Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!ucbvax!THUMPER.BELLCORE.COM!nsb
From: nsb@THUMPER.BELLCORE.COM (Nathaniel Borenstein)
Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.andrew
Subject: Re: Why isn't ATK more widely used?
Message-ID: <QahgqYi0M2YtF4qrV0@thumper.bellcore.com>
Date: 1 Aug 90 12:40:04 GMT
References: <4ahTjdsB0KGWQ41FNW@holmes.parc.xerox.com>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
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Excerpts from internet.info-andrew: 31-Jul-90 Re: Why isn't ATK more
wide.. Bill Janssen@parc.xerox. (216)

> Perhaps what we need is another version of `xbiff' called `andybiff'
> which will look at Mailbox rather than /usr/spool/mail/$USER.  Then you
> could have `eatmail' running as a daemon without worrying about it.

Well, you sort of already have this -- the Andrew Console program when
you tell it you're running AMDS checks this way, of course.  The trick
is to fool it into thinking that.  Unfortunately, it now checks
precisely whether or not you're running AMDS to make that determination.
 If you added a preference to tell console "check Mailbox even though
I'm not running AMDS" then you'd get the right mail checking behavior.  

The fix should be very easy.  Right before line 106 of
atk/console/cmd/mailmon.c (which says "SetMailEnv()") you could add a
line something like this (this is untested):

if (UseNonAndrewMail) UseNonAndrewMail = 
environ_GetProfileSwitch("console.alwayscheckmailboxdir", FALSE);

I think that such a single line change would make console work in this
situation, but as I said I haven't tested it.  -- Nathaniel