Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!mp.cs.niu.edu!rickert From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc Subject: Re: SMail and biff Keywords: smail, biff, comsat Message-ID: <1991May22.164500.2149@mp.cs.niu.edu> Date: 22 May 91 16:45:00 GMT References: <22812@shlump.lkg.dec.com> <22833@shlump.lkg.dec.com> Organization: Northern Illinois University Lines: 37 In article <22833@shlump.lkg.dec.com> lan_csse@netrix.nac.dec.com (CSSE LAN Test Account) writes: >>Huh? Biff (more properly, comsatd) waits for messages (on udp port 512) >>from your MTA. Upon receipt of a delivery notification from the MTA, it >>attempts to notify the user that mail has arrived. If your biff behaves like >>you say it does, it's not the biff that the rest of us run (derived from BSD). > >Yes, it quite definitely acts that way. I just went to a su window on this >Ultrix 4.1 machine, and typed: > (echo 'From: root'; echo Hello.; echo '') >>/usr/spool/mail/jc >I had xbiff running at the time. About 25 seconds later, it beeped at me The subject line and all the comments up till now have referred to 'biff'. Now you tell us you were really talking about 'xbiff', which may or maynot be the same thing. It might have been better if you had said 'xbiff' from the start. >to work like people are claiming, the shell would have to be realizing >that /usr/spool/mail/jc is the mailbox for a user. This is obviously >quite feasible, but I think it's a rather dubious thing for even csh >to do. I mean, mush, yes; csh, no. On the other hand, such baroqueness On my system, csh doesn't have any trouble with this. In my .login file I simply place the command 'set mail=/usr/spool/mail/$user', and from then on csh knows exactly where to look. Other shells have similar facilities. >(Well, I suppose I could write my own tcp daemon and plug it in on the >comsatd port 512/udp and have it report to me what it sees. This is far >too much work to be worth the effort. ;-) It would be easier to just examine the output of 'netstat -a' to see if there is a listener on the biff port. -- =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science Northern Illinois Univ. DeKalb, IL 60115 +1-815-753-6940