Dear all,


How can I deny messaging which use "wall" command to send message out?


regards
Wilson

Sorry but you can't do that. wall is used by root to send messages to everyone. And root will always be able to write to your terminal.

I disagree with Perderabo you can disable the wall daemon in
/etc/inetd.conf file

comment out wall daemon i.e place an # in front of walld/1 in /etc/inetd.conf

then issue a kill -HUP (inetd proccess id)

Disabling the rwalld daemon will stop remote hosts from sending any messages at all to the local host. However the wall command does not use the rwalld daemon.

You are right Perderabo disabling walld in
/etc/inetd.conf will only disable rwall
remote wall

Thanks for putting me right Perderabo

You could move the executable or change the permissions so only a certain group or user could run it.

Hmmm...I may have been too hasty here. I never before noticed that ordinary users can run /usr/sbin/wall. But it is using the same permission scheme as the "write" command. You learn something new every day, I guess.

It is possible for a user to protect his terminal from wall/write messages from ordinary users. The way to do this is with the command "mesg n". And "mesg y" will accept messages again.

But if the messages are coming from root, there is no hope. Root is supposed to be able to do pretty much everything. As a sysadmin, I'm a bit aghast at the prospect of ordinary users running wall. Is this accepted practice in some shops?