Email: IMAP and SMTP

Overview

There are two primary ways of accessing your email at CSLab. You can either configure and use a client-side mail reader, such as Outlook, Eudora or Alpine, or you can read and send mail via our webmail server. Please note that if you use a client-side mail reader then pay special attention to the section titled SMTP below.

  • Important: Never try to use more than one program to access your mail simultaneously. For example, if you have an instance of Alpine running, do not try to open your mail with Outlook, Eudora, webmail, etc., until you have exited Alpine, or else chaos will ensue.

    All mail messages delivered to you in the past two weeks are copied to a shadow, read-only mailbox in /var/oldmail/<your_login_name>. If you accidentally delete a needed message, or destroy your mailbox, you can recover the lost messages from this file.

    E.g. If you use the "Mutt" program:

    mutt -f /var/oldmail/$USER

    Mail Settings: IMAP

    To use CSLab's IMAP server you must configure your mail client to use SSL or TLS. This prevents your access credientials from being sent in the clear. Instructions for common clients are here.

    For all clients use the following setting:

    IMAP server: imap.cs.toronto.edu

    Mail Settings: SMTP

    In order to send email using the CSLab SMTP server, please configure your mail client as follows:

    SMTP server: mail.cs.toronto.edu

    Be advised that you can only use mail.cs.toronto.edu to send email if you are on the University network. If you are off-campus, say at home, our mail server will refuse to relay email on your behalf since it is only configured to process email from machines with University IP addresses.

    If you wish to use the CSLab mail server remotely (i.e. off-campus), please first connect using VPN or SSH-tunneling. VPN is recommended.