notify(1)                                                  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:

             -y          Install mail notification facility.

             -n          Remove 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 who 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.  This prevents
             notify from writing an escape sequence to a ``smart'' terminal
             which could potentially cause the terminal to be programmed
             through a mail message.

             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.





                           Copyright 1994 Novell, Inc.               Page 1

      notify(1)                                                  notify(1)


            If there are multiple machines connected together via a
            distributed filesystem, 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 deliver the file to the user's regular
            mailfile.

      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.sys
                              list of machines and paths to their root
                              filesystems
            /var/adm/utmp     list of users who are logged in

      REFERENCES
            mail(1), mailcheck(1), mesg(1)

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



















                          Copyright 1994 Novell, Inc.               Page 2