subbarao@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Kartik Subbarao) (01/19/91)
In article <15841@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> salantel@wsqtb9.crd.ge.com (E. L. Salant) writes: >I recently switched from working on an xterm to a regular workstation and found >that I can no longer do a biff y. (I get a message saying /dev/ttyp1: Not >owner). Apparently biff can only be turned on in the login window, which >was possible on the xterm, but apparently impossible on the console (since it >would have to be done from the session manager window). > Does anyone out there have a fix to this? I don't follow what you mean by "regular" workstation. The reason it's giving you messages like "/dev/ttyp1: Not owner" is because some window managers (like sunview) don't change the owner of your tty to "you" -- they keep it as root. You need to own the tty to turn "biffing" on and off. If you make biff y when you are on console (i.e no window manager up yet) then all mail notices appear on your "Console" sunview window. The "console" window you see in sunview or X is actually not /dev/console, but another tty which has redirected all i/o from /dev/console to it. (usually /dev/ttyp0). You can't change biff y or biff n at will in your "Console" window once you have up sunview, because the "Console" is really /dev/ttyp0, which again, root owns. SO, the solution to your problem is either to use a different window manager, or stick biff y in your .login. (if you always want biff y). -Kartik -- internet# find . -name core -exec cat {} \; |& tee /dev/tty* subbarao@{phoenix or gauguin}.Princeton.EDU -|Internet kartik@silvertone.Princeton.EDU (NeXT mail) -| SUBBARAO@PUCC.BITNET - Bitnet