Silencing fetchmail

Silencing fetchmail

[Alex Snow]

Hi All,

I finally got my mail working.  One more question... How do I stop
fetchmail from telling me about mail? I mean how do I completely silence
it? I tried adding the --silent option when I started it but it didn't
work.  Is there something I can add to my .fetchmailrc?

--
A message from the system administrator: "I've upped my priority, now up yours!

Re: Silencing fetchmail

[Adam Myrow]

Did you try "-s" on the command line as well?

Re: Silencing fetchmail

[Alex Snow]

Ok I'm starting to think that this is some util that's telling me about
the mails.
Anyone know of any such util that gets installed with slack8.1?

--
A message from the system administrator: "I've upped my priority, now up yours!
On Mon, 20 Jan 2003, Adam Myrow wrote:

> Did you try "-s" on the command line as well?
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

Re: Silencing fetchmail

[Buddy Brannan]

On Mon, Jan 20, 2003 at 10:06:05AM -0500, Alex Snow wrote:
> Ok I'm starting to think that this is some util that's telling me about
> the mails.
> Anyone know of any such util that gets installed with slack8.1?

Could it be biff that's causing you trouble?

Try putting somewhere in one of your initialization scripts (say, .bashrc)
biff n
-- 
Buddy Brannan, KB5ELV/3   | "And if the ground yawned,
Phone: (814) 455-7333     | I'd step to the side and say,
Email: davros@ycardz.com  | "Hey ground! I'm nobody's lunch!"
http://www.ycardz.com/    | --Eddie From Ohio

Re: Silencing fetchmail

[Toby Fisher]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Mon, 20 Jan 2003, Alex Snow wrote:

> Ok I'm starting to think that this is some util that's telling me about
> the mails.
> Anyone know of any such util that gets installed with slack8.1?

Ah, could be biff is set to y, type biff n and your problems should be
over, I think that's what it might be.

- -- 
Toby Fisher	Email: toby@tjfisher.co.uk
Tel.: +44(0)1480 417272	Mobile: +44(0)7974 363239
ICQ: #61744808
   Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
   See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: pgpenvelope 2.10.2 - http://pgpenvelope.sourceforge.net/

iD8DBQE+LBFgKl9qIwuqk+IRAqZ5AJ9J12oB2g2jNwFXRBrD+LnMH2t44gCgrSh2
fvd4mXuRq20pFsN2KVPhpn8=
=jAFU
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Re: Silencing fetchmail

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

Look in /etc/profile for a line that says "biff y" and change the
"y" to "n".



-- 
The Moon is Waning Gibbous (94% of Full)
So visit me sometime at http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh

Re: Silencing fetchmail

[Alex Snow]

Ok that seems to have worked!

Thanks for the help.  that biff thing was starring to seriously effect my level of sanity.

On Mon, Jan 20, 2003 at 10:13:51AM -0500, Chuck Hallenbeck wrote:
> Look in /etc/profile for a line that says "biff y" and change the
> "y" to "n".
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> The Moon is Waning Gibbous (94% of Full)
> So visit me sometime at http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
--
A message from the system administrator: "I've upped my priority, now up yours!

Re: Silencing fetchmail

[Adam Myrow]

Yeah, it's called biff and for some stupid reason, it gets turned on by
default.  You can get rid of this annoyance as follows.  As root, edit
/etc/profile and fine the following lines.

if [ -x /usr/bin/biff ]; then
 biff y
fi

Either delete them, or add a number sign in front of each  so that they
look like this.\

#if [ -x /usr/bin/biff ]; then
# biff y
#fi

Another way is to put "biff n" as the last line of your .profile or
.bash_profile, but since this is an absolutely useless and annoying
program, I prefer to disable it systemwide.  It is the first thing I do
when I install a fresh copy of Slackware.

Re: Silencing fetchmail

[Alex Snow]

It's now disabled system wide.  Your right it is kinda useless.

eOn Mon, Jan 20, 2003 at 09:20:24AM -0600, Adam Myrow wrote:
> Yeah, it's called biff and for some stupid reason, it gets turned on by
> default.  You can get rid of this annoyance as follows.  As root, edit
> /etc/profile and fine the following lines.
> 
> if [ -x /usr/bin/biff ]; then
>  biff y
> fi
> 
> Either delete them, or add a number sign in front of each  so that they
> look like this.\
> 
> #if [ -x /usr/bin/biff ]; then
> # biff y
> #fi
> 
> Another way is to put "biff n" as the last line of your .profile or
> .bash_profile, but since this is an absolutely useless and annoying
> program, I prefer to disable it systemwide.  It is the first thing I do
> when I install a fresh copy of Slackware.
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
--
A message from the system administrator: "I've upped my priority, now up yours!

Re: Silencing fetchmail

[Jude DaShiell]

It's called biff for a very good reason, but only those who know the
background of Unix would know.  It turns out that when Kernighan and gang
there were six in all gave birth to Unix in a college dorm room on one
weekend in the 1970's they had a dog in the room with them and it was a
very good watchdog going after anybody who came to the door and announcing
them.  The dog's name was Biff, so this is in tribute to the dog and a bit
of Unix trivia for you.

-- 
Jude <dashielljt(at)gmpexpress-dot-net>

Re: Silencing fetchmail

[Toby Fisher]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Mon, 20 Jan 2003, Alex Snow wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I finally got my mail working.  One more question... How do I stop
> fetchmail from telling me about mail? I mean how do I completely silence
> it? I tried adding the --silent option when I started it but it didn't
> work.  Is there something I can add to my .fetchmailrc?

Well, there is always the option to put it into Daemon mode as root,
that's what I used to do, I had a line in my ip-up script:

fetchmail -d 300

HTH

- -- 
Toby Fisher	Email: toby@tjfisher.co.uk
Tel.: +44(0)1480 417272	Mobile: +44(0)7974 363239
ICQ: #61744808
   Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
   See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: pgpenvelope 2.10.2 - http://pgpenvelope.sourceforge.net/

iD8DBQE+LA9UKl9qIwuqk+IRAieLAJ0Tqt0dgSLD/DbwCAOOANanytmrDQCcDh8v
g9OMOW5phLBKP0Yfcto7ag0=
=+xHs
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Re: Silencing fetchmail

[Jude DaShiell]

No, fetchmail isn't telling you about mail.  There's three possibilities
that might be doing it though.  If you're using slackware out of the box
that narrows to one though.  In slackware you can put biff n in
.bash_login and that'll silence the beeping and new mail messages.
There's also newmail that may have to be silenced or wnewmail if they're
being used.  Check /etc/profile and look for new mail and you should find
what's telling you about new mail under that line.

-- 
Jude <dashielljt(at)gmpexpress-dot-net>

Re: Silencing fetchmail

[Alex Snow]

It was biff that was doing it.  I changed the line in /etc/profile to biff
n and it fixed the problem

--
A message from the system administrator: "I've upped my priority, now up yours!"
On Mon, 20 Jan 2003, Jude DaShiell wrote:

> No, fetchmail isn't telling you about mail.  There's three possibilities
> that might be doing it though.  If you're using slackware out of the box
> that narrows to one though.  In slackware you can put biff n in
> .bash_login and that'll silence the beeping and new mail messages.
> There's also newmail that may have to be silenced or wnewmail if they're
> being used.  Check /etc/profile and look for new mail and you should find
> what's telling you about new mail under that line.
>
> --
> Jude <dashielljt(at)gmpexpress-dot-net>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

Re: Silencing fetchmail

[Igor Gueths]

Does Fetchmail not act silent even though you have it running as a cron
job? One thing to try would be adding > /dev/NULL 2>&1 to make sure it is
silent. This does have the side effect of not warning about connection
problems. However, if you leave the configuration as is for the forseeable
future, you shouldn't have any problems.

May you code in the power of the source,
may the kernel, libraries, and utilities be with you,
throughout all distributions until the end of the epoch.

On Mon, 20 Jan 2003, Alex Snow wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I finally got my mail working.  One more question... How do I stop
> fetchmail from telling me about mail? I mean how do I completely silence
> it? I tried adding the --silent option when I started it but it didn't
> work.  Is there something I can add to my .fetchmailrc?
>
> --
> A message from the system administrator: "I've upped my priority, now up yours!
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

Re: Silencing fetchmail

[Alex Snow]

I got it fixed.  It was this god damn biff thing.  It still is saying "you
have new mail in /var/spool/mail/alex_snow but that's not bad.  Biff was
dispalying the whole message.

--
A message from the system administrator: "I've upped my priority, now up yours!"
On Mon, 20 Jan 2003, Igor Gueths wrote:

> Does Fetchmail not act silent even though you have it running as a cron
> job? One thing to try would be adding > /dev/NULL 2>&1 to make sure it is
> silent. This does have the side effect of not warning about connection
> problems. However, if you leave the configuration as is for the forseeable
> future, you shouldn't have any problems.
>
> May you code in the power of the source,
> may the kernel, libraries, and utilities be with you,
> throughout all distributions until the end of the epoch.
>
> On Mon, 20 Jan 2003, Alex Snow wrote:
>
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I finally got my mail working.  One more question... How do I stop
> > fetchmail from telling me about mail? I mean how do I completely silence
> > it? I tried adding the --silent option when I started it but it didn't
> > work.  Is there something I can add to my .fetchmailrc?
> >
> > --
> > A message from the system administrator: "I've upped my priority, now up yours!
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

Re: Silencing fetchmail

[Thomas Stivers]

On 01/21/03 12:30 PM -0500, Alex Snow wrote:
> I got it fixed.  It was this god damn biff thing.  It still is saying "you
> have new mail in /var/spool/mail/alex_snow but that's not bad.  Biff was
> dispalying the whole message.

If you want to change the behavior of that you have mail message search
the bash man page for mail and or mailpath. That is a feature of the
shell and can be changed with environment variables.

-- 
Thomas Stivers
e-mail: stivers_t@tomass.dyndns.org
PGP Public Key ID: 45CBBABD
http://stivers-home.dyndns.org

Re: Silencing fetchmail

[Scott Howell]

Actually my fault, you can check /etc/profile and there is a line that 
will let you globally turn it off. My previous suggestion will only help 
the short term till you reboot.

Scott

Re: Silencing fetchmail

[Scott Howell]

biff=off should fix that for you

Re: Silencing fetchmail

[Jude DaShiell]

That side effect can be overcome though by checking the
/var/spool/mail/$user file.  See if the file size changes over time, if so
mail is being downloaded.

-- 
Jude <dashielljt(at)gmpexpress-dot-net>