rwall bug?

[tom reingold]

[Posting to comp.sys.sun and comp.unix.wizards]

As a system administrator of a few dozen systems, I have used the "rwall"
command to notify users of the shutting down of systems.  It seems that
there is a horrible bug that is rather embarrassing.  It sends my message
to all systems on the Internet that it can reach within a short timeout
period.  Thank goodness the period is short, but I have received mail from
various parts of the country saying that my message of shutdowns was
received.

What am I doing wrong?  I used the command "rwall -n <group>" where
<group> is defined in my /etc/netgroup file.

The result seems to be the same, whether I use a machine using Sun OS 3.4,
Sun OS 4.0 or Pyramid's version of Unix.

Tom Reingold                   INTERNET:       tr at bellcore.bellcore.com
Bell Communications Research   UUCP:           bellcore!tr
444 Hoes La room 1H217         PHONE:          (201) 829-4622 [work],
Piscataway, NJ 08854                           (201) 287-2345 [home]