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BIFF(1) | General Commands Manual | BIFF(1) |
NAME¶
biff
—
be notified if mail arrives and who it is from
SYNOPSIS¶
biff |
[ny |
DESCRIPTION¶
Biff
informs the system whether you want to
be notified when mail arrives during the current terminal session.
Options supported by biff
:
When mail notification is enabled, the header and first few lines of the message
will be printed on your screen whenever mail arrives. A
“biff y
” command is often included in
the file .login or
.profile to be executed at each login.
Biff
operates asynchronously via the
comsat(8) service. If that service is not
enabled, biff
will not do anything. In that
case, or for synchronous notification, use the
MAIL variable of
sh(1) or the
mail variable of
csh(1).
SEE ALSO¶
csh(1), mail(1), sh(1), comsat(8)HISTORY¶
Thebiff
command appeared in
4.0BSD.
BUGS¶
su(1), and biff don't seem to get on too well. This is probably due to the tty still being owned by the person using su. This can result in “Permission denied
” messages
when attempting to change the biff status of your session.
Please report bugs to netbug@ftp.uk.linux.org including diffs/patches, compiler
error logs or as complete a bug report as is possible.July 31, 1999 | Linux NetKit (0.17-pre-20000412) |