in.comsat(1M)                                             System Administration Commands                                             in.comsat(1M)

NAME

       in.comsat, comsat - biff server

SYNOPSIS

       /usr/sbin/in.comsat

DESCRIPTION

       comsat is the server process which listens for reports of incoming mail and notifies users who have requested to be told when mail arrives.
       It is invoked as needed by inetd(1M), and times out if inactive for a few minutes.

       comsat listens on a datagram port associated with the biff service specification (see services(4)) for one line messages 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 printed when
       displaying the message.

FILES

       /var/adm/utmpx  user access and administration information

ATTRIBUTES

       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE         |      ATTRIBUTE VALUE        |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability                 |SUNWrcmds                    |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO

       svcs(1), inetadm(1M), inetd(1M), svcadm(1M),services(4), attributes(5), smf(5)

NOTES

       The message header filtering is prone to error.

       The in.comsat service is managed by the service management facility, smf(5), under the service identifier:

       svc:/network/comsat:default

       Administrative actions on this service, such as enabling, disabling, or requesting restart, can be performed using svcadm(1M). Responsibil-
       ity for initiating and restarting this service is delegated to inetd(1M). Use inetadm(1M) to make configuration changes and to view config-
       uration information for this service. The service's status can be queried using the svcs(1) command.

SunOS 5.10                                                          27 Jul 2004                                                      in.comsat(1M)