Howto Forward/Redirect Emails

Say you want to forward your BIC email to other accounts out there. Here’s the recipe:

Create a file at the top of your BIC home directory, ~/.forward with permissions rw-,---,--- (ie use the command chmod 600 ~/.forward).
If your username is jane, then the forward file should be located in /home/bic/jane/.forward. NOTE THE DOT IN THE FILENAME.

The mail server will refuse to use a ~/.forward if it is write-enabled by others than you — a security feature.

With you favorite editor (nano, pico, gedit, vi, etc….) insert the email addresses that you want to forward to, either one by line:

a@foo.com
b@bar.org
c@blah.net

or, all on one line with addresses delimited by commas ‘,’ like

a@foo.com, b@bar.org, c@blah.net

You can also simply use the command echo jane@other.net > ~/.forward. Beware: this will clobber any pre-existing ~/.forward.
If you preprend a forwarded address with a backslash “ ” no further forwarding is done, ie the email is delivered locally. Useful to avoid mail loops…
You can also use procmail, a program to process emails (see man procmailrc and man procmailex for examples). The syntax is more complicated but allows to do complex tasks. Note that your ~/.forward will be disregarded if you create a ~/.procmailrc file with procmail recipes in it.
An example of a procmail recipe that does the same as the above ~/.forward:

:0:
{
   ! a@foo.com
   ! b@bar.org
   ! c@blah.net
}