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COMSAT(8)		  BSD System Manager's Manual		     COMSAT(8)

NAME
     comsat — biff server

SYNOPSIS
     comsat [-l]

DESCRIPTION
     comsat is the server process which receives reports of incoming mail and
     notifies users if they have requested this service.  comsat receives mes‐
     sages on a datagram port associated with the “biff” service specification
     (see services(5) and inetd(8)).  The one line messages are of the form:

	   user@mailbox-offset

     If the user specified is logged in to the system and the associated ter‐
     minal 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 termi‐
     nal.  Lines which appear to be part of the message header other than the
     “From” or “Subject” lines are not included in the displayed message.

OPTIONS
     The comsat program supports this option:

     -l	    The -l option turns on syslogd(8) log messages.

FILES
     To find out who's logged on and on what terminals comsat consults:

     /var/run/utmp
     /var/run/utmpx

SEE ALSO
     biff(1), inetd(8), syslogd(8)

HISTORY
     The comsat command 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.

     comsat runs as root so that it can open the users maildrop.

BSD				 May 29, 2010				   BSD

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