Closing your Math department account
Note that this information pertains to the Math ID account, and any associated "@math.lsu.edu" address. This does not pertain to your institutional MyLSU ID and "@lsu.edu" address. Contact Math HR staff or the IT staff for current info on the closure of your MyLSU account.
When you transition to a different institution, you may keep your math account on our server for up to 3 months after departure, but we urge you to attend to it as soon as possible. If you would like the account to remain for a longer period (such as for continued research collaboration), send a note to merlin@math.lsu.edu to begin the request. The department chair and other Math HR staff will be involved in the approval process.
We can assist you in moving files and math mail (detailed steps below). After your account is closed, we can continue forwarding future incoming math mail to your new address for a requested duration up to 3 years, and we can re-direct future incoming web requests to your new web address for a requested duration up to 3 years.
Note that future server rebuilds or other departmental infrastructure changes may prevent such a forward or re-direct from continuing for the entire requested duration, but we will strive to do so for up to 3 years.
Actively communicate your plans and wishes
- When you know you will be leaving the department (for example, you have accepted a job elsewhere, or you have set a graduation date), please write to techsupport@math.lsu.edu to tell us approximately when you will be leaving and when you would like to take care of the steps on this page, and give us two different ways to contact you in the future, for example a non-LSU e-mail address and a phone number. If your plans change, let us know.
Steps you should take before departing Baton Rouge
- Consider any locations where you may have stored local data, such as an office computer's 'scratch' space or one of the computational cluster computers. Retrieve any files from these locations before leaving Baton Rouge. These files will NOT be backed up after your departure.
If you have already left Baton Rouge, please contact Math IT staff as soon as possible if you think you left behind important, locally-stored data.
Steps you should take as soon as you obtain your new mail address
Note: If you obtain your new e-mail address prior to departing Baton Rouge, we urge you to complete the following steps from within our department, as we can then provide in-person assistance.
- If you have separate math mail from LSU mail, then do the following steps for each!
- Set up forwarding on the old account to forward any future incoming mail to the new account. Although the old account will eventually go away, this step meanwhile ensures no more mail will end up there.
- The next step below can be tedious (and take several days) if you have a lot of folders and/or a lot of mail. We can do this step for you using scripts that loop across folders and across mail in folders, but to obtain our assistance you must arrange to get with us and authenticate us into your source and destination accounts.
- Use an IMAP mail client, such as Mozilla Thunderbird, and connect it simultaneously to your old mail account here and your new account elsewhere. Then create corresponding folders on your new account, select all the messages within each folder in your math account, and drag the entire group of messages to your new account. This process will slowly empty your old account while populating your new account. Delete the empty folders. You will have completed this part of the process when your old mail account e-mail (all folders, not just the inbox) is completely empty.
Steps you should take as soon as you have file storage elsewhere
- Use file transfer tools (such as FileZilla, WinSCP, SFTP, SSH File Transfer, etc) to transfer your network account files from julia.math.lsu.edu to your new location.
- Delete all your files at julia.math.lsu.edu, including hidden files (whose name starts with a period), leaving behind an empty account.
Verify that your account is truly empty
- Use SSH to connect to julia.math.lsu.edu, and use the command du -sh ~, which reports your total account usage, to verify that your account is empty. If it isn't, our quota page has detailed instructions for locating the remaining files.
Request closure and forwarding
Once both your account and e-mail are empty (see steps above), please send us a message containing appropriate instructions along the following lines:
Math Tech Support, I have moved my existing LSU Math e-mail and account files. My LSU Math account is completely empty, and you may close it at your convenience. My new e-mail address is mynewaddress@somewhere.edu. Since I did not use an LSU Math mail address, there is no need to forward mail. My new e-mail address is mynewaddress@somewhere.edu. I was actively using the LSU Math address myoldaddress@math.lsu.edu, and expect to receive more mail at that address, thus would like you to please forward future incoming mail to my new address for 3 years. I understand the forward may disappear sooner due to future departmental server rebuilds or other infrastructure changes. Since I did not have an LSU Math website, there is no need to re-direct future incoming web requests. My new website address is somewhere.edu/~mynewaddress. I had an active LSU Math website at the address https://www.math.lsu.edu/~myoldaddress, and would like you to re-direct future incoming web requests to my new address for 3 years. I understand the re-direct may disappear sooner due to future departmental server rebuilds or other infrastructure changes. In case you need to reach me, my telephone number is (xxx) xxx-xxxx.
Note: You may request forwards and redirects for less than 3 years (some people see such services as a source of spam and wish to limit their exposure), but no more than 3 years.