winpopup in linux

[Christopher Chisholm]

Paul Lussier wrote:
> 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".
>
>   

Thanks for your reply, and everyone else's too!

wall seems like it will work for what i need.  I definitely agree that 
winpopup in general has been subverted in its intent, but sometimes it's 
hilarious to broadcast various things across whole domains :)  at least 
these days the messaging service in windows defaults to disabled.

thanks again!

-chris