winpopup in linux

Paul Lussier p.lussier at comcast.net
Fri Feb 2 12:52:45 EST 2007


Christopher Chisholm <christopher.chisholm at syamsoftware.com> writes:

> Greetings,
>
> I've been messing around with smbclient -M to send winpopup messages
> to a windows system.  What i'm wondering is how i can go about
> receiving and somehow displaying a received message in linux, which
> would be coming from either a windows box or another linux one.

The short answer is: You can't.

Linux/UNIX isn't like Windows :)

Winpopup is an API intended for use by applications and the OS to tell
the (single) user of the system something.  It has been subverted from
it's intended use for the nefarious means of annyoing the living crap
out of friends, coworkers, spouses, and kids, thanks to smbclient :)

As already mentioned by tpb, the way to get a message to all users of
a Linux/Unix system is to use 'wall'.  This does not, however, provide
a pop-up window.  This is because 'wall' was written in time before
"windows" existed, and all users being sent the message were actually
on the same system, just at different terminals (or consoles).

So, with winpopup and wall, you have two different applications
written for the same basic purpose, but for inverse environments: one
for a single user on a single system with a complicated windowing and
message-passing environment , the other for many users on a single
system with extremely simplistic message-passing and no windows.

There are probably several ways to accomplish what you want, most of
which probably include you writing some code and somehow convincing
the users to run it.

We use something very much like what you desire here at work.  It's
called zephyr.  It requires that a) you have a kerberos environment,
b) each person you want to send a message to run a 'zephyr client',
and c) that anyone running such a client subscribe to the "channel" on
which you wish to broadcast your message.

One of the "clients" is zwgc (zephyr window-gram client), which in
fact pops up an X frame on the persons desktop with your message in
it.

I'm fairly sure you don't have much intention of configuring Kerberos :)

You could probably cobble something together fairly easily with perlTk
or pythonTk which would meet your needs.  Keep in mind though, that on
a linux system, anything you want to affect all logged in users SHOULD
NOT depend upon an X environment given that they don't have to be
running any X environment to be "logged in".

-- 
Seeya,
Paul
--
Key fingerprint = 1660 FECC 5D21 D286 F853  E808 BB07 9239 53F1 28EE

A: Yes.                                                               
> Q: Are you sure?                                                    
>> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.           
>>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?


More information about the gnhlug-discuss mailing list