COMSAT(8C)

NAME
comsat, in.comsat - biff server

SYNOPSIS
/usr/etc/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(8C), and times out if inactive for a few minutes.

comsat listens on a datagram port associated with the biff(1) service specification (see services(5)) 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
/etc/utmp
    to find out who's logged on and on what terminals

SEE ALSO
biff(1), services(5), inetd(8C)

BUGS
The message header filtering is prone to error.

The notification should appear in a separate window so it does not mess up the screen.