UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi!!,
is there any way to stop background processes from writting onto the terminal window??

I have opened a session into a server1. From this server1, I rlogin to Server2. Now all the "wall" messages of server1 are appearing on myscreen. Any way to stop "wall" messages coming from server1???

Thanks in advance..

wall is not a background process. If wall is being run as root, no you cannot stop the messages from appearing. The concept of wall is that it should be used only when a message is so important that all users must see it.

Instead of opening a session to server1 and then doing a rlogin to server2, just open a session to server2 directly.

I am working in a scenario where everyone uses the same login for connecting to Server2. So, no one knows the password for this login on server2.

So, the only way of connecting to it is logging to a local Server1 and then "rlogin" to the server2 which has the entry for this common login in .rhosts file.

i have tried to use "stty -tostop" to stop a background process
( not the wall ) to write to the stdout. but it doesnt help anyway..

Any ideas??

when you launch the background process, instead of this:
background_job &

try this:
background_job >/dev/null 2>&1 &

This assumes that use are using sh, ksh, bash, or another shell like that. And it's not an absolute fix, the job could still open /dev/tty.

Using "at" or "cron" to run the job would be an absolute fix since then the job would be unable to open /dev/tty. But such a job can no longer truely be called a "background job", so I guess that's cheating.