Bug 2053536

Summary: after su from root to a normal user mesg is unable to show current status
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Reporter: Vinay Mishra <vmishra>
Component: util-linuxAssignee: Karel Zak <kzak>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact: Radka Brychtova <rskvaril>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 8.4CC: alrodrig, anrussel, jke, kzak, ngalvin, paygupta, rskvaril, sujagtap, vmishra
Target Milestone: rcKeywords: Reopened, Triaged
Target Release: 8.0   
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
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Story Points: ---
Clone Of: 1906157 Environment:
Last Closed: 2023-08-10 09:32:09 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On: 1906157    
Bug Blocks:    

Comment 3 Karel Zak 2022-02-15 09:15:23 UTC
> sudo su - svc-mongo
> Last login: Fri Jan 28 16:04:57 CST 2022 on pts/0
> mesg: cannot open /dev/pts/1: Permission denied

I guess there is "mesg y" (or "mesg n") in the user's profile file. 

The bugfix in rhel-8.5 has fixed "mesg" (without any option). If you call "mesg y|n" then it needs to open and modify the terminal setting, but the terminal is still owned by the root user. This is impossible to fix.

Example:

 # su - kzak
 Last login: Tue Feb 15 03:50:00 EST 2022 on pts/0

 $ mesg
 is y

 $ mesg y
 mesg: cannot open /dev/pts/0: Permission denied

 $ rpm -qf /bin/mesg
 util-linux-2.32.1-32.el8.x86_64


This is expected behavior.


Note that since util-linux v2.7 (RHEL-9) it will be possible to use "su --pty" to create a new terminal owned by the user.

Comment 4 Karel Zak 2022-02-15 09:18:06 UTC
Sorry for typo -- s/since util-linux v2.7/since util-linux v2.37/

Comment 9 Karel Zak 2022-07-12 10:32:30 UTC
*** Bug 2036583 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***