Accounts on tentacle.net come with an email address. You can have a pretty much unlimited amount of mail in your account, and there's effectively no size limits on any messages you send.
Your email address is your username@tentacle.net. It's also possible to set up aliases if you want more email addresses that go to the same account, but you'll need to ask an administrator to set that up.
You can also automatically forward all of your mail to another server by putting a file called .forward in your home directory, and putting the new email address in there. But why would you want to do that?
There are many ways to check your email using tentacle.net. They all have relative benefits and drawbacks, and you may find yourself using several methods, depending on the situation.
The command line presents the most traffic-efficient method of checking mail. If you have a slow connection that doesn't lag (have lots of delay between you and the server) very much, this is the best way to check mail. The major disadvantage is that you can't view graphics or attachments in your emails.
From the command line, you can check your mail using the Mutt application. For those of you familiar with Pine, Mutt works in a similar manner, but is much more configurable and powerful. In addition, since we are using a special mail system here, Pine cannot read the mail directly, and you need to enter your password whenever you use it. If you have never used either application, you would probably best learn Mutt. If you're really used to Pine (which is more widely available on UNIX systems), it's available, but you may want to consider switching.
To check mail using Mutt, just type
chaos[1] % mutt
Many people are used to checking their mail using a web browser; GMail or Hotmail are examples of popular web mail services. The advantage of web mail is that it's accessible from practically anywhere, regardless of the computer you're using. The major disadvantage is that it takes quite a bit of trickery to make it behave with the same level of features and responsiveness as a traditional, dedicated email program on your desktop. Still, web mail software is getting better all the time, and many people prefer this method of checking mail even with other options available.
Tentacle.net's webmail system is fairly convenient and has some useful features, and doesn't have the usual size limitations or huge spam load of other webmail providers. The thing that really sets it apart is that it's truly free -- it's not supported by ads, and it doesn't depend on the success of some corporation's business model.
Our webmail is accessible at https://mail.tentacle.net/
Its use should be fairly self-explanatory; the main concern most users have is with the SSL certificate.
Since you need to enter your password to log in to webmail, we encrypt it using SSL, which makes sure that nobody between you and tentacle.net can read your password (or your email, for that matter) as it's sent over the web. The problem is that for this to work smoothly, we need a special certificate that's signed by one of the major certification companies. That costs about $125/year minimum, and it's actually completely unnecessary for secure communication.[4]
The best way to fix the warnings you'll get when you connect to our mail site is to go to http://www.tentacle.net/certs/ which will explain the details of certificates, and which will allow you to download our certificate and install it in your browser. If you're on the road, however, most browsers will let you accept the connection on a one-time-only basis, and you'll be able to read email without having to install the certificate.
The Post Office Protocol (POP) is another method for checking your email. This method is best for people who only check mail from one computer. The advantages are that all email is stored on your local hard drive, meaning that you can read old emails even if you're not connected to the Internet, and that you can use a full-featured email client, such as Outlook or Thunderbird. The disadvantage is that the system is set up for offline mail reading from a single computer, so if you want to check mail using multiple computers, or if you sometimes use webmail, things can get pretty confusing. IMAP (see Section 5.1.4, “IMAP”) is really the recommended mail-checking protocol these days.
The main reason I mention POP here is that lots of mobile devices and other systems only let you check mail using POP. Just be careful with your settings (I usually recommend turning on the "leave mail on server" option if there is one), especially if you also use webmail or other methods for checking your mail, or you may find that once you download the mail, the POP client deletes it from the server.
The Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is currently the best way of accessing your mail remotely. In fact, the web mail system and Pine both use it behind the scenes to get your mail. IMAP is similar to POP3 in that you can download your messages from the server to an email client (like Outlook or Thunderbird), but it also stores the mail on the server, so you can check the mail from several computers.
Because your entire mail archive is stored on the server, you have many more options for checking it. For example, you could use Mutt at the office, where you have a nice SSH client. When you get home, you can open up Outlook Express and get all of the day's messages. Then, if you're at an Internet cafe and you want to check your mail, you can use the web mail system, and your mail will be there. Not only that, but if you read a message one way, it will be marked read on all other systems, so next time you won't have to go through mail you've already read. The point is that even if you check your mail with one system, it'll all be in every other system, without having to download each message. Additionally, you can sort your mail into folders on the server, and the folders will be right there in webmail and Mutt, without you having to do anything. If you delete or move a message, the change is automatically recorded in every program you use.
In order to use IMAP, you need an email client. Examples are Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Thunderbird, Evolution, and the OS X Mail client, though there are many others out there.
Configuration for each program is quite different, but if you look at the information in Chapter 2, Basic Information, you should be able to fill in the options correctly.
Be sure to turn on SSL/TLS in your mail client. You won't be able to connect otherwise.
[4] What happens if we buy the certificate is that the company verifies that, yes, we are, in fact, tentacle.net. If they're convinced that we are who we say we are, then they sign our SSL certificate. Since they are a massive corporation, they have made deals with all major web browser makers (such as Mozilla for Firefox and Microsoft for Internet Explorer) saying that those makers should trust their signatures. The only thing different with us is that we sign our own certificate, saying that we vouch for ourselves. If you trust us, then you can add us to your browser, and from that time on, your browser will trust anything we sign. Essentially, it just comes down to a verification issue; regardless of that, the data transmitted will be secure.