send notifications to all users

[Thomas Koch]

Hi,

I'd like to notify all logged in users of some system event, e.g. from a
script started by cron, anacron or systemd timers.

The internet is full of Q&A about this and many hacks to publish DBUS or
DESKTOP variables to the root user.

But now with all this systemd, consolekit and desktop-notification stuff: I
wonder whether there shouldn't be a better solution. And if there isn't, what
would be the right place to add this?

Thank you,

Thomas Koch

[Guido Berhoerster]

Post by Thomas Koch
I'd like to notify all logged in users of some system event, e.g. from a
script started by cron, anacron or systemd timers.
The internet is full of Q&A about this and many hacks to publish DBUS or
DESKTOP variables to the root user.
But now with all this systemd, consolekit and desktop-notification stuff: I
wonder whether there shouldn't be a better solution. And if there isn't, what
would be the right place to add this?

How about wall(1)? It's simple, works cross platform and is the
only mechanism that notifies all users[*] regardless of whether
they are logged in via SSH, on a virtual console, a terminal
emulator, or in a X session through a desktop notification via
kwrited (by default in KDE) or xwrited in any other DE that has a
XDG notification daemon.

[*] unless they explicitly disabled wall/write messages

[Thomas Koch]

Post by Guido Berhoerster
How about wall(1)? It's simple, works cross platform and is the
only mechanism that notifies all users[*] regardless of whether
they are logged in via SSH, on a virtual console, a terminal
emulator, or in a X session through a desktop notification via
kwrited (by default in KDE) or xwrited in any other DE that has a
XDG notification daemon.

Hi Guido,

thank you! Of course I found wall when googling, but I didn't find a solution
to display wall messages to a Desktop user. Your xwrited seems to be a good
solution.

I tried to clone it with hg clone, hg clone --insecure and git clone hg:: but
neither worked with the url https://hg.guido-berhoerster.org/projects/xwrited,
also with just http.

And the download link to the last version doesn't work on https://code.guido-berhoerster.org/projects/xwrited/#downloads.

Maybe you'd like to switch to git instead of mercurial? :-)

Do you know whether anybody already started a package for Debian?

Regards, Thomas Koch

[Guido Berhoerster]

Hi,

Post by Thomas Koch

Post by Guido Berhoerster
How about wall(1)? It's simple, works cross platform and is the
only mechanism that notifies all users[*] regardless of whether
they are logged in via SSH, on a virtual console, a terminal
emulator, or in a X session through a desktop notification via
kwrited (by default in KDE) or xwrited in any other DE that has a
XDG notification daemon.

Hi Guido,
thank you! Of course I found wall when googling, but I didn't find a solution
to display wall messages to a Desktop user. Your xwrited seems to be a good
solution.

glad to hear that.

Post by Thomas Koch
I tried to clone it with hg clone, hg clone --insecure and git clone hg:: but
neither worked with the url https://hg.guido-berhoerster.org/projects/xwrited,
also with just http.
And the download link to the last version doesn't work on https://code.guido-berhoerster.org/projects/xwrited/#downloads.

Sorry about that, the download link should be fixed now, see
https://code.guido-berhoerster.org/projects/xwrited/downloads/xwrited-1.tar.gz

Cloning over https still doesn't work, uwsgi somehow eats query
strings, I'll debug that later. However, you can download a tarball
of the repo via the web interface
https://hg.guido-berhoerster.org/projects/pk-update-icon/archive/tip.tar.bz2

Post by Thomas Koch
Maybe you'd like to switch to git instead of mercurial? :-)

Nope :-)

Post by Thomas Koch
Do you know whether anybody already started a package for Debian?

Not that I'm aware of, I only maintain a package on OBS for
openSUSE.