wall broadcasts not showing up in X terminals

Axalon · 11-05-2007, 12:33 AM

For whatever reason, when I'm in an X session and I have a terminal window open, wall messages don't get to me, not even from root. If I log into one of the virtual terminals on F1-F6, I can receive them fine there. It's only on X terminals where it seems they're being suppressed. I checked mesg, and that was set to "y", so that isn't it.

Any ideas?

I login using GDM, I'm running Archlinux, and my version of Sysvinit is 2.86.

Tinkster · 11-05-2007, 03:15 AM

Pure speculation because I've never encountered the issue, and
don't have the means to (I don't intend to install Arch and Gnome ;})...

Do a 'who' and see who owns a terminal. I can't write or wall
to my pty where I su'd to root (officially my user owns the pty
and has the write disabled).

Now it *could* be that if you log in via GDM (what window manager
are you using, btw?) the actual owner of the pty's isn't you but
maybe root, and that's why those messages don't get through...

Cheers,
Tink

Axalon · 11-05-2007, 11:48 AM

who reports:

Code:

axalon   vc/7         2007-11-05 00:00 (:0)

so I apparently do own it. Though vc/7 is where my X server runs, whereas when I run a process in a terminal and check up on it using "ps aux", it reports that whatever process I'm running originated from pts/0. Could it be that the terminal is somehow masking itself?

With that in mind, I decided to test that. I SSH'd into my own box, and when I ran who, there it showed me as logged into that terminal:

Code:

axalon   vc/7         2007-11-05 00:00 (:0)
axalon   pts/1        2007-11-05 12:41 (localhost.localdomain)

I could also receive wall messages.

Also, I did a who -a to print out everyone who is logged in, and sure enough, I'm not the owner of that pty.

Code:

                        2007-11-04 13:45               833 id=rc    term=0 exit=0
           system boot  2007-11-04 13:45
           run-level 3  2007-11-04 13:45                   last=S
                        2007-11-04 13:45              4576 id=rm    term=0 exit=0
LOGIN      vc/1         2007-11-05 12:29             11902 id=c1
                        2007-11-05 00:59              9303 id=c2
LOGIN      vc/3         2007-11-04 13:45              4763 id=c3
LOGIN      vc/4         2007-11-04 13:45              4764 id=c4
LOGIN      vc/5         2007-11-04 13:45              4765 id=c5
LOGIN      vc/6         2007-11-04 13:45              4766 id=c6
axalon   + vc/7         2007-11-05 00:00   .          8397 (:0)
           pts/1        2007-11-05 12:44             11949 id=ts/1  term=0 exit=0
           pts/0        2007-11-05 00:55              9267 id=ts/0  term=0 exit=0
LOGIN      vc/2         2007-11-05 00:59              9303 id=2
LOGIN      vc/1         2007-11-05 01:20              9481 id=1

So, is there any way to change that behavior?

Tinkster · 11-05-2007, 01:14 PM

Don't know for sure ... try xdm instead of gdm? As I said - I don't
have the issue.

Cheers,
Tink