🚀 go-pugleaf

I recently FTP'd the msgs(1) package from the bsd-sources archives
at ftp.uu.net.  It is now running on our system (SunOS 4.1.1 on
Sun 3 machines).  However, I need a bit of help with it.

msgs doesn't wait at the end of the last message, though the source
implies it should.  This is a problem if a user starts a windowing
system from .login after running msgs:  the last message is erased
before s/he has a chance to read it.  

msgs only allows root to post.  This is (probably) OK, but there seem
to still be file permission type problems.  Does msgs need to be setuid
something?  The docs say that if the msgs limits file is corrupt,
deleting it is OK, because it will be regenerated the first time msgs
is run again.  This only happens if msgs has write access to the msgs
directory.  If I do this (for example, by making msgs setuid daemon (is
that safe?) and making the directory owned by same), I find that
non-root users can't post messages, but an attempt to do so corrupts
the limits file.

Are these well known?  Are there fixes?  I'm finding the source to
be "optically thick" (an astronomical term).
-- 
Stephen Walton, Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, Cal State Univ. Northridge
 "Anyone who remembers the sixties probably wasn't there."---Robin Williams