I've been having a problem where people who try to talk, write, or chat to me
are sometimes told that I am refusing messages.  I have never typed "mesg n"
on grex, and when I type "mesg y" it only solves the problem temporarily. 
Somebody was recently unable to "talk" to me even though I had already typed
"mesg y" once during that grex session.  What can I do to correct the problem?

31 responses total.

You might look in your .profile or .cshrc file (whichever is appropriate)
for a mesg n line.  When I shamelessly stole Remmers' .cshrc file, his had
that in it.  Maybe yours does too.  In which,, just remove that line.

I looked at those files, and that doesn't seem to be the problem.

I notice that you have a .screen directory.  Do you use the "screen"
program regularly?  Is it possible that the write refusals occur
when you're running "screen"?

I use screen very occasionally, and I've haven't used it on the days in 
question.  I can't figure out what I've been doing differently when the
problem has occurred, and it seems almost random.  I don't think putting
a mesg y line in the .login or .tcshrc would help any, since it seems to
happen sometimes even after I've already typed "mesg y" once.

The redundance my help, can't hure, stick 'em in both files.

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I don't know much about scg's question, but Valerie, I think tcsh is
a lot more like csh than it is like sh. I'm no expert here,
but I thought "export" was a 'sh' thing, and not a feature of csh or tcsh.

Steve is correct; tcsh is a superset of csh, and doesn't really
resemble sh at all.  So it uses .login/.cshrc instead of .profile,
and setenv VAR value rather than VAR=value;export VAR.

Actually, it uses .tcshrc rather than .cshrc, a minor quibble.
(or does it alos look for .cshrc? I never tried that.)

(Yes it does.  tcsh is my login shell and it sources my .cshrc file.)

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Re 9: Yeah after I entered the first line of #8 I realized it could
possibly be versatile in that respect. Cool.

The .profile file is left over from when I was a new user and used the bbs
shell.  I just never bothered to delete it when I switched shells.  As for
the having "mesg y" in the .login file, I have tried typing it manually after
logging in sometimes and have still had the problem after that, although not
right away.  There must have been something else that was doing it.  It 
doesn't seem to be a problem right now, and I'm hoping it might be something
that will go away with the new grex.  Are we still running the same OS?

create a file called .mesgn

What would that do?

login automatically will turn your messages off as you login.
Then someone can't get you before
the mesg n hits in your .login file

So, if I put in a .mesgy file, it would automatically turn my messages on?

I'm fairly sure that the .mesgn stuff was a feature of login on
M-Net.  I don't think it has ever worked on Grex, but if it did
it certainly doesn't work on the new system.

The problem actually doesn't seem to have gone away with the new system.  It

seems to be related to either talk or trn.  I'll do some more checking on that
and try to figure out which one of those it is.

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I've done that, and it seems to be somehow related to both chat and talk.  Is
there some way of correcting that (maybe somer rc file for them?)

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My messages seem to turn off when I go into those programs.

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What are the functional differences, Valerie?  I would have expected mesg
to produce the same results whichever version was used - but this sounds
like the most promising idea I've heard on what Steve's problem could be.
Hm.

Especially when I try it & observe the following sequence:
> $ /usr/bin/mesg
> is n
> $ /usr/local/bin/mesg
> is y

This is certainly strange!

I tried to do that, but /usr/local/bin is already listed first.
/

The 'mesg' in /usr/bin is probably the stock Unix 'mesg' program.  It
uses the permissions of your tty to determine if messages are on or
off.  I think the 'mesg' in /usr/local/bin is Jan Wolter's program;
it doesn't use tty permisions, but maintains a file to determine
whether messages are on or off, and you can use it to chat someone
even if their tty is write-depermitted.  That explains the results
in #24.

However, if /usr/local/bin is first in his path, it doesn't explain
Steve's problem.

set drift=ON
In trying to figure out what could be wrong, I noticed that scg's .login &
.tcshrc don't have execute permission.  I thought I'd found the problem, but
this seems to be typical of everyone I looked at with csh or tcsh, so
apparently not.  Can anyone briefly explain *why* these scripts don't need
execute permission to run?

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I have no clue of how to work on the Grex....i just wanna know what i 
should do to look for a friend in grex...if my friend is online...how do 
i goto him and have a chat? please help me!

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- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss