COMSAT(8) BSD System Manager's Manual COMSAT(8)NAMEcomsat — biff server
SYNOPSIScomsatDESCRIPTION
The comsat utility is the server process which receives reports of incom‐
ing 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:
user@mailbox-offset[:mailbox-name]
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”, “To”, “Date”, or “Subject” lines are not included in the dis‐
played message.
If the user specified is logged in to the system and the associated ter‐
minal has the group execute bit turned on (by a “biff b”), two bell char‐
acters (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 ALSObiff(1), inetd(8)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.
BSD July 9, 2002 BSD
