7.1.2.3. Mail
Regularly clean out your mailbox, make sub-folders and automatic
redirects using procmail (see the
Info pages) or the filters of your
favorite mail reading application. If you have a trash folder,
clean it out on a regular basis.
To redirect mail, use the .forward
file in your home directory. The Linux mail service looks for this
file whenever it has to deliver local mail. The content of the file
defines what the mail system should do with your mail. It can
contain a single line holding a fully qualified E-mail address. In
that case the system will send all your mail to this address. For
instance, when renting space for a website, you might want to
forward the mail destined for the webmaster to your own account in
order not to waste disk space. The webmaster's .forward may look like this:
Using mail forwarding is also useful to prevent yourself from
having to check several different mailboxes. You can make every
address point to a central and easily accessible account.
You can ask your system administrator to define a forward for
you in the local mail aliases file, like when an account is being
closed but E-mail remains active for a while.
