Awatmath.2004 net.unix-wizards utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!watmath!bstempleton Sun Mar 14 22:13:48 1982 Re: A suggestion for a change to biff I have reworked comsat, the thing that does biff, into a system that takes the mail message, and passes it as standard input to a process with the userid and tty device of the mail recipient. The comsat invokes either the ".biff" (ak! another . file - I want to change this eventually) file in the recipient's home directory or if there is none, a standard one. naturally, it runs setuid and setgid the recipient, so that it can write on the terminal if needed. I will send it to net.sources once It is tested here and in final form. It has a lot of nice side effects 1) Everybody can customize as they like. I have mine save my cursor position on my terminal, go to the home, print who the message is from. (eventually I will add the subject) and restore the cursor position. Much better when you are in VI. 2) If you are worried about the "horrible" security bug, you can have your biff filter out nasty characters to the terminal. 3) people can write customized biffs, and others link to them. ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.