HELP! Biff (and talk) problems...

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#3363

From: Mark Frost
Date: Sat, 06 May 1989 04:13

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Help! We are having trouble with our "biff" program. Ever since we upgraded
our ISI V16 to 4.3 BSD we have never received on-line notification of
new mail - the only way to know is to check for mail. From what I 
understand this could be a problem with sendmail, comsat, or biff.
I don't really know what to look for.  I has been suggested that we
look to see if "biff isn't talking" or "sendmail isn't listening". How
do we do this?

In a possibly similar vein, our UNIX "talk" program doesn't function either.
It sits there for about minute and finally says

talk: ucschu.UCSC.EDU: Can't figure out network address.

Another, older version of "talk" says 

This machine doesn't exist! Boy, am I confused!

We are listed in /etc/hosts and so far as I can tell all other needed places,
but it seems that we must be missing something. We have tried copying the
binaries of these files from another ISI on campus running 4.3 that doesn't
have the same problems, to now avail - they also don't work on our machine.

If I knew what "talk" was looking for, I could delve into it more. Also, if
someone from another machine on our campus ethernet sends a talk request, the
user on our machine does get notification, he/she just can't respond. 

Anyway, I have no idea if these two problems are related, but I'd be
very grateful to anyone who could enlighten me.

PLEASE! SEND ME E-MAIL! I really don't have time to read these newsgroups.

Thanx a lot!


Mark Frost
	Office of the the Computing Coordinator
	Humanities Division
	University of California at Santa Cruz
Internet: humtech@ucschu.UCSC.EDU
Bitnet: humtech@ucschu.bitnet
Uucp: ...!ucbvax!ucscc!ucschu!humtech

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arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!ames!ig!bionet!agate!saturn!ucschu.ucsc.edu!humtech

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!ames!ig!bionet!agate!saturn!ucschu.ucsc.edu!humtech
From: humtech@ucschu.ucsc.edu (Mark Frost)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail,comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: HELP! Biff (and talk) problems...
Message-ID: <7029@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Date: 6 May 89 04:13:59 GMT
Sender: usenet@saturn.ucsc.edu
Reply-To: humtech@ucschu.ucsc.edu (Mark Frost)
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz; Humanities Division
Lines: 42