Today's article is just another brick in the wall...

[KGIII]

This one is going to have very limited use for the average viewer here. If this is useful for you, you probably already know how to do this.

Anyhow, have you ever wanted to send a message (in the terminal) to logged-in users? Well, you can do that. You just need to use the wall command.

Send A Message To Logged In Users • Linux Tips

Today's article is going to have really limited use for my regular readers, as we talk about how you can send a message to logged in users.

linux-tips.us

Basically, I was in the mood for a quick and easy article. This fits the bill.

It did remind me of the 'messenger service' back in the Windows XP days. They shipped it with that service enabled, at least in the Pro version, and nefarious people used it to spam users. You basically just needed to craft a message and send it to an IP address. If they had the service running, it'd pop up a message on the screen. This service was available on NT and 2k, which is how I suppose it ended up enabled by default in Windows XP.

Your only recourse was a firewall or to disable the service. This was a very popular way of spamming users. If you want to know more, look up "Windows messenger service spam" and you'll get some hits to some really old pages.

 

[Alexzee]

Good article and helpful.
Always wanted to learn how to do this just haven't had the time.

Thanks KGIII!

 

[KGIII]

Good article and helpful.
Always wanted to learn how to do this just haven't had the time.

Thanks KGIII!

There are other ways, as well. Say you checked the processes and you know the TTY that the user is logged into, you can run something like echo "your message" > /dev/tty* and send messages that way.

I think I wrote an article about one of the other ways, but I don't think I've covered that one. Then again, I have no clue what I've written about. I've written so many articles that I simply can't remember anymore.

I'm approaching 500 articles - and I still haven't missed a publication date! (I too have no idea how I've managed to do this, but I have.)

 

[Alexzee]

There are other ways, as well. Say you checked the processes and you know the TTY that the user is logged into, you can run something like echo "your message" > /dev/tty* and send messages that way.

I think I wrote an article about one of the other ways, but I don't think I've covered that one. Then again, I have no clue what I've written about. I've written so many articles that I simply can't remember anymore.

I'm approaching 500 articles - and I still haven't missed a publication date! (I too have no idea how I've managed to do this, but I have.)

Persistence and dedication will tend to aid one in doing things we wouldn't normally do, I think. It's amazing the skills and talents that we pick up along the journeys in life.

Like you, I too have written many articles (not as many as you) and forget what I've composed over time. You're not alone, LOL!

 

[Condobloke]

Were you listening to Pink Floyd when you wrote this, by any chance?

 

[KGIII]

Were you listening to Pink Floyd when you wrote this, by any chance?

Technically, no... But, it reminded me of it when I was writing the headline. I figured it was moderately amusing, even if only to me, so I went with it. I suppose it was low-hanging fruit.

LOL It's not easy coming up with all this stuff.

 

[KGIII]

Entirely unrelated to the topic, but related to my site...

I keep getting people offering me money to make a sponsored post on my site.

I tried this once before and Google was not happy. They tanked my traffic for about three months. That could have been a coincidence, as they'd also changed their ranking algorithm around that time. It was also a painfully obvious sponsored article, but I agreed to not point it out. I regret that last part.

The site has an ahref's DR of 30, so I should probably charge a couple hundred bucks for the article.

That'd cover some hosting for a while. (The site now chews through bandwidth, though I did resolve the disk space. I also recently upgraded to 4 GB of RAM.)

Hmm...

I should give them an outlandish price and some conditions, like the ability to label it as sponsored content.

The site's large enough now to where I don't think Google will care. It'd be one article out of hundreds of articles.

I don't think it'd cheapen the site. Sponsorship is common. Even Linux.org has had sponsorship (ads) and contains ads.

I am curious about what others might think. It'd even give me a day off! Heck, that's almost worth it by itself!

 

[Alexzee]

After re-reading your article today I didn't understand fully.

Is it possible to send a message to my brother down the hall in the same location as me using the wall cmd?

 

[KGIII]

After re-reading your article today I didn't understand fully.

Is it possible to send a message to my brother down the hall in the same location as me using the wall cmd?

If you're both logged into the same system, yes.

If it's over a network to another system, no.

You'd need some sort of messenger that worked over the network, of which there will be many. I've not really tried many of them and haven't used one in years.

The wall command is only useful if you're on the same system.

 

[Alexzee]

If you're both logged into the same system, yes.

If it's over a network to another system, no.

You'd need some sort of messenger that worked over the network, of which there will be many. I've not really tried many of them and haven't used one in years.

The wall command is only useful if you're on the same system.

Thanks for the clarification.
It's over a network so I'll have to see what messengers I can find.

 

[KGIII]

There's a way to do so in the terminal with netcat. You'd have to search for it.

 

[Alexzee]

There's a way to do so in the terminal with netcat. You'd have to search for it.

Found it. Thanks.

How to Use Netcat Commands: Examples and Cheat Sheets

Learn what the Netcat utility program is and the different types of commands it can support to help IT organizations manage their networks in a better way.

www.varonis.com