Linux Vacation

Linux Vacation is an automatic mail-answering program that brings your vacation message to Linux. It is a derivative of the vacation program that was originally found on agate.berkeley.edu on Nov 16, 1993, in the 386bsd directory. Eric Allman originally wrote the program in 1983, and it is copyrighted by the Regents of the UCB. For this distribution, the copyright disclaimer is valid, making this version provided "as is," and the creator cannot be held liable for any damage, data loss, or earthquakes in the Bay Area.

Version 1.1 is a security-patched version that fixes the security bug in version 1.0 that Olaf Kirch reported to the CERT mailing list. Therefore, it is strongly recommended NOT to use vacation-1.0 any longer. As for copyrights, the original parts of vacation are under the BSD copyright, while the creator places the changes under the GPL. The file COPYING in the directory further explains the copyright notices.

The creator worked towards making this port mimic the version found with SunOS 4.1.x as much as possible. There are minor differences, but it resembles the Sun version more than the original 386bsd source. To unpack the package, create the directory if it’s absent with mkdir -p /usr/src and then input gzip -dc /vacation-1.1.tgz | tar xpvf -.

After unpacking, use the simple command `make install' to install the binary in /usr/bin and the manpages in /usr/man/man*, respectively. However, if you choose different directories, edit the Makefile. In summary, Linux Vacation is an excellent program for automatic mail answering on Linux with extra security and ease of use.