notify(1)                      DG/UX R4.11MU05                     notify(1)


NAME
       notify - notify user of the arrival of new mail

SYNOPSIS
       notify -y
       notify [ -n ]

DESCRIPTION
       When a new mail message arrives, the mail command first checks the
       recipient's forwarding file, /var/mail/:forward/user, to see if the
       message is to be forwarded elsewhere (to some other recipient or as
       the input to some command).  notify is used to set up forwarding so
       that the new message is saved both into the mailbox and, if the user
       is currently logged in, he or she is notified immediately of the
       arrival of new mail.

       Command-line options are:
       -n          Remove mail notification facility
       -y          Install mail notification facility

       If invoked with no arguments, notify reports whether automatic mail
       notification is activated or not.

       The notification is done by looking in /var/adm/utmp to determine if
       the recipient is currently logged in, and if so, on which terminal
       device.  Then the terminal device is opened for writing and the user
       is notified about the new message.  The notification will indicate
       whom the message is from.  If the message contains a Subject: header
       line, it will be included.  (For security, all unprintable characters
       within the header will be converted to an exclamation point.)

       If the user is logged in multiple times, he or she will get multiple
       notifications, one per terminal.  To disable notifications to a
       particular login session, the mesg(1) command can be used to disable
       writing to that terminal.

       If there are multiple machines connected together via RFS or NFS,
       notify will look up the /var/adm/utmp files on the other systems as
       well.  To do this, the file /etc/mail/notify.sys will be consulted,
       which will contain two columns, the first being the name of a system
       and the second being a path to find the root filesystem for that
       machine.

       If notify has troubles delivering the mail to the specified mailfile,
       notify will look up the directory of the mailfile in
       /etc/mail/notify.fsys.  If the file's directory is found in the first
       column of the file, the mail will be forwarded to the system listed
       in the second column instead of being returned to the sender.

FILES
       /tmp/notif*             temporary file
       /var/mail/*             users' standard mailboxes
       /var/mail/:forward/*    users' forwarding information
       /usr/lib/mail/notify2   program that performs the notification
       /etc/mail/notify.fsys   list of file systems and home systems
       /etc/mail/notify.sys    list of machines and paths to their root
                               filesystems
       /var/adm/utmp           list of users who are logged in

SEE ALSO
       mail(1), mesg(1).
       User's Guide.

NOTES
       notify uses the ``Forward to >|command'' facility of mail to
       implement notifications.



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