Copyright (c) 1983 Regents of the University of California.
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@(#)comsat.8 6.1 (Berkeley) 04/27/85

C 5 comsat - biff server /etc/comsat Comsat is the server process which listens for reports of incoming mail and notifies users if they have requested this service. Comsat listens on a datagram port associated with the ``biff'' 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 included in the displayed message.

/etc/utmp to find out who's logged on and on what terminals biff(1) The message header filtering is prone to error.

Users should be notified of mail which arrives on other machines than the one they are currently logged in to.

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