comsat(1M)        MISC. REFERENCE MANUAL PAGES         comsat(1M)



NAME
     comsat, in.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(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 mes-
     sages 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 char-
     acters 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

SEE ALSO
     services(4), inetd(1M).

NOTES
     The message header filtering is prone to error.




















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