redhat man page for comsat

COMSAT(8)						    BSD System Manager's Manual 						 COMSAT(8)

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

     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"				  Linux NetKit (0.17-pre-20000412)