Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 507667
'write' does not work
Last modified: 2009-09-17 06:16:12 EDT
Description of problem: write (CLI application) does not work, and to my knowledge cannot be made to work without chowning ttys (though I have not tried). Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Unknown. -v, -V, or --version. Man page does not provide a version. How reproducible: Every time. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Attempt to write a user. `write user`. Write claims you don't have write permissions on. 2. Attempt to turn on write permissions via `mesg y` Actual results: `mesg y` complains: "mesg: error: tty device is not owned by group `tty'" Writing continues to not work. Expected results: mesg enables writing. write should then work. Additional info:
Can't edit comments? Above, meant to say that -v, -V, and --version all fail to return version info.
Yep, you can't edit ... additionally - write is not part of coreutils, it is from util-linux-ng, reassigning.
I can't reproduce this problem. Please, check who(1) output and tty permissions. $ who test tty2 2009-06-23 22:01 kzak tty1 2009-06-22 15:29 (:0) kzak pts/0 2009-06-23 20:15 (:0.0) kzak pts/2 2009-06-23 20:25 (:0.0) kzak pts/3 2009-06-23 20:28 (:0.0) kzak pts/4 2009-06-23 20:34 (:0.0) kzak pts/5 2009-06-23 21:34 (:0.0) kzak pts/6 2009-06-23 20:43 (:0.0) $ ll /dev/tty2 crw--w---- 1 test tty 4, 2 2009-06-23 22:05 /dev/tty2 $ write test Hello World! ^C
I also have screen running. I notice that the /dev/pts/x files screen is using are owned by group screen.
(In reply to comment #4) > I also have screen running. I notice that the /dev/pts/x files screen is using > are owned by group screen. On my system all active /dev/pts/x files (include screen stuff) are owned by user and tty group. I can write to/from screen tty. Anyway, write(1) requires that the tty is owned by tty group -- write(1) has s-bit on group: # ls -la /usr/bin/write -rwxr-sr-x 1 root tty 11936 2009-06-10 15:04 /usr/bin/write ^ ^^^
Closing... Please, reopen if you believe that the problem is reproduce able on the currently supported Fedora releases. Thanks.