Email

FIT user email address

FIT employees have an account on the Unix faculty employee server kazi.fit.vutbr.cz. Their official email address is:

login@fit.vutbr.cz (primary)
login@fit.vut.cz (secondary)

FIT students have an account on the Unix faculty student server eva.fit.vutbr.cz. All student email arrives on this server and students can also create their Web pages here. The email address of a FIT student is:

login@stud.fit.vutbr.cz (primary)
login@stud.fit.vut.cz (secondary)

This address is the official address of the FIT student and all emails related to FIT studies will be delivered to it. According to the Study and Examination Rules, students must use this address for electronic communication with the faculty. We encourage students not to redirect mail to other mail servers using a .forward file, but to use a safer and more robust .procmailrc.

Unix account is used to login (without domain) (see student's account and data security).

Reading email

There are several options to read your email:

Keep the mail on the server eva and read it locally using mutt or alpine - after login in with ssh (in Windows use Putty).
Keep the mail on the server eva and read it remotely by a program that can communicate with the IMAP4 server (Mozilla Thunderbird, Outlook, Android/K9-Mail, etc.). If you do not want or cannot use the IMAP4 client, you can use Web email https://roundcube.fit.vutbr.cz or https://email.fit.vutbr.cz.
You can redirect mail to another server. However, if you redirect mail incorrectly, the first delivery error can easily cause the mail to loop and thus flood the mailbox with error messages. If you really want to redirect mail, follow the instructions for the procmail delivery program or use https://email.fit.vutbr.cz (Filters). If a mail is not delivered due to incorrect mail forwarding, you may lose important study information and instructions.

Using options A or B your mail is accessible from any computer connected to the Internet, mailbox size is not limited, and incoming mail is filtered against viruses and spam.

Sending and receiving email

When sending mail via the BUT computer network, it is in accordance with the BUT Computer Network Operating Rules required the sender's address to be his/her official address. Use of non-official email server in BUT network is prohibited and is blocked at the BUT firewall. Sending of spam and other materials contrary to the principles of acceptable use of the BUT and CESNET2 networks is a violation of the BUT Computer Network Operating Rules . The size of both sent and received mails, including attachments, is limited to 32MB. On sending and receiving, mails are automatically scanned for undesirable contents and possibly rejected or discarded. If you are sending a mail that contains dangerous content, you will receive notification of rejection or discard of attachment. Notifications of discarded virus-infected mails are not send because there are even thousands of such events during virus or spam storms. An overview of undelivered mails and removed attachments can be found in the FIT information system.

Limits on mail

Mailbox size is not limited. However, we recommend that the incoming mailbox (INBOX) size does not exceed 1GB. Older mails you want to keep can be moved to another mailbox once a semester/year. Similarly, we recommend keeping your outbox within reasonable limits. The reason is the load of backups, these mailboxes change very often, so it is necessary to back up them every day with differential backups, which are then unnecessarily large.

Parameters for setting IMAP4 client

Parameter	Settings	Comment
Sender's address	login@stud.fit.vutbr.cz	You are obliged to use your official address
SMTP server	smtp.stud.fit.vutbr.cz	SMTP server for outgoing mail
SMTP port	587	Port 587 is intended for submitting email from client programs, requiring authentication (ie Unix login and password). Because the password is sent in an open form, you must use encrypted SSL at the same time. Unfortunately, Outlook cannot start SSL on a port other than 25 with the STARTTLS command, so you must use port 465 for Outlook.
SMTP port	465	Port 465 is designed for SMTP over SSL (without the STARTTLS command, so communication starts immediately encrypted, unlike ports 25 and 587, where it starts in text and switches to encrypted with STARTTLS). You can use this port in Outlook, but you can also use it in Thunderbird.
SMTP port	25	May be used in need, some ISP block this port
SMTP over SSL	yes	For SMTP authentication, the password is in the open form, login is not allowed on the unencrypted connection.
Authentication	yes	Authentication is required (i.e. Unix login and password - attention, login only, not the whole email address). Do not check SPA box (Outlook - Secure Password Authentication) - this is not supported
IMAP server	imap.stud.fit.vutbr.cz	IMAP server for reading mail
IMAP port	993	Port for IMAP encrypted SSL connection. Because the password is sent by the IMAP protocol in the open form, authentication on the IMAP/143 port without SSL is not allowed (for some clients it is possible to force encryption on port 143 by the STARTTLS command/setting). While it is possible to connect remotely to port 143, login is not allowed without switching to an encrypted connection.
IMAP over SSL	yes	Remote access is permitted over encrypted channel only.
Root folder		Path to root folder must be empty. The real local location of mailboxes is $HOME/mail
Ph.D. students (i-account) and employees
Sender's address	login@fit.vut.cz	only these three parameters differ, for the rest see above
SMTP server	smtp.fit.vutbr.cz
IMAP server	imap.fit.vutbr.cz

Note: this may seem quite complicated. However both MS Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird support autoconfiguration.

Mailbox blocking

The mailbox is blocked whenever user account is blocked, e.g. when study at FIT is terminated. When account is unblocked mailbox is accessible again.

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Send comments to michal@fit.vutbr.cz