comsat(1M)


comsat -- biff server

Synopsis

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(1Mtcp), and times out if inactive for a few minutes.

comsat listens on a datagram port associated with the biff service specification (see services(4tcp)) 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/utmp
who's logged on and on what terminals

References

biff(1bsd), inetd(1Mtcp), services(4tcp)

Notices

The message header filtering is prone to error.
30 January 1998
© 1998 The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. All rights reserved.