COBRA ~ VIPER
TIPS

E-mail on UNI's Computer Network

Compiled by
Matthew A. Kollasch, Director
matthew.kollash@uni.edu
Instructional Resources and Technology Services
College of Education


Table of Contents

Accessing Cobra/Viper

Your method of accessing COBRA will depend on the type of computer and telecommunications software you use.

UNI Information Systems and Computing Services Starmaster Terminal DU9604

Available Services:

                1 - UNISTAR
                2 - NOVA (nova.cs.uni.edu)
                3 - INFOSYS
                4 - VIPER (viper.uni.edu is ISCS DEC Alpha AXP system)
               44 - VIPER overflow
                5 - VAX (minimal applications, you probably want COBRA)
                6 - ACAD (load balanced between COBRA and VIPER)
               66 - ACAD overflow
                7 - COBRA (cobra.uni.edu is ISCS DEC Alpha AXP system)
               77 - COBRA overflow
                9 - WEHNER (wehner.math-cs.uni.edu)
               10 - ISCSSUN (iscssun.uni.edu)
               11 - LIBCD (Rod Library CD-ROM databases)

Choose SERVICE:

Type 6 and press Enter. The screen will now show:

Wait for SERVICE VIPER START, then press [Return] until prompted for Username
You have been connected to port DECSRV63
service 7 start

Password

Have a new password in mind because after entering SS #, COBRA / VIPER will immediately ask for a new password. It must be at least 6 characters long, but no longer than 32 characters. A combination of letters and numbers or all letters or all numbers can be used; have a backup password in mind, for if the someone on COBRA / VIPER is already using the password you have selected, COBRA / VIPER will not let you use it. You will have to type your new password twice to confirm that it is correct. COBRA / VIPER will force you to change yourpassword every six months.

Electronic Mail -- (email)

At the dollar sign ($) prompt, type mail or m, and press Enter; a MAIL> prompt will appear on the screen.

Sending email to other COBRA / VIPER users:

At MAIL> prompt type send or s, press Enter; system will prompt you with To:

At the To: prompt, type in username of person you are sending message, then press return.

At Subject: prompt enter a brief statement indicating nature of message, press Enter. You will then be in mail editor where the statement [End of File] will appear. Type message here. Editing features are limited: use arrow keys to move around the text; backspace or delete keys should allow you to edit. After completing message press the Control key [Ctrl] as you press the Z key. On IBM's and compatibles you may also press the F10 function key. This will take you out of the mail editor and send message to its destination. You will be returned to the MAIL> prompt.

To cancel a message before sending it, enter [Ctrl] Y. This will cancel your message and return you to the $ prompt. You must then type mail or m to return to MAIL> prompt.

UNIDIR

This search utility allows you to find COBRA / VIPER usernames. At the $ prompt enter unidir . Example: $ unidir smith

UNIDIR provides a list of all names with the search string smith in it -- from smith to smither to smithson. The username, full name, department or student status are displayed.

If you are searching for a common name, such as Smith, you may want to add the /page switch to instruct the computer to pause at the end of each page. For example, type unidir smith/page.

Sending email off campus

This is similar to sending to COBRA / VIPER users, except you must include the domain name of the person you are e-mailing. The format for off-campus e-mail addresses is username@domain.

For example, to send mail to someone with the username, herky-hawk, at the University of Iowa which has the domain name uiowa.edu, you would enter:
To: herky-hawk@uiowa.edu

America Online (aol.com) address to someone with the username chandler:
To: chandler@aol.com

Reading email

When you logon the system will indicate the number of unread email messages.

To read new messages type mail or m at the $ prompt, then press Enter.
At the MAIL> prompt you may type dir to display list of new mail messages.

Messages will appear like this:

#  From                                 Date            Subject
1  Presley@Graceland.org                2-Jan-1995      Viva Las Vegas
2  Crockerb                             6-Jan-1995      Casserole recipe

You may either press Enter and read the messages in the order in which they were received, or you may type in a message number to read a specific message. To read message 2, type 2, then press Enter.

If you have unread messages when you enter mail utility, the system takes you to the NEWMAIL folder. If you have no unread messages, the system takes you to the MAIL folder.

If you want to look at your "old" mail while in NEWMAIL, type dir mail and a list of the mail you have read, but not deleted, will appear. Likewise, if you are in MAIL and want to look at NEWMAIL, enter dir newmail, and a list of unread messages will appear.

Another way to list a directory of email is to list only those messages from a specific person. For example, enter dir/from=jones to list the email in the current folder from the person with the username JONES.

Deleting email messages

When reading an email message you don't want to keep, enter d or delete at MAIL> prompt, press Enter, and that message will be deleted. To delete a range of email messages, enter d x-xx at MAIL> prompt (e.g. to delete messages 1-5 enter d 1-5, or to delete messages 1-3, 5, and 9, enter d 1-3,5,9). To delete all messages in a directory enter d/a.

Replying to a mail message

To reply to a message you are reading type reply or re at MAIL> prompt then press return. The mail editor screen will appear, enter a reply and send using the Ctrl Z key combination.

If you wish to incorporate the original message in the reply, enter reply/extract at MAIL> prompt. You may now edit the original message or add comments. It is customary to put a > at the beginning of each line of the original message to distinguish it from your reply. On IBM and compatibles pressing the F8 function key will add greater than mark (>) and move the cursor down one line. On Macs, F3 will mark the line.

Example:

> I can meet at 2pm on Tues in your office...OK?
That's fine, please bring the policy manual.

Forwarding a mail message

To forward a mail message to someone else type for or forward at the MAIL> prompt while reading the message. You will then be shown a To: prompt. Type in email address and subject. The message will appear; you can add comments before sending it.

Folders

The system creates three folders for you.

NEWMAIL -- newmail arrives and stays here until you open it.

MAIL -- newmail goes here after it has been opened, but not deleted.

WASTEBASKET -- all deleted mail goes here. Deleted mail stays here until you exit the MAIL utility with an exit or e. Exiting with quit or q, does not empty the WASTEBASKET.

Empty folders can not exist. Therefore, if you delete all of your newmail, the NEWMAIL folder disappears until you receive newmail.

Create your own folders

This is a way to manage email by topic. You may be on a budget committee and want to keep mail concerning this in a separate folder. To do so, simply move that mail to its own folder. First, open the message you want to move, then at the MAIL> prompt enter move budget. If this is the first message to be moved there, the system indicates budget does not exist and asks if you want to create it? Respond with a Y.

MAIL> dir foldername    Takes you to the directory named and lists
                        messages in that directory
                        Example:        MAIL> dir budget

MAIL> sel foldername    Takes you to the directory named and displays
                        the number of messages in that directory
                        Example:        MAIL> sel budget

MAIL> dir/fol           Displays directory of all folders
                        Example:        MAIL> dir/fol

MAIL> move              Moves a mail message to selected folder
                        Example:        MAIL> move budget

MAIL> copy              Copies a mail message from one folder to another
                        Example:        MAIL> copy budget

To delete a folder move or delete all the mail from that folder; folders cannot exist if empty. Folder names are displayed in upper right corner of the screen.

Creating/editing text files

You can create text files to send as mail. A text file name should use extension .txt with no spaces. Example: budget.txt or lyrics.txt

Follow these steps:

$ edit lyrics.txt

Blank screen appears if this is new file; text will appear if file already exists. Begin entering/editing text; once you have completed this, press [ctrl z]. You are now back at $ prompt. Enter dir and you will see a directory that includes this new file.

Each time you edit a file at the $ prompt COBRA / VIPER creates a new file and retains your earlier versions. For example, if you have edited budget.txt three times a list of files in your $ directory will include budget.txt;1 budget.txt;2 budget.txt;3. To delete all previous versions of all files in the $ directory enter the purge command.

$ Purge

The most recently edited file, in this case, budget.txt;3, will be maintained and the others will be deleted. Caveat: Using the purge command will delete previous version of all files!

To delete specific versions you must enter the semi-colon and the fileUs version number.

To delete budget.txt;2 do this:

$ del budget.txt;2

To delete all versions of budget.txt do this:

$ del budget.txt;*

The asterisk is a wild card.

Sending a text file

MAIL> s filename.txt     Example:  
MAIL> s lryics.txt

At the TO: prompt enter email address(es).Your text file appears as the message. You may edit it or send as it is. Press to send.

Extract

Takes a message out of mail and creates a file in your system or $ directory for editing or printing. Use file extension .txt

Example:     MAIL> extract budget.txt

You may then exit from mail to the $ directory to edit your new file: budget.txt. To do so enter:

$ edit budget.txt

The mail message will appear on the screen; edit it as desired.

Extract/noheader

Takes a message out of mail without the To/From/CC/Subject email header and creates a file in your system or $ directory for editing or printing. Use file extension .txt

Example:     MAIL> extract/noheader budget.txt

Extract/all

Extracts all mail from the folder you are in and puts it in one text file in your system or $ directory for editing or printing.

Example:     MAIL> extract/all budget.txt

All mail messages in the folder are now in one text file.

Once you no longer need a file you have extracted, it would be a good ideal to delete it. You are allowed only so much disk space (currently 4000 blocks for student accounts) and if you are out of disk space, you will not be able to send email. To see how much disk space you have enter the command show quota at the $ prompt.

Editing your mail header

MAIL> set cc_prompt             creates the carbon copy line in header.

MAIL> set nocc_prompt           removes the carbon copy line from header

MAIL> set personal_name         creates a personal name to the right of your
                                username
Example:     MAIL> set personal_name "Zoe"

Zoe will now appear in the header of all mail sent. If you do not use the quotation marks all letters of the personal name will be in uppercase.

When you use the set command, whatever you set will remain on or off (depending on wether you set it on or off) until you change it later. 

MAIL> show personal_name        displays your personal name

Sending a message to multiple recipients

You can "stack" your addresses at the TO: prompt or the CC: prompt.

Example:  TO: capone, gotti@marion.gov, dillinger
          CC: ness, hoover, purvis

The message will be sent to all six people listed; you can mix on campus and off campus addresses as needed.

Distribution Lists

A distribution list is a file typically used when you need to correspond with many people about the same topic on a regular basis, e.g., members of a department or a class.

Create distribution files at the $ prompt:

$ edit filename.dis     filename is arbitrary --  if it is a budget
                        committee you might use budget.dis

The screen viewed when you enter a email message appears. Enter one addresses per line.

Stracy@aol.com
kaminsky
allen2134
joe.zwerin
tapert9996
smitha
herky-hawk@uiowa.edu

When finished creating list, enter [ctrl z] and you'll return to the $ prompt.

To send a message to a distribution list, enter the MAIL utility.

Example:        MAIL> s
                To:             @budget.dis
                SUBJECT:        year end report
                Enter message
                Enter [ctrl z] to send message to everyone on your list.

The @ symbol tells COBRA / VIPER that you are sending mail via a distribution list. You may mix distribution lists and individual address:

Example:     To: @budget.dis, chandler

You may mix on and off campus addresses. Add your username to the list if you want to receive a copy of everything you send to the people on your distribution list.

E-Mail Aliases

Something similar to distribution lists is e-mail aliases. However, instead of sending e-mail to a list of people, it sends e-mail to just one person. This can be handy when sending e-mail to someone with a long e-mail address or one that's hard to remember.

To create e-mail aliases, you need to create a file named login.com. To do this, type edit login.com at the $ propmt.

Now you have to define the aliases you wish to use. For example, say you want to create the alias Fred for JONESF9876 and Herky for herkey-hawk@uiowa.edu then you would need to add the following lines to your login.com file.

define Fred "jonesf9876"
define Herky "herky-hawk@uiowa.edu"

When you are finished entering aliases, enter [ctrl z] to exit the editor and save the file. You will now need to type @login for the changes you made to your login.com file to take affect. From now on, however, the login.com file will be read automatically whenever you login.

Now, instead of entering the e-mail address at the To: prompt you only need to enter the alias. For example, to send mail to herky-hawk@uiowa.edu, you would type Herky at the To: prompt.

Logging Off

To leave mail enter e or exit to return to $ prompt.
Enter logoff or lo at the $ prompt to exit COBRA / VIPER.

More Commands

mail> help            Displays a series of help screens.

$ show quota          Displays the status of your allotted COBRA / VIPER                                   disk space.

$ show users          Displays list of users currently logged onto COBRA / VIPER.

$ modemuse            Shows how much modem time you have used on the 
                      authenticated modem pool as of midnight.

$ training            Shows the ISCS training schedule.

$ scchours            Shows the hours of the Student Computing Centers.

$ vmsfi               Enters the VMS Frontend Interface which is a menu driven 
                      VMS system, instead of the command line system which you 
                      otherwise use.

ctrl b or ctrl F6     Displays command line where additional commands
                      can be given.

ctrl e                Moves cursor to end of line.

ctrl h                Moves cursor to start of line.

ctrl j                Deletes word just to left of cursor.

ctrl u                Deletes to start of line.

ctrl y                Returns you to dollar sign prompt.

Questions?
Call the Consulting Center at 273-5555