Sending System Messages

[Will Saxon]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Elsner [mailto:peter at servplex.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2003 12:44 PM
> To: Justin P. Michel
> Cc: freebsd-questions at FreeBSD.ORG
> Subject: Re: Sending System Messages
> 
> 
> Don't know about Windows clients, but wall will do it for 
> anyone connected 
> to Unix...
> 
> man wall
> 
> Peter

Samba can certainly send popup messages to any machine that supports NetBIOS messages. We do something along these lines by first querying an IP for its netbios name and messenger service status with nmblookup (nmblookup -A ip_address) and then sending a message if we know the client supports it (smbclient -I ip_address -M NAME -UBig\ Brother\ Is\ Watching).

I have never tried to send a message to an entire domain, although it would seem that using the workgroup or domain name might work. 

Not knowing how it actually works, I would guess Microsoft does not do this. I only know how to send mass messages like this through Server Manager, which also details who all is connected to a particular server. I think MS probably just takes this list and sends a separate message to each connected host.

-Will