mesg

mesg is a Unix command that sets or reports the permission other users have to write to the current user's terminal using the talk and write commands.

mesg
Original authors	Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson
Developer	AT&T Bell Laboratories
Initial release	November 3, 1971 (1971-11-03)
Operating system	Unix and Unix-like
Type	Command

Usage

It is invoked as:

mesg [y|n]

The 'y' and 'n' options respectively allow and disallow write access to the current user's terminal. When invoked with no option, the current permission is printed.

Input redirection may be used to control the permission of another TTY. For example:

% mesg
is y
% tty
/dev/tty1
% mesg < /dev/tty2
is y
% mesg n < /dev/tty2
% mesg < /dev/tty2
is n
% mesg
is y

See also

• List of Unix commands

References

• mesg – Shell and Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 5 from The Open Group