Bug#103864: bsdutils: wall does not reach KDE users
Package: bsdutils
Version: 1:2.12p-4sarge1
Severity: normal
Administrators like root typically use wall to notify users of ongoing
maintenance etc. operations. man wall(1) says:
"Wall displays the contents of file or, by default, its standard input,
on the terminals of all currently logged in users."
However, KDE tools for example don't update utmp, so w, wall and write
commands don't reach KDE and other users with kwrited running (for
example http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=103864 ).
A simple (but perhaps dangerous?) workaround is for root to write
directly into the users pts, e.g.:
# for f in /dev/pts/* ; do echo Running apt-get for updates in 10 \
minutes. Beware for crashing openoffice, mozilla etc. after that. > $f ; done
Should this workaround be documented somewhere like wall manpages or
Debian reference or KDE help? If the utmp-issue is unsolvable, should wall
also try write to all existing pts's?
As suggested in
http://groups.google.com/group/sfnet.atk.linux/msg/aa1619fdf7d0a8a7
root can also play with X users Xauthority file and use xmessage to
deliver the same message, but this seems a lot tricker than wall. I'd be
happy to know if there are other more simple workarounds to this
messaging problem.
Thanks,
-Mikko
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
Architecture: i386 (i586)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.8-2-386
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=fi_FI@euro (charmap=ISO-8859-15)
Versions of packages bsdutils depends on:
ii libc6 2.3.2.ds1-22 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
-- no debconf information
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