COMSAT(8) | System Manager's Manual | COMSAT(8) |
comsat
— biff
server
comsat |
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
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.
The comsat
command appeared in
4.2BSD.
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.
May 31, 2007 | OpenBSD-current |