NAME
comsat - biff server

SYNOPSIS
/usr/etc/comsat

DESCRIPTION
Comsat is the server process which receives reports of incoming
mail and notifies users if they have requested this service.
Comsat receives messages on a datagram port associated with the
"biff" service specification (see services(5) and inetd(8)). The
one line messages are 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.

FILES
/etc/utmp to find out who’s logged on and on what terminals

SEE ALSO
biff(1), inetd(8)

BUGS
The message header filtering is prone to error. The density of the
information presented is near the theoretical minimum.

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

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