NAME
comsat —
biff server
SYNOPSIS
comsat |
DESCRIPTION
Thecomsat utility is the server process which receives
reports of incoming mail and notifies users if they have requested this
service. The comsat utility receives messages on a
datagram port associated with the “biff” service specification
(see services(5) and
inetd(8)). The one line messages are of the form:
If the user specified is logged in to the
system and the associated terminal has the owner execute bit turned on (by a
“biff y”), the
offset is used as a seek offset into the appropriate
mailbox file and the first 7 lines or 560 characters of the message are
printed on the user's terminal. Lines which appear to be part of the message
header other than the “From”,
“To”,
“Date”, or
“Subject” lines are not included in
the displayed message.
If the user specified is logged in to the
system and the associated terminal has the group execute bit turned on (by a
“biff b”), two
bell characters (ASCII \007) are printed on the user's terminal.
If mailbox-name omitted, standard mailbox assumed.
FILES
- /var/run/utmp
- to find out who is logged on and on what terminals
- /var/mail/user
- standard mailbox
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
The comsat utility appeared in
4.2BSD.
BUGS
The message header filtering is prone to error. The density of the information presented is near the theoretical minimum.
Users should be notified of mail which arrives on other machines than the one to which they are currently logged in.
The notification should appear in a separate window so it does not mess up the screen.