Xref: utzoo comp.mail.sendmail:732 comp.unix.questions:13325 comp.unix.wizards:15984
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi
From: dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail,comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: HELP! Biff (and talk) problems...
Message-ID: <7127@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>
Date: 6 May 89 20:40:47 GMT
References: <7029@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 20

In article <7029@saturn.ucsc.edu> humtech@ucschu.ucsc.edu (Mark Frost) writes:
>Ever since we upgraded
>our ISI V16 to 4.3 BSD we have never received on-line notification of
>new mail...

I discovered a long time ago that if I enabled "pseudo-device inet" in
our 4.3BSD configuration file, "talk" worked but "biff" didn't.  If I
didn't enable that device, "biff" worked but "talk" didn't.  Since the
4.3BSD documentation is less than spectacular, I simply tossed a coin,
decided "talk" was more useful than "biff", allowed that pseudo-device
to stay in, and resigned myself to a biff-less existence.

You might want to set csh's "mail" variable like this:

     set mail=(30 /usr/spool/mail/$USER)

which will cause csh to check for mail every 30 seconds.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>
UUCP:    ...!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi