John Mahowald wrote:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 20:31:19 +0200, Dotan Cohen dotancohen@gmail.com wrote:
When I reset the computer this morning, I discovered this waiting for me:
KWrited - listening on device /dev/pts/2
(this is a translation of the hebrew message that I got, original message here): KWrited - מקשיב בהתקן /dev/pts/2
Is this something that should worry me?
If you mean worry about network security, no. That is a local device, for a virtual terminal I believe.
IIRC, kwrited is a kernel daemon that allows KDE desktop users to receive messages sent via the "write" command from users on other pseudoTTYs, serial ports, network logins, and X sessions.
/dev/pts/2 is a pseudoTTY. Each time you run a terminal emulator on your desktop or access it remotely (ssh, telnet, etc.), a pseudoTTY is allocated to that session and your I/O is handled by it. If, however, you don't have a terminal emulator open on your desktop, you can't receive any "write" messages since you don't have a pseudoTTY.
When KDE starts kwrited, it also grabs a pseudo TTY and uses it to handle write requests (essentially, it opens a limited terminal emulator), so when someone does "write fred", the write request will go to the open /dev/pts/N device and Poof! It shows up on Fred's X display in a nice GUI window.
TECH STUFF: Actually, /dev/pts/N is the "slave" or "user" end of a pseudoTTY while /dev/ptmx is the "master" or "server" end and is implemented as a multiplexor. If you want the gory details, see "man pts(4)" (and yes, I've written LOTS of stuff using pseudoTTYs).
AFAIK, there's no equivalent to kwrited on Gnome, but you can probably run kwrited under Gnome. I've never done it, however. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer rstevens@vitalstream.com - - VitalStream, Inc. http://www.vitalstream.com - - - - Overweight: When you step on your dog's tail...and it dies. - ----------------------------------------------------------------------