailbox, rather than trying to download your INBOX and doing local operations as POP/POP3 would. Our IMAP installation is also set up to access your personal mailboxes (not just your INBOX as POP3 does), thus allowing you to access the same mail as you would with WebMail or pine.

Here are the parameters you need to know:

  • Protocol: IMAP
  • Incoming mail server: imaps.stat.ubc.ca
  • Port:
    • If using STARTTLS: 143 
    • If using SSL: 993
  • Mail Folder Prefix: (leave empty)

2. The POP/POP3 protocol is less desirable.   pop/POP3 will try to download your INBOX down to your local disk.  Be careful to set "Leave mail on server" or "Don not download INBOX"

  • Protocol: POP/SSL
  • Incoming mail server: pop.stat.ubc.ca
  • Port: 
    •  If using STARTTLS: 110
    •  If using SSL: 995

If you use a search engine to search for terms like the mail client you are using (e.g. "Thunderbird"), the protocol (e.g.      "IMAP"), and a keyword like "setup" or "configuration" you should be able to find step by step instructions on where to input the above information. (Make sure you substitute their values for our's!)

Q: How do I use To/Cc/Bcc/Fcc/Lcc in PINE?

In PINE, you can specify the outgoing message header options: To, Cc, Bcc, Fcc and Lcc.

TO

Send this message to the following e-mail address (REQUIRED).

CC (CARBON COPY)

Send a carbon copy to the given e-mail address.

BCC (BLIND CARBON COPY)

Send a blind carbon copy to the given e-mail address. There will be nothing in the message header the that indicates a Bcc: was sent. The To: and Cc: recipients will not know a copy was sent to the Bcc: recipients.

FCC (FILE CARBON COPY)

Save a copy of this outgoing message into a file. The default file is "sent-mail". You may type Ctrl+T to get a list of all your folders and select one to use as the FCC for this message.

LCC (LIST CARBON COPY)

Send a copy of the message to a list of people but avoid having all of their addresses visible, in order to reduce clutter when the message is received.

To create a list of e-mail address, select the ``ADDRESS'' submenu in the main menu of PINE. Then type ``@'' to add new e-mail list.

When you compose your e-mail message, leave the header option To: blank. And type the nickname of the e-mail list in the header option Lcc:. Each recipient in the e-mail list will receive the message without their address being visible.

You need to use Ctrl+R to turn on/off the Bcc, Fcc, and Lcc header options.

Q: Email aliases, how to figure out who are in an aliases? Ex: who are in students@stat.ubc.ca?

Login to Unix servers (Be.stat.ubc.ca)
$ ssh your_email@stat.ubc.ca
         Type this:
 $ less /usr/local/data/stat-mailaliases/aliases
      
and browse through to get necessary information. It will contain lines like these:

help:tha,thi,binh.dang
grads:grad
students:grad

which explain that "help" includes "hi,tha and Binh.Dand" in help group. There is no misterious difference between "grad", "grads" and "students" in our department.

Also, there will be lines like the following:

grad: :include:/etc/stat-mailaliases/grad.list

which instructs us look at the given file to get the list of people included into "grad" alias. To look at this list just pull this file on your screen by

 less /usr/local/data/stat-mailaliases/grad.list

You will see a simple one-name-by-line list of all grad students' emails.

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