MUSS Help: Differences in MUSS

• Executive Summary
• New Features
• Differences
  • Passwords
  • Using Telnet
  • Web Pages
  • Mail
• What about my files?
  • Web Pages
  • Aliases
  • Forward File
  • Signature File
  • Address Book File
  • Mail Folders

In 1993, MUSS was put into production to fill the need for a communication vehicle amongst Undergraduate students and Faculty. At that time, the 'current' state of technology was 'telnet/Pine'. This technology consisted of students 'telnet'ing into MUSS and invoking PINE to read and compose electronic mail (e-mail). Since that time, great strides have been made in the area of software facilitating Electronic Communication.

In September, 1999, a group of Engineering students undertook a project on behalf of CIS to examine the business and technical aspects of providing e-mail service on campus. The project report was submitted in December 1999 and included a recommendation to replace the 'telnet/Pine' technology with a software product called CommuniGate Pro from Stalker Software. In February, 2000, CIS began evaluating this software to examine the feasibility of converting to it. There was a period of consultation and discussion with respect to other options prior to the decision to proceed in May 2000. It was determined that it would be advantageous to the majority of undergraduate students for CIS to switch to this vehicle of e-mail delivery. A conversion plan was formulated and the target date set at August 1st, 2000 as the implementation date. This date corresponds to the start date of students requesting CIS services for the academic year 2000-2001. As of August 1, 2000 students will no longer be able to access their email messages from 'Pine'. This document is one of the results of the implementation plan and will tell you the changes and new features available on MUSS.

Web Interface

The motivation for switching to Communigate Pro was to provide a Web Interface for students' e-mail. This product also provides an easy interface to managing your personal Web Pages.

The URL to access MUSS is:
http://muss.cis.mcmaster.ca

Please note: if there is no interaction with the MUSS server over a period of 1 Hour or more, you will be logged out of your account. This is a safety feature in case you leave your account open by mistake. If you are composing an e-mail message, there is no actual interaction with the MUSS server. If you take more than 1 Hour to compose a message, you will get an error message stating that you have been logged out of your account when you press 'Send'. Your message will be lost and not be sent. To prevent accidental loss of a composition, it is suggested to periodically save your message as a draft. Not only will this save a backup copy of your message in your "drafts" folder, but it also initiates an interaction with the MUSS server which will prevent an unwanted log out from your account.

Formerly students had one password for accessing both muss e-mail and course materials kept on the CIS computing labs "K" drive. Every student will now have _two_ passwords, actually two accounts: one account to access e-mail, and the other to access the CIS lab server K drive via FTP. When one password is changed, the other will not be changed automatically. To change your e-mail password, use the Web interface to muss e-mail. To change your FTP K drive password, telnet to muss and choose the "change password" option from the menu. If you forget your password, please report to a CIS computing lab and talk to the Student Consultant on duty. Your password will take up to 24 hours to be reset. Please note that having a "shell" account on MUSS is not granted automatically: send an e-mail to the CIS Help Desk (helpline@mcmaster.ca) to request access. SEE next paragraph for more details.

Shell account access to MUSS using Telnet will be limited due to the load on the system of using Pine. (A shell account grants access to check your e-mail using pine as well as other features that were available with the old system - lynx, trn, talk, etc.) Meritorious requests of telnet access will be considered on a case by case basis for clients with special needs. These requests should be made through the CIS helpline by sending an e-mail to: helpline@mcmaster.ca

It should be noted that LYNX, TRN, and TALK will not be available without Telnet access.

There are four differences that are note-worthy.

1. for others to view your Web Pages, they need to be told to put the tilde (~) before your UserID. The new URL would be 'http://muss.cis.mcmaster.ca/~UserID'.
2. there is now a limit of one hundred (100) files that can be used in your Web Page area. There is also a limit of one megabyte (1 MB); this is the same as before.
3. sub-directories are not allowed.
4. the file index.html is not the file that is used by the Web Server when the above URL is used. The new Web Server uses the file with the name default.html. This is consistent with most Web Servers.

There are a number of changes that you should be aware of and conduct your usage accordingly.

1. Disk Quota has been increased from one megabyte to three megabytes. When you get close to exceeding your Disk Quota, a warning message is issued upon login.
2. Your INBOX is now included in your Disk Quota.
3. A mailbox folder named "news" will contain news and updates from CIS. This mailbox folder and its contents are not included in your Disk Quota.
4. If a message is sent to you that would cause you to exceed your quota, it will be held be for FIVE days. If you reduce your disk usage sufficiently within that time, the message will be delivered to your account. If you do not reduce your disk usage, the message will be returned to the sender as undeliverable.
5. The Telnet/PINE technology made it difficult to contract a virus from an e-mail attachment. By using the Web interface, contracting a virus is easier and caution should be used whenever you open an attachment. Of course, for those using Mail Clients like Internet Explorer, Netscape, Outlook Express, etc, the risk is the same regardless of the software on the server.
6. In the Web Interface, it has been observed that multiple 'white' spaces are displayed as one space. This can lead to rather odd output if the message has some sort of structure. The actual mail message is not changed. If you use a Mail Client to retrieve the message, the white spaces will be as they were in the original message.

The rest of this document provides documentation of what happens to files of accounts that existed as of July 31, 2000 on MUSS. If you got an account on MUSS after July 31, 2000, you can skip the rest of this document.

Students' web pages will be transferred to appropriate CommuniGate Pro area. If you have subdirectories, the file names will be changed to the form 'subdir1.filename' (i.e. the slash (/) is changed to a period (.)). The file index.html will be renamed to default.html.

Aliases were generated if your UserID was changed. This would normally occur if you have a legal name change. Existing aliases will be dropped during the conversion. This is not a real change since these are dropped each academic year. These aliases are only to act as a bridge and give some time for your correspondents to make the change to your address.

The .forward file is used to redirect e-mail arriving at your MUSS account to some other host. The contents of the .forward file will be converted and placed in your MUSS account. You are encouraged to review your new Forwarding Rules to verify continuance of your e-mail.

ProcMail users please note: No conversion will be attempted. You will need to use the Web Interface section 'FWD & AutoReply' to generate the rules to accomplish what was done by ProcMail.

The .signature file will not be converted because the manufacturer of CommuniGate Pro has not made provision for this in their API. The .signature file will be put in your Web Pages area with the name signature.txt. It is suggested that you view it using the 'Web Site' section of the Web interface and use the cut and paste functions to copy it to the Signature box of your account.

The .addressbook file will not be converted because there is an incompatibility between the Pine and the new MUSS address books. The .addressbook file will be put in your Web Pages area with the name addressbook.txt. You can use the 'WebSite' section of the Web interface to view this file.

A mail folder is a file that conforms to the Unix Mail Format. If you have a subdirectory in your home directory with the name of mail, files in that mail subdirectory will be transferred to your MUSS account area with the same name with a prefix of mail.

If no mail subdirectory is found, all files in your home directory will be examined. All files that conform to the Unix Mail Format will be transferred to your CommuniGate Pro account area with no prefix.

It should be noted that due to a formatting change of messages in MUSS, the order of all messages received prior to August 1, 2000, will be undefined. The messages will have a "Received" indicator of "Not Yet". This indicates that the message is incompatible with the new system's internal flag utility and the attributes of these messages will change back to unread (i.e. closed envelopes) every time you log into your account.