biff —
be
notified if mail arrives and who it is from
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).
csh(1),
mail(1),
sh(1),
comsat(8)
The
biff command appeared in
4.0BSD.
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
[email protected] including diffs/patches, compiler
error logs or as complete a bug report as is possible.