DistantBiff -- monitor distant mailboxes

[Dave Taylor]

This is a cute little shell script I hacked up to allow me to have some
minimal idea what's going on with some of the remote accounts that I have,
but don't necessarily want to log in to with any frequency to check.
The script expects to be run from a cron or crontab file.

	Enjoy and happy end of 1989 to y'all!

						-- Dave Taylor
Intuitive Systems
Mountain View, California

taylor at limbo.intuitive.com    or   {uunet!}{decwrl,apple}!limbo!taylor

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#!/bin/sh
# 
# DistantBiff -  A script to aid users in keeping track of mail
#                they might receive on remote computer accounts.
#
# Author: Dave Taylor, Intuitive Systems <taylor at intuitive.com>
#
# Use by adding an occasional invocation of this script to the
# cron program, perhaps nightly, or once a week...

# LOCALIZE the following

USERNAME=taylor
SEND_MAIL_TO=taylor at Intuitive.Com

# stuff you might need to change for BSD, local configuration, etc.

 HOMEDIR=/users/$USERNAME
 MAILBOX=/usr/mail/$USERNAME
    mail=/usr/bin/mailx		  # should understand '-s' flag for subject
    from="/usr/local/bin/from -n"

# and stuff you should probably leave alone...

         host=`hostname`
      oldfile=".last.from"		# these
      newfile=".new.from"		#   live in 
      newmsgs=".new.msgs"		#     users home
      changes="none"

# first step: move us into the home directory

cd $HOMEDIR

# now let's get a summary of the current mailbox state

$from $MAILBOX > $newfile

# armed with this, let's now figure out what's changed...

if [ ! -f $oldfile ] ; then	# first time we've run!
  changes="all"
else

  diff $newfile $oldfile > $newmsgs	# New mail?

  if [ "`head $newmsgs`" != "" ] ; then  #   MMmmmm...YES!
    changes="new"
  fi
fi

# now let's send a summary based on what changes there are.

case $changes in

#  if it's new, we'll get just the stuff that shows up in new but
#  not old (to avoid reporting deleted messages, which would be in
#  old but not new) (cute, eh?), and strip off the '<' from diff

   new) cat $newmsgs | grep '^<' | sed 's/^< //' | \
	    $mail -s "New messages on $host" $SEND_MAIL_TO
        ;;

#  otherwise, just send the output of the 'from' command!

   all) $mail -s "New mail on $host" $SEND_MAIL_TO < $newfile
        ;;

#  unless nothing has changed...

     *) ;;	# nothing to do since no changes!

esac

# some final cleanup...

/bin/mv  $newfile  $oldfile	# update for next time
/bin/rm -f $newmsgs		# and discard this

# and we're done!

exit 0

# -- end of script