The interactive setup feature of vacation will take care of things
for most users.  If it won't handle your setup, here's what you need
to know:

0.  Full details are available in the man page: man vacation.


1. You can use vacation to create the response or to edit the
   response you have already in your home directory.  That file is
   .vacation.msg (note the lead period in the filename).  To use
   the Subject: line of the mail you're responding to use the
   variable $SUBJECT, like this, for example:
       I'll see your mail about $SUBJECT when I get back.


2. You need to set up the invocation yourself. 

   A. If you have a .forward that doesn't invoke procmail 
      you can do it there.

      1.  As long as you have only addresses in your .forward, add this
          line after whatever is already there:
             "|/usr/local/bin/vacation yourlogin"
          Replace "yourlogin" with your actual Panix login, and don't
          remove the quotation marks or the vertical bar.

          If you want to save a copy to your Panix mailbox along
          with passing it to other addresses and forwarding it,
	  add
	     \yourlogin
          (replacing that with your actual login) to the list of
	  addresses.
          
          That will continue with the forwarding you already have and
          will send an auto-response to each message as well.


      2.  If your .forward invokes a program other than procmail, you
          should make sure that you really want to use both programs.

      3.  When you want to turn vacation off, we recommend that you 
          do so by commenting out the line 
             "|/usr/local/bin/vacation yourlogin"
          in your .forward by inserting a "#" (no quotes) before it:
             #"|/usr/local/bin/vacation yourlogin"
          (You can turn it back on again by removing the "#" mark.)

    B.  If you use procmail, we suggest the following:
      1.  Create a file in your .procmail directory called rc.vacation
      that contains this recipe:

        :0 c
        | /usr/local/bin/vacation yourlogin

             (replace "yourlogin" with your actual Panix username)

      2.  Add this line to your .procmailrc: 
               INCLUDERC=$HOME/.procmail/rc.vacation

          Make sure to locate it _after_ any spam filtering (unless, 
          of course, you want to reply to spam), and _before_ any rules
          that actually deliver those messages you want the autoresponder 
          to answer.

          In particular, if you use IMAP, make sure that rc.vacation
          is listed before the IMAP rule. 

          NB:  Where you locate the vacation rule is very important.
          This rule does not save messages anywhere, it just triggers 
          the reply function and passes messages along to the next rule,
          if there is one.


      3.  When you want to turn vacation off, we recommend that you do
          so by commenting out the line
               INCLUDERC=$HOME/.procmail/rc.vacation
          in your .procmailrc by inserting a "#" (no quotes) before it:
               #INCLUDERC=$HOME/.procmail/rc.vacation
          (You can turn it back on again by removing the "#" mark.)

3. This vacation program sends one message per time interval to
   each address that triggers it.  The default time interval is 1 week.
   You can change that by using the -t flag in the line of your .forward
   file or rc.vacation rule.  For example:
            "|/usr/local/bin/vacation -t12d yourlogin"
   would raise the interval to 12 days.  (See the man page for complete 
   details.)


4. For complete information, see man vacation.  (Yes, I know I said
   that already.)