On Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 07:28:32AM -0500 I heard the voice of David T-G, and lo! it spake thus: > % > > % > The appalling biff program requires "comsat" to do it's job, so that > % > is why I guess Slackware has it enabled. > > So the real fix would be to modify /etc/profile rather than simply turn > off comsat and have biff trying to run anyway.
*bzzt* ;) The real fix is to turn off biff notification in your MTA. The pattern goes something like this: - MTA delivers, notifies comsat - comsat notifies terminals with 'biff y' set. Note that biff isn't a daemon of any sort; it's comparable to mesg(1), in that it just sets modes (looking at my /usr/bin/biff source, all 109 lines of it (including comments etc), all it does is change the u+x mode of the STDERR tty. See <URL:http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/usr.bin/biff/biff.c?rev=1.9&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup> ). So, turning off biff y, and comsat will still do everything except deliver the message to the tty. Turn off comsat, and you'll still (probably) get packets sent to it by the MTA. Turn off biff/comsat notification in the MTA (or maybe the MDA, not entirely sure), and you'll stop getting the packets and all the rest. -- Matthew Fuller (MF4839) | [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unix Systems Administrator | [EMAIL PROTECTED] Specializing in FreeBSD | http://www.over-yonder.net/ "The only reason I'm burning my candle at both ends, is because I haven't figured out how to light the middle yet"
