Re: wall linux command not working?

[Chris Jones]

On Tue, Jan 03, 2012 at 03:11:54AM EST, Vladimir Todorov wrote:

I've run out of ideas.. 

> | $ screen -v
> | Screen version 4.01.00devel (GNUa6eea7b) 2-May-06

OK. Naturally, my assumption was that some patch or other might have
introduced a bug in this area. All the same, may be worth taking a peek
at the patch history..?

Are you using the default screen settings as provided by debian in
/etc/screenrc + the hardcoded stuff - IOW.. do you (your test user) have
a ~/.screenrc?

I was thinking of listing the options that are on/off in my setup so you
could compare with yours. 

Unfortunately, I don't know if there is a way to do that in GNU/screen..
and if so how it's done.. a bit like the ‘:set’ command with no option
specified in Vim. 

Would anyone know the answer to that question?

Otherwise, I find that GNU/screen's behavior is somewhat unclear/erratic
in the messaging area:

When I have a screen session with... say twenty... windows, and I wall
a message from the superuser, I find that the message does not appear on
some of the windows/pts while it does appear on others.. which can be
a bit of a nuisance since you have to do a CTRL_L to get rid of the
message.

Not sure if it's possible, but wouldn't it make better sense that only
the ‘active’ window gets the message? 

Is GNU/screen actually trying to do just that... and making a mess of
things?

Might be worth taking a look at what wall is doing, using gdb or strace
and see if anything transpires that end..?

In any event, I'd say it's definitely worth sending a bug report to the
maintainer.. see if he can recreate.. On a multi-user system not being
able to send a message for all to see does not strike me a healthy
situation.

CJ