03-06-2002
I never worked on a compaq, but on BSD, where biff was born, all biff did was turn on or off the user execute bit on the tty file of the controlling terminal. A "biff n" made sense because a previous user might have done a "biff y" on the same terminal and left it that way.
On HP-UX, there is no way for a previous user to have run "biff y". And even if the previous user did a "chmod u+x `tty`" for some odd reason, who cares? There is no comsat daemon on HP-UX who is scanning the tty files looking for execute bits.
So people who want asyncronous notification of email on a tty session will need to use newmail. People who don't want asyncronous notification of email on a tty session should do nothing.
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Hello all. I am getting this error on my mail log file at /app/syslog in AIX.
Sep 23 07:12:06 teamaix mail:info bellmail: biff service is not defined in /etc/services
Here is what I have for the settings:
teamaix(root): / -> biff
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Hello all. I am getting this error on my mail log file at /app/syslog in AIX.
Sep 23 07:12:06 teamaix mail:info bellmail: biff service is not defined
in /etc/services
=========================================================
Here is what I have for the settings:
teamaix(root): / -> biff... (0 Replies)
Discussion started by: pregmi
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BIFF(1) BSD General Commands Manual BIFF(1)
NAME
biff -- be notified if mail arrives and who it is from
SYNOPSIS
biff [ny]
DESCRIPTION
Biff informs the system whether you want to be notified when mail arrives during the current terminal session.
Options supported by biff:
n Disables notification.
y Enables notification.
When mail notification is enabled, the header and first few lines of the message will be printed on your screen whenever mail arrives. A
``biff y'' command is often included in the file .login or .profile to be executed at each login.
Biff operates asynchronously via the comsat(8) service. If that service is not enabled, biff will not do anything. In that case, or for syn-
chronous notification, use the MAIL variable of sh(1) or the mail variable of csh(1).
SEE ALSO
csh(1), mail(1), sh(1), comsat(8)
HISTORY
The biff command appeared in 4.0BSD.
BUGS
su(1), and biff don't seem to get on too well. This is probably due to the tty still being owned by the person using su. This can result in
``Permission denied'' messages when attempting to change the biff status of your session.
Please report bugs to netbug@ftp.uk.linux.org including diffs/patches, compiler error logs or as complete a bug report as is possible.
Linux NetKit (0.17-pre-20000412) July 31, 1999 Linux NetKit (0.17-pre-20000412)