🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <8671@gollum.twg.com> david@twg.com (David S. Herron) writes:
>In article <1991Feb19.073900.13631@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au> ccandrew@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au (Andrew Vellnagel) writes:
>>	I am using Sun OS 4.1 and the mail system is mmdf.  In my .login I
>>issue the command 'biff y' yet when mail is sent to me I am not informed.
>
>Well.. for biff (and his good buddy comsat) to work there is a tiny
>little protocol the MTA is supposed to use when delivering the message.
>That protocol is a sendmail-ism, but possibly a useful sendmail-ism.
>On the other hand nobody ever taught that protocol to MMDF ... (lack of time..?)

 The actual 'biff' is done at the direction of /bin/mail as it delivers the
mail to the mailbox.  It sends a message to 'comsat'.  The /bin/mail sources
are distributed with sendmail sources, so it is easy to extract the details
of how you do this.

 A common problem, however, is that on Sun's often the mail is delivered on
a file server, whereas you are logged into a different client work station.
Even getting the standard 'biff' code working will not help you in this
situation, as only those logged into the server are biffed.  (I guess you
could open a window to rlogin to the server, and just use that window for
biff messages).

-- 
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  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940