The JFI mail server is the current-day server which has the most direct lineage of evolution from the original do-all JFI server "control" from many years ago. In fact, "control.uchicago.edu" is one of the names jfimail still answers by on the network to this day, for legacy/compatibility reasons.

Jfimail is a Linux-based Postfix mail server running Spamassassin and ClamAV anti-virus agents for students, faculty, and staff who would like to have a mail service redundant with the campus' own CMail service. This has proven to be helpful during times of campus outages. Also, unlike the campus CMail service, we have no mail quotas, neither for mailbox size nor for age of messages (though if you let your inbox get too big, then your own desktop email program may have issues). We recommend that those keeping a lot of mail break it up into subfolders for better organization and faster folder loading performance.

Another benefit, for those familiar with UNIX mail handling, is that jfimail still offers a traditional UNIX interface to the control of one's mailbox. Most of our Linux desktops NFS-mount the mail spool, and running Pine, Mutt, or any other mailreader that looks at /var/spool/mail for "$MAIL", will work as expected. Also, the creation of .forward and .procmailrc files in the users' JFI home directories will also offer the traditional UNIX control of mail forwarding, delivery, and filtering. The campus once also offered a UNIX-oriented mail solution on harper.uchicago.edu, but harper has now been decommissioned, and the CMail server-end that now replaces the mail server that once stood behind harper is just a network appliance that can only be used via IMAP and POP.

Jfimail does also support IMAP and POP though for users who prefer Thunderbird, Apple Mail, and other similar mailreaders. This service is also available off-campus, and can be used on TCP port 587 (submission) for sending if necessary, in cases where some home Internet providers have been known to keep their customers from sending mail on port 25 to any server other than the ISP's own. (AT&T once did this.)

Many misunderstandings have arisen with the users regarding spam control using our server, and this has been because its default behavior is not the same as the campus server. The CMail service provided by the campus not only tags spam by default, but also junks it into a separate junk folder service, which can be seen by going to another site. Periodically a "Junk Mail Manager" email is sent out notifying users of the subject lines of some of the email that has been junked, in case any of it was sent there by mistake. On the campus mail server, this spam-to-junk behavior happens without any changes or action necessary from the user at all.

By contrast, the JFI server tags (in the subject header) but does not junk any mail at all, regardless of spam status, unless you have setup a .procmailrc file in your home directory telling it to. Additionally, once such a .procmailrc file has been setup, it is possible to implement other even stronger spam filtering measures in the actual .procmailrc file which go further toward combating spam than the Spamassassin agent on the server does, though with the risk that such aggressive filtering may result in excessive "false positives" and mistaken mails going to the Junk folder. At any rate, with this system, the user is completely in control of the amount and type of filtering being done, ranging from none at all (with no .procmailrc file), to only what the server marks, to at the most extreme, what the server marks plus further aggressive filtering measures from the .procmailrc itself. The users can modify their .procmailrc file at any time, and the changes take effect immediately when the file is saved. For users not familiar with procmail syntax, we have provided a pre-written procmail filter, which we periodically update with new filtering approaches as spammers become more devious in their methods. These JFI-managed spam filters are available on request, and will be improved by us as needed without any work from the user.

Email sent from your JFI account using jfimail ends up being sent as USER@jfi.uchicago.edu rather than @uchicago.edu, where "USER" is the JFI login ID and not the campus CNet ID. It may be received from jfimail over a secure SSL connection with POP or IMAP, or using a UNIX mailreader on one of the workstations (such as Pine).