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.

Linux NetKit (0.17-pre-20000412)                 July 31, 1999"                                        COMSAT(8)