So, when you are at a conference — and the hotel blocks port 25 — the best thing in the world, is that old standby — ssh port forwarding.
alias mailshell=’ssh -L 5525:mymailserver.edu:25 username@myserver-with-smtp-access-to-mymailserver.edu’
And then configure my mail client to send to 127.0.0.1:5525
Or use Gmail — whatever floats your boat
Of course, you then might run into the fact that the hotel’s NAT seems to timeout your SSH sessions something awful. That’s when adding:
Host * ServerAliveInterval 120
to your .ssh/config file comes in really handy
bonus tidbit. Sometimes you have to create a set of symlinks for a whole directory. Yay for for loops!
prompt% for file in ls -A /webserverconfigurationfiles > do > fullfile=/webserverconfigurationfiles/$file > ln -s $fullfile $file > done
p.s. Hilton-UF in-room ethernet rocks.