On Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 03:36:45PM -0600, Matthew D. Fuller wrote: > 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. > Mmm. In Postfix there is a biff option, probably the same in klingonmail aka sendmail, and other mailers. So to summarise the total solution: - kill off biff in your MTA - kill off biff in your MDA (if applicable) - get rid of biff in your /etc/profile (where it has no business being and makes "su" produce error messages) - kill off comsat, since it has no use, and you shouldn't run services you don't need. Very neat. Killing off comsat is the shortest cure, evidentially speaking :)
-- Regards Cliff
