SUMMARY: shutdown broadcasts annoying message to all machines

From: Marty Leisner (leisner@eso.mc.xerox.com)
Date: Thu Oct 01 1992 - 01:33:27 CDT


This was the inital message:
Whenever anyone does a shutdown, it broadcasts an annoying message to people who don't
use the machines resources...and won't be affected by the shutdown.

Is there a way to only broadcast a shutdown message to only people affected and interested?

Barry Margolin (barmar@think.com) came up with what appears to be the best solution.
1) kill rpc.mountd
2) delete /etc/rmtab
3) restart rpc.mountd

I haven't tried this (a number of people also advised erased /etc/rmtab which I
did try, it doesn't work since rpc.mountd caches /etc/rmtab). Also shutmount -a
must communicate with rpc.mountd by undefined magic (erasing /etc/rmtab doesn't
effect showmount...).

Also, /etc/rmtab isn't accurate, since if the other machines crashh, it still
thinks they're using the NFS file systems.

A number of people said "turn off rwalld". I don't like this. I want to inform only
"interested parties", not "all parties". Turning off rwalld inhibits messages
off the machine, which may be catastrophic is a networked environment.

Some people recommended doing "mesg n". However, it seems to only work when I'm
running off the console...when running in a window, I get the message:
        annapurna% mesg n
        mesg: cannot change mode
whatever that means!!

I have concluded the rpc.rwalld needs to be rewritten. Instead of writing to
all sessions of all users, it can:
        1) figure out the console where the user originates from (assuming he's
not running an Xterminal)
        2) write one message to the console.

Anyone know of any better copies?

The honor roll goes to:
        barmar@think.com Barry Margolin
        stern@sunne.east.sun.com Hal stern
        Perry_hutchinson.portland@xerox.com
        trinkle@cs.purdue.edu Daniel Trinkle
        phillips.henr801c@xerox.com Mark Phillips
        ensond@heart.cor.epa.gov Dave Denson
         cfoley@arsenic.cray.com Chuck Foley
        jim@tcp.com Jim Lick
        rickert@cs.niu.edu
        phil@eecs.nwu.edu William LeFebvre
        Barry.Cornelius@durham.ac.uk
ups!kevin@fourx.aus.sun:com
miker@sbcoc:com

Thanks for the help...

Marty leisner.henr801c@xerox.com
          Member of the League for Programming Freedom
 The Feynman Problem Solving Algorithm:
 1) Write down the problem
 2) Think very hard
 3) Write down the answer -- Murray Gell-mann



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