NAME

     comsat — biff server

SYNOPSIS

     comsat

DESCRIPTION

     Comsat is the server process which receives reports of incoming mail and notifies users if they have
     requested this service.  Comsat 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:/path/to/mailbox

     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” or “Subject” lines are not included in the output.

FILES

     /var/run/utmp  to find out who's logged on and on what terminals

SEE ALSO

     biff(1), inetd(8)

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.

     Please report bugs to netbug@ftp.uk.linux.org and include diffs/patches, compiler error logs or as complete
     a bug report as you are able.

HISTORY

     The comsat daemon appeared in 4.2BSD.