biff y

[Kartik Subbarao]

In article <15841 at crdgw1.crd.ge.com> salantel at 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


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