comsat(8)comsat(8)NAMEcomsat - The biff server
SYNOPSIScomsatDESCRIPTION
The comsat server receives reports of incoming mail and notifies users
who request this service. comsat is invoked by the inetd(8) daemon
when it receives messages on a datagram port associated with the
biff(1) service specification in /etc/services(4). The datagram con‐
tains a 1-line message of the form: user@mailbox-offset
If the user specified is logged in and the associated terminal has the
owner execute bit turned on (with biff y), offset is used as a seek
offset into the file named in mailbox. The first 7 lines or 560 charac‐
ters of the message are printed on the user's system. The message
excludes mail header lines other than the From or Subject lines.
The comsat command always tries to convert incoming mail messages from
the mail interchange codeset to the user's application codeset. It
determines the mail interchange code first by checking the mail message
itself to see if it contains the required information. Otherwise, the
system-wide default mail interchange code in the file /usr/lib/mail-
codesets will be used. If no such system file exists, no codeset con‐
version will be performed.
The determination of the user's application code in each terminal ses‐
sion is by one of the following methods. The application codeset
defined in the user's Asian tty driver. The codeset name stored in the
~/.codesetdevname file, where devname is the name of the terminal
device for the current terminal session. You can obtain the value of
devname by issuing the tty command. For example, if the tty command
returns /dev/ttys8, use ttys8 as the value for devname. The lang val‐
ued option defined in $HOME/.mailrc or /usr/share/lib/Mail.rc.
FILES
Specifies the command path. Includes information about logged-in users
and their associated ttys. File containing mailx subcommands to cus‐
tomize mailx for a specific user. File containing mailx subcommands to
change mailx for all users on the system.
SEE ALSO
Commands: biff(1), inetd(8), mailx(1), mh(1)
Files: services(4), inetd.conf(4), tty(7)comsat(8)