NAME¶
biff —
be notified if mail arrives and
who it is from
SYNOPSIS¶
DESCRIPTION¶
Biff informs the system whether you want to be notified when
mail arrives during the current terminal session.
Options supported by
biff:
- n
- Disables notification.
- y
- Enables notification.
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¶
The
biff 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.