comsat Daemon

Purpose

Notifies users of incoming mail.

Syntax

/usr/sbin/comsat [ -d Directory ]

Description

The comsat daemon is the server that receives reports of incoming mail and notifies users if they have enabled this service with the biff command. Started by the inetd daemon, the comsat daemon is not meant to be used at the command line. The comsat daemon receives messages on a datagram port associated with the biff service specification. The one-line messages are of the form:

user@mailbox-offset

If the user specified is logged in to the system and has run the biff y command, the first 7 lines or 560 characters of the message are displayed on the user's login terminal. Lines that appear to be part of a message header other than the From: or Subject: lines are not included in the displayed message.

Flags

Item Description
-d Directory Specifies the name of the directory to use as the system mail directory. If the -d flag is not specified, the comsat daemon uses the /var/spool/mail directory as the default system mail directory.

Files

Item Description
/etc/utmp Contains a list of users who are logged in, including their terminals.
   
/etc/services Contains a list of Internet network services and the well-known ports where the servers accept connections.