Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
+# $EPIC: mesg.txt,v 1.1.1.1 2006/07/11 04:57:43 jnelson Exp $
+======Synopsis:======
+__mesg__    [display the current terminal writability state] \\
+__mesg__ yes    [make your terminal world-writeable] \\
+__mesg__ no   [make your terminal not world-writeable]
+======Description:======
+This command simulates the effect of the unix __mesg__(1) command.
+When you specify the 'yes' flag, other users on your system may write
+messages directly to your terminal, which will mess up your ircII screen.
+If you specify the 'no' flag, other users will be prohibited from writing
+to your terminal.  If you do not specify an argument, the current value
+is used.
+This operation is permanent and transcends EPIC; when you exit EPIC the
+value you set here will persist until you log out.
+Back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the earth and everybody on the
+internet was using a unix shell account, the 'talk' program was very
+popular and was used to talk to other users on other machines who were
+not using irc.  Eventually some yutz on irc figured out that you could
+corrupt a victim's terminal emulator making it impossible to see anything
+by forging talk requests and inserting specially crafted data into it.
+If your unix host runs the talk daemon, you should __/MESG no__ to avoid
+being the victim of a "talk bomb".  You really should turn off the talk
+daemon since "talk bombs" are about the only thing they're used for these
+days.  If your unix host is not running 'talk' then it really doesn't
+matter what your __MESG__ setting is.
+Because write-access control to your terminal is controlled entirely
+through ordinary unix file permissions, users that are not subject to
+ordinary unix file permissions (ie, root) can never be prohibited from
+writing to your terminal.  This is not a bug in epic, this is how unix
+works.

EPIC

Site Tools

Differences

Page Tools