.TH NOTIFY 1
.SH NAME
awin, rwin, biff, readfile \- simple notification system
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B notify/awin
.br
.B notify/rio
.br
.B notify/biff
.br
.B notify/readfile
[
.B -p
]
.I file
.br
.B notify/wall
[
.I message
]
.SH DESCRIPTION
These programs provide a simple notification system for Plan 9.
The first two,
.I notify/awin
and
.IR notify/rwin ,
provide notification windows in either
.IR acme (1)
or
.IR rio (1),
respectively; you are expected to run exactly one of these for the
system to behave properly. Each will exit with an error if there is
already one running. These programs create
.BI /srv/notify. user
and wait for messages to be written to it.
.PP
.I Notify/awin
puts each line written to
.BI /srv/notify. user
in the tag of its window and appends it to the body, creating a
log of messages.
.I Notify/awin
will notice if its window goes away and recreate it when a new
message comes in. The body text is not preserved in this case.
.PP
.I Notify/biff
reads the
.IR plumber (4)
port
.I seemail
and sends formatted notifications of any new mail to
.BI /srv/notify. user \fR .
.PP
.B Notify/readfile
loops reading
.I file
 and writing a line at a time to
.BI /srv/notify. user \fR .
A tag is prepended to each line. By default, the tag is the last
element of
.IR file ;
if
.I -p
is given, the full path is used instead.
It is intended for monitoring files like
.BR /dev/kprint ,
where the read will block waiting for more input.
.PP
.B Notify/wall
sends
.I message
to every user on the system running a notifier like
.IR notify/awin .
It is intended for critical system notifications on shared systems, such
as warning of a pending shutdown; use sparingly. If
.I message
is omitted it will be read from standard input.
.SH BUGS
.B rwin
is fictional.
.PP
.B Notify/biff
should include the mail subject in the notification, but that isn't in the
plumbing message.
.PP
The mkfile only installs the C programs, not the scripts.