humtech@ucschu.ucsc.edu (Mark Frost) (05/06/89)
Help! We are having trouble with our "biff" program. Ever since we upgraded our ISI V16 to 4.3 BSD we have never received on-line notification of new mail - the only way to know is to check for mail. From what I understand this could be a problem with sendmail, comsat, or biff. I don't really know what to look for. I has been suggested that we look to see if "biff isn't talking" or "sendmail isn't listening". How do we do this? In a possibly similar vein, our UNIX "talk" program doesn't function either. It sits there for about minute and finally says talk: ucschu.UCSC.EDU: Can't figure out network address. Another, older version of "talk" says This machine doesn't exist! Boy, am I confused! We are listed in /etc/hosts and so far as I can tell all other needed places, but it seems that we must be missing something. We have tried copying the binaries of these files from another ISI on campus running 4.3 that doesn't have the same problems, to now avail - they also don't work on our machine. If I knew what "talk" was looking for, I could delve into it more. Also, if someone from another machine on our campus ethernet sends a talk request, the user on our machine does get notification, he/she just can't respond. Anyway, I have no idea if these two problems are related, but I'd be very grateful to anyone who could enlighten me. PLEASE! SEND ME E-MAIL! I really don't have time to read these newsgroups. Thanx a lot! Mark Frost Office of the the Computing Coordinator Humanities Division University of California at Santa Cruz Internet: humtech@ucschu.UCSC.EDU Bitnet: humtech@ucschu.bitnet Uucp: ...!ucbvax!ucscc!ucschu!humtech
dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi) (05/07/89)
In article <7029@saturn.ucsc.edu> humtech@ucschu.ucsc.edu (Mark Frost) writes: >Ever since we upgraded >our ISI V16 to 4.3 BSD we have never received on-line notification of >new mail... I discovered a long time ago that if I enabled "pseudo-device inet" in our 4.3BSD configuration file, "talk" worked but "biff" didn't. If I didn't enable that device, "biff" worked but "talk" didn't. Since the 4.3BSD documentation is less than spectacular, I simply tossed a coin, decided "talk" was more useful than "biff", allowed that pseudo-device to stay in, and resigned myself to a biff-less existence. You might want to set csh's "mail" variable like this: set mail=(30 /usr/spool/mail/$USER) which will cause csh to check for mail every 30 seconds. -- Rahul Dhesi <dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> UUCP: ...!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi
cliff@cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Cliff Marcellus) (05/07/89)
You may not be aware that "talk" under 4.3BSD is actually "ntalk"
(... and uses the "ntalkd" daemon.) YOu widh to start looking there
"ntalkd" should be conf'ed in /etc/services as
ntalkd 518/udp
"talk" should still be available as /usr/old/talk (with "talkd" still
running on port 517/udp)
Just a thought...
Cliff Marcellus UUCP : {any backbone}!calgary!ssg-vax-a!cliff
Institute for Space Research DOMAIN : cliff@ssg-vax-a.phys.UCalgary.CA
Dept of Physics and Astronomy SPAN : CANCAL::CLIFF
The University of Calgary "If it's not fun, don't do it!"