comsat(8)						      System Manager's Manual							 comsat(8)

NAME

       comsat - The biff server

SYNOPSIS

       comsat

DESCRIPTION

       The  comsat server receives reports of incoming mail and notifies users who request this service.  comsat is invoked by the inetd(8) daemon
       when it receives messages on a datagram port associated with the biff(1) service specification in /etc/services(4).  The datagram  contains
       a  1-line message of the form: user@mailbox-offset If the user specified is logged in and the associated terminal has the owner execute bit
       turned on (with biff y), offset is used as a seek offset into the file named in mailbox.  The first 7 lines or 560 characters of  the  mes-
       sage are printed on the user's system.  The message excludes mail header lines other than the From or Subject lines.

       The  comsat command always tries to convert incoming mail messages from the mail interchange codeset to the user's application codeset.	It
       determines the mail interchange code first by checking the mail message itself to see if it contains the required information.	Otherwise,
       the  system-wide  default mail interchange code in the file /usr/lib/mail-codesets will be used.  If no such system file exists, no codeset
       conversion will be performed.

       The determination of the user's application code in each terminal session is by one of the  following  methods.	 The  application  codeset
       defined	in  the user's Asian tty driver.  The codeset name stored in the ~/.codesetdevname file, where devname is the name of the terminal
       device for the current terminal session.  You can obtain the value of devname by issuing the tty command.  For example, if the tty  command
       returns /dev/ttys8, use ttys8 as the value for devname.	The lang valued option defined in  $HOME/.mailrc or /usr/share/lib/Mail.rc.

FILES

       Specifies  the  command	path.  Includes information about logged-in users and their associated ttys.  File containing mailx subcommands to
       customize mailx for a specific user.  File containing mailx subcommands to change mailx for all users on the system.

RELATED INFORMATION

       Commands: biff(1), inetd(8), mailx(1), mh(1)

       Files: services(4), inetd.conf(4), tty(7) delim off

																	 comsat(8)