5 ms·

No, Biff informs the system whether you want to be notified when mail arrives during the current terminal session.

by yzydserd 4mo ago

raverbashing 4mo ago
Yes I'm sure root is anxious to read all the mail in their local mailbox
- roryirvine 4mo ago
  Sending mail to root@<whatever> really did use to be a pretty reliable way of getting somebody useful's attention - the early-to-mid 90s equivalent of making a "Can someone from Google please unlock my account?" post on HN.
  - throw0101a 4mo ago
    Under Debian/Ubuntu, when Postfix is installed, part of the standard list of questions that dpkg-reconfigure asks you is how you want mail flow to work: you can give it a central smarthost. So any local mail gets sent on, and on the central mail hub you can tell it to send root@ to someplace useful: * https://wiki.debian.org/Postfix#Forward_Emails https://wiki.debian.org/Postfix#Forward_Emails
maybewhenthesun 4mo ago
exactly. and chromium is a good looking space shooter with too few levels!
throw0101a 4mo ago
I.e., NAME biff -- be notified if mail arrives and who it is from […] HISTORY The biff command appeared in 4.0BSD. It was named after the dog of Heidi Stettner. He died in August 1993, at 15. * https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=biff https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=biff Eric Cooper, a student contemporary to Foderero and Stettner, reports that the dog would bark at the mail carrier,[4][5] making it a natural choice for the name of a mail notification system. Stettner herself contradicts this.[3][6] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biff_(Unix) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biff_(Unix)
- teddyh 4mo ago
  Also: <https://manpages.debian.org/stable/biff/biff.1.en.html https://manpages.debian.org/stable/biff/biff.1.en.html>
- dcminter 4mo ago
  From the excellent "A Quarter Century of UNIX" (by the late Peter H. Salus): Heidi would bring her dog with her to class and to her office. He was a very friendly dog, and a lot of the students enjoyed throwing a ball for him down the corridor to fetch. He even had his picture on the bulletin board with the graduate students: the legend read that he was working on his Ph.Dog. John decided to name the program after the dog: Biff. According to Heidi, John and Bill Joy then spent a lot of time trying to compose an explanation for biff - they came up with "Be notified if mail arrived." Biff, who died in August 1993, at 15, once got a B in a compiler class. According to Heidi, the story of Biff barking at the mailman is a scurrilous canard. One of my favourite bits of trivia from that excellent book, but hardly anyone I bump into these days knows anything about that kind of multi-user Unix experience/environment these days. I barely caught any of it myself.
  - burntsushi 4mo ago
    Yeah this was before my time. I never did email from a terminal. Which probably explains why I was okay with naming it Biff. In any case, I've renamed the project to bttf: https://github.com/BurntSushi/bttf/pull/14 https://github.com/BurntSushi/bttf/pull/14
    - sourcegrift 4mo ago
      I dont think it's part of the unix standard. Biff sounds perfect
      - burntsushi 4mo ago
        My decisions about naming aren't limited or prescribed by what is in a standard or not. :-)
    - 4mo ago
burntsushi 4mo ago
Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine. The name Biff was just too good to pass up. The name comes from the fact that Biff is a character in Back to the Future, and it rhymes with Jiff[1]. Jiff is the datetime library that Biff uses. "Make like a tree and get out of here!" https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9Jabplo2pZU https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9Jabplo2pZU [1]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/jiff https://github.com/BurntSushi/jiff
- throw0101c 4mo ago
  > Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine. The name Biff was just too good to pass up. So if I do an "apt install biff" on Debian (or Ubuntu) what will happen? * https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=biff https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=biff If I type in "biff" on a Debian CLI, what should I expect the behaviour of the program that is executed to be? Will it be something about mail or time?
  - burntsushi 4mo ago
    I honestly don't know. Which is... Not Great.
  - abrowne 4mo ago
    I know that if you want `fd` (https://github.com/sharkdp/fd https://github.com/sharkdp/fd) you need to `apt install fd-find` and which installs the binary `fdfind` (!).
  - dredmorbius 4mo ago
    Per Debian policy and precedence of the email notification utility, you'll install biff, the command-line email notification utility: <https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-binary.html#the-package-name https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-binary.html#the-...> <https://packages.debian.org/trixie/biff https://packages.debian.org/trixie/biff>
- eb0la 4mo ago
  It was a great opportunity to name a unix tool "mcfly" or just "Marty" for time manipulation. Better luck next time, I guess.
nine_k 4mo ago
All short names, that is, pronounceable strings of 4 or maybe even 5 letters are already taken. Some of them taken many times over. I think fewer people now care about mail notifications in a terminal session than about wrangling datetimes on the command line.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
dredmorbius 4mo ago
For those confused by this and a few similar threads/comments: the project name was originally "biff", but that was changed apparently due to the discussion on this submission, which has been retitled.

No, Biff informs the system whether you want to be notified when mail arrives during the current terminal session.

raverbashing 4mo ago

Yes I'm sure root is anxious to read all the mail in their local mailbox

roryirvine 4mo ago
Sending mail to root@<whatever> really did use to be a pretty reliable way of getting somebody useful's attention - the early-to-mid 90s equivalent of making a "Can someone from Google please unlock my account?" post on HN.
- throw0101a 4mo ago
  Under Debian/Ubuntu, when Postfix is installed, part of the standard list of questions that dpkg-reconfigure asks you is how you want mail flow to work: you can give it a central smarthost. So any local mail gets sent on, and on the central mail hub you can tell it to send root@ to someplace useful: * https://wiki.debian.org/Postfix#Forward_Emails https://wiki.debian.org/Postfix#Forward_Emails

maybewhenthesun 4mo ago

exactly. and chromium is a good looking space shooter with too few levels!

throw0101a 4mo ago

I.e., NAME biff -- be notified if mail arrives and who it is from […] HISTORY The biff command appeared in 4.0BSD. It was named after the dog of Heidi Stettner. He died in August 1993, at 15. * https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=biff https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=biff Eric Cooper, a student contemporary to Foderero and Stettner, reports that the dog would bark at the mail carrier,[4][5] making it a natural choice for the name of a mail notification system. Stettner herself contradicts this.[3][6] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biff_(Unix) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biff_(Unix)

teddyh 4mo ago
Also: <https://manpages.debian.org/stable/biff/biff.1.en.html https://manpages.debian.org/stable/biff/biff.1.en.html>
dcminter 4mo ago
From the excellent "A Quarter Century of UNIX" (by the late Peter H. Salus): Heidi would bring her dog with her to class and to her office. He was a very friendly dog, and a lot of the students enjoyed throwing a ball for him down the corridor to fetch. He even had his picture on the bulletin board with the graduate students: the legend read that he was working on his Ph.Dog. John decided to name the program after the dog: Biff. According to Heidi, John and Bill Joy then spent a lot of time trying to compose an explanation for biff - they came up with "Be notified if mail arrived." Biff, who died in August 1993, at 15, once got a B in a compiler class. According to Heidi, the story of Biff barking at the mailman is a scurrilous canard. One of my favourite bits of trivia from that excellent book, but hardly anyone I bump into these days knows anything about that kind of multi-user Unix experience/environment these days. I barely caught any of it myself.
- burntsushi 4mo ago
  Yeah this was before my time. I never did email from a terminal. Which probably explains why I was okay with naming it Biff. In any case, I've renamed the project to bttf: https://github.com/BurntSushi/bttf/pull/14 https://github.com/BurntSushi/bttf/pull/14
  - sourcegrift 4mo ago
    I dont think it's part of the unix standard. Biff sounds perfect
    - burntsushi 4mo ago
      My decisions about naming aren't limited or prescribed by what is in a standard or not. :-)
  - 4mo ago

burntsushi 4mo ago

Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine. The name Biff was just too good to pass up. The name comes from the fact that Biff is a character in Back to the Future, and it rhymes with Jiff[1]. Jiff is the datetime library that Biff uses. "Make like a tree and get out of here!" https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9Jabplo2pZU https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9Jabplo2pZU [1]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/jiff https://github.com/BurntSushi/jiff

throw0101c 4mo ago
> Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine. The name Biff was just too good to pass up. So if I do an "apt install biff" on Debian (or Ubuntu) what will happen? * https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=biff https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=biff If I type in "biff" on a Debian CLI, what should I expect the behaviour of the program that is executed to be? Will it be something about mail or time?
- burntsushi 4mo ago
  I honestly don't know. Which is... Not Great.
- abrowne 4mo ago
  I know that if you want `fd` (https://github.com/sharkdp/fd https://github.com/sharkdp/fd) you need to `apt install fd-find` and which installs the binary `fdfind` (!).
- dredmorbius 4mo ago
  Per Debian policy and precedence of the email notification utility, you'll install biff, the command-line email notification utility: <https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-binary.html#the-package-name https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-binary.html#the-...> <https://packages.debian.org/trixie/biff https://packages.debian.org/trixie/biff>
eb0la 4mo ago
It was a great opportunity to name a unix tool "mcfly" or just "Marty" for time manipulation. Better luck next time, I guess.

nine_k 4mo ago

All short names, that is, pronounceable strings of 4 or maybe even 5 letters are already taken. Some of them taken many times over. I think fewer people now care about mail notifications in a terminal session than about wrangling datetimes on the command line.

deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]

dredmorbius 4mo ago

For those confused by this and a few similar threads/comments: the project name was originally "biff", but that was changed apparently due to the discussion on this submission, which has been retitled.