Using write to send a message to another computer

Bruce5 · 06-17-2014, 04:06 PM

Hi

I have two linux computers running mint 17. On both computers I set mesg y to allow communications.

The write commands works locally but when I want to send a message to another computer it doesn't seem to work.

I've tried this syntax to no avail

write blah@192.168.0.111 and I get this error

write: blah@192.168.0.111 is not logged in on pts/0

That's funny because blah is logged in. Is the write command only limited to talking on the same machine?

Thanks

sag47 · 06-17-2014, 08:19 PM

man write

It tells you it's for sending messages to other users. It makes no mention of being able to send messages to users on other computers over the network on my system. You can still use ssh.

Code:

ssh 192.168.0.111 'echo hello | write blah'

echo hello | ssh 192.168.0.111 'write blah'

ssh 192.168.0.111 'write blah'

michaelk · 06-17-2014, 08:25 PM

As far as I know write only works on the same computer. The correct syntax is:
write username tty

talk or ntalk is capable of communicating with users on different computers. They use xinetd.