ssh-ing into wemail

[ProtagonistJ]

now that i've got your attention...

transfer student from another engineering school who's very used to ssh-ing or telnetting and using pine to get my email schwerve on.  and then i come to siue...

the question become thus: what are the addresses for any/all ssh/telnet servers on campus?  googling "ssh mail" and "telnet mail" only irritates me by throwing up resume pages of people who can some how spell ssh or telnet and have read an email at some time in their past.  

and, while we're on the subject, is it ftp or sftp that this wonderful and slightly backward institution supports?  i've heard it both ways and wouldnt be surprised if either were true.  

[Chris Swingler]

You can use either Telnet or ssh to get your mail; and Pine is installed on the server.  You need to ssh/telnet into cougar.siue.edu, and you need to do it from on campus.  Cougar will reject attempts to connect if you aren't in the 146.163.x.y subnet.

In _theory_, since cougar has sshd running, it _should_ support sftp/scp.  But I've never managed to get it to work.  (nmap wasn't able to figure out the version of ssh it's running.)  To get files up there in your home directory, you'll need to ftp into ftp.siue.edu.  ftp'ing into cougar.siue.edu doesn't work reliably in my experience.

If you're not on campus, I'd suggest finding a good POP3 client (Evolution, mutt, etc) and connect to pop.siue.edu.  Cougar, from what I've heard, supports IMAP, but I've never managed to get it to work, either.  (You'll need to run a local sendmail server, of course.)

[ProtagonistJ]

it rejects *all* ssh/telnet connections from off campus?  what the heck?  so there's no way to ssh/telnet from off campus?  what in the holy crap is that about?  how many defense secrets can there possibly in those machines?  

yeah, i need to run pine; nothing else will do.  couldn't run pine through some magical pop3 client, could i?  yeah i doubt it too.

[William Grim]

what in the holy crap is that about?

First off, stop being so colorful.

Secondly, if you are a student in the engineering building, you can SSH to home.cs.siue.edu and then ssh to cougar.

yeah, i need to run pine; nothing else will do.  couldn't run pine through some magical pop3 client, could i?  yeah i doubt it too.

And, um, yeah, you can run pine on your own computer and use fetchmail as a daemon.

[Guest]

I just SSH into a CS server and then tunnel my IMAP connections or use the server's SSH to connect to cougar.siue.edu.  The reason I tunnle IMAP instead of just using it is that the password does not go over my cable modem clear-text that way.

[Peter Motyka]

the question become thus: what are the addresses for any/all ssh/telnet servers on campus?  googling "ssh mail" and "telnet mail" only irritates me by throwing up resume pages of people who can some how spell ssh or telnet and have read an email at some time in their past.  

You have excellent Internet search skills... I know when I need access to a specific server on the Internet, I simply type broad search terms into google and stomp my feet when I don't get satisfactory results.

and, while we're on the subject, is it ftp or sftp that this wonderful and slightly backward institution supports?  i've heard it both ways and wouldnt be surprised if either were true.

The only thing that is backwards here is you go about finding information. You will be shocked to find out there are a wealth of server resources at SIUE, especially in the engineering departments... Servers that will definitly allow you to get your SSH encryped e-mail schwerve on...

[R. Andrew Lamonica]

Take it easy Peter.  ;-)

I’m sure he was kidding about using Google to find our mail server and if he wasn’t, the joke about the resumes was funny.  

I have seen resumes that contain every technical word the author knows in an attempt to sound knowledgeable.  Unfortunately, this trick usually has the opposite effect as these resumes are usually short. :-P   On the other hand, I have a long-form (3x the normal length) version of my resume that I use to submit to private databases.  I figure that the HR people who use these databases will probably never read the whole resume.  They will most likely just do searches on words related to the job/project they need people for and then mail each person that comes up a request for an updated resume.   This way they spend no time reading resumes of people who are already employed somewhere else and not looking to change jobs.
 

[Guest]

truly, pete, you've both wowed and cowed me with your technical erudition.  "..stomp my feet when I don't get satisfactory results."  it's like you've got a camera watching me.  indeed, you ARE the pumpkin king.  

of course the google paragraph was a joke and a ridiculous one at that; though gmail DOES promise to bring about economic prosperity to Iraq and a steady stream of lady-love for yours truly, google cannot 'be all things to all men.'  it's hard to accept, but i do understand.  (hint: that was a joke too)

the issue, because you all just need to know (that's sarcasm, petey.  i don't really think you need to know.  i'm just typing to hear myself type, so to speak.), is that i've got some archived email that The MAN says is only accessible through pine.  yet i'm a scant two thousand miles away from our fair Edwardsville.  and, since telnet is the stuff of devils, ssh is the only way to go.  that's right, daddy no like the telnet.  

i'd really like to KISS (keep it simple stupid) this thing since CLIs, while charming in their own way, aren't exactly my idea of a good time.  hence the question about magical pop3 clients and my foray into this wonderful board in the first place.  

but i've got a good idea of where to start, so thanks for that.  plus there's the tips on improving my resume.  you guys are the best!

[R. Andrew Lamonica]

Excuse me for exposing my own ignorance, but what are "CLIs"?

[ProtagonistJ]

No, it's kind of an arcane term.  Not knowing it doesn't necessarily equate ignorance.  

I meant that to mean "Command Line Interfaces."  I'm not sure when and where it came into being, but I read it first in an essay by Neal Stephenson (author of Snowcrash and Cryptonomicon among others).  

The essay is entitled "In the beginning... was the command line."  The online versions are a bit dated now, but it's still good writin'.  

Find it online at:
http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html

Or buy a pretty version from Amazon.com.

[Guest]

You have excellent Internet search skills... I know when I need access to a specific server on the Internet, I simply type broad search terms into google and stomp my feet when I don't get satisfactory results.

I got a good laugh from this... thanks!

Anyone need a job? Got citizenship? Imaps.cc (I work there, and love it.. and we need some more people. VB/Oracle/Aero/GIStech...)

Derrick (alumni)