lcc.ghb@SEAS.UCLA.EDU (George Bray) (12/01/87)
> Here's one I think we haven't covered before. > What does "biff" (the mail alarm) stand for? > Jay Batson > If I had any opinions, I'd probably try to foist them off on my employer, > so my opinions may (or may not) represent those of my employer.... "biff" is a funny one. Everyone asks "where does the name come from". In fact, biff was the name of a dog who hung around the fifth floor of Evans Hall at UC Berkeley in 1981. The programmer of biff (I forget the name) couldn't come up with a name, so it was named after the dog. P.S. This is a true story. I was there at the time. George Bray Locus Computing Corporation (the usual disclaimer)
davel@hpcupt1.UUCP (12/05/87)
> "biff" is a funny one. Everyone asks "where does the name come from". > In fact, biff was the name of a dog who hung around the fifth floor of Evans > Hall at UC Berkeley in 1981. The programmer of biff (I forget the name) > couldn't come up with a name, so it was named after the dog. I always thought that "biff" stood for the phrase "notify me asynchronously when mail arrives". After being run through crypt, of course. ;-) -Dave Lennert HP ihnp4!hplabs!hpda!davel
lock@hpcilzb.HP.COM (Ed Lock) (12/13/87)
> What does "biff" (the mail alarm) stand for? > "biff" is a funny one. Everyone asks "where does the name come from". > In fact, biff was the name of a dog who hung around the fifth floor of Evans > Hall at UC Berkeley in 1981. The programmer of biff (I forget the name) > couldn't come up with a name, so it was named after the dog. biff: bark if "from" found. This was also the name of the dog that belonged to Heidi S., a computer science graduate student at UC Berkeley in the late 70's and early 80's. Ed Lock Design Technology Center Hewlett-Packard ...!hpda!hpdtc!lock
ssi@usfvax2.EDU (Ssi) (11/03/88)
We have 5 clients and a file server. I would like to centralize
the mail spool in a public directory ie. /usr2/mail/somename .
My users are very likely to log in on different machines during
the day, also serveral people are likely to use the same login
name. I know I can send mail(1) to a full path name instead of
to a login name. How can I get biff(1) to watch for mail sent
to a pathname instead to user@machine ???
Greg Ripp PH: (813)628-6100guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) (11/04/88)
>I know I can send mail(1) to a full path name instead of >to a login name. How can I get biff(1) to watch for mail sent >to a pathname instead to user@machine ??? Well, you can modify "sendmail" to notify the "comsat" daemon whenever it stuffs mail into a file - assuming you can figure out which user to notify (perhaps the owner of the file?) You can't do it with the vanilla software, however.