Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 109589
mesg fails with device not owned by group `tty' error
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:10:33 EST
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 Description of problem: When I type "mesg y" into a tcsh shell running inside a kde terminal window, I get the response: mesg: error: tty device is not owned by group `tty' Looking in /dev/pts/, all of the files there belong to my default group, not by "tty". However, if I log in remotely using ssh, then the corresponding file (e.g., /dev/pts/22) does belong to group "tty", and mesg y works. Problem might be in /usr/bin/konsole in component kdebase-3.1.4-6. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): SysVinit-2.85-5 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Open KDE terminal window. 2.Type "mesg y" Actual Results: mesg: error: tty device is not owned by group `tty' Expected Results: Null response; mesg access enabled. Additional info:
I wonder if this is related to the cannot chownpty error messages produced by konsole when it is started by a non-root user? --error text follows konsole: cannot chown /dev/pts/3. Reason: Operation not permitted konsole_grantpty not installed root-suid konsole: chownpty failed for device /dev/pts/3::/dev/pts/3. : This means the session can be eavesdroped. : Make sure konsole_grantpty is installed in : /usr/bin/ and setuid root.
/usr/bin/konsole_grantpty was installed with suid bit turned off. I turned it on and restarted kde, but the problem continues. However, if I run konsole as root, then the corresponding /dev/pts/ device does end up with gid=tty as it should.
<aol>I'm seeing this problem too</aol> Every time I log into my machine I see the "mesg: error: tty device is not owned by group `tty'" because I have "mesg y" in my .bashrc. Ugh.
Oh, I should add that this probably has nothing to do with Component: kdebase, as I do not have KDE installed and I see the same message. Michael, I'm guessing it would be better to change the component to MAKEDEV or bash.
This may be a kernel bug. I've written C test programs to create a pty using either getpt(), open("/dev/ptmx",...), or openpty(). In all cases, the newly created device /dev/pts/nn has uid and gid of the calling process, not the gid specified when /dev/pts was mounted. Mount shows none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620) so the /etc/fstab entry is being processed, but the setgid 5 for the new slave device is not happening. My test programs work correctly when compiled and run on a RH9 system. I'm changing component to "kernel".
Thanks for the bug report. However, Red Hat no longer maintains this version of the product. Please upgrade to the latest version and open a new bug if the problem persists. The Fedora Legacy project (http://fedoralegacy.org/) maintains some older releases, and if you believe this bug is interesting to them, please report the problem in the bug tracker at: http://bugzilla.fedora.us/