GTA Technology Training

Mathematics Department
Penn State University
August, 2003

Email

There are two independent computer systems relevant to you at PSU: the university-wide system (your "Access Account"), and the Math Department system (MathNet). You have a separate user name, password, and email address for each of these systems. You can recognize an Access account email address because it ends in "@psu.edu," while a MathNet email address ends in "@math.psu.edu."

@psu.edu Email Addresses

To find someone's @psu.edu email address, use the ph program. This program can find the PSU email address for almost everyone at PSU. Your students will use a system like this to find your email address, and the elion system will send emails to this address.

Try this: Find your @psu.edu email address

@math.psu.edu Email Addresses

You will receive emails from other people in the Math Department at your "@math.psu.edu" email address. To find someone's the @math.psu.edu address, use the command finger.

Try this: Find your @math.psu.edu email address.

Email Forwarding

Most people find it inconvenient to check for new email at two email addresses. It's possible to forward all the messages from one email address to the other, so that you only need to check one address. To forward mail from your @psu.edu email address, you need to go to http://www.work.psu.edu. From that page, follow the link on the right side of the page to change your forwarding address. THe following image shows you what to look for:

Try this: Set your forwarding options to send mail from your @psu.edu address to your @math.psu.edu address.

Checking @math.psu.edu email

There are several different programs that you can use to check @math.psu.edu email. Unless you are familiar with the way email is stored in a UNIX system, it is important that you choose one and only one of these to prevent misplaced messages. Two very popular email programs are pine and Netscape. I recommend that you use pine to check your email. I don't recommend the program MailTool; it is much less user friendly than pine and sends attachments in a non-standard format which can confuse recipients who aren't at Penn State.


If you want to use pine, you will want to learn how to use pine. If you don't want to learn about pine, the next topic is E-Lion