How do you warn users of a backup

[bjdobs]

Can someone please tell me if there is an AIX command to send all active users a message warning that their application will be shutdown in X minutes?

We have a Progress Database that must be shutdown nightly in order to back it up ... the issue is cron shuts it down at a scheduled time without any warning ... even if the user knows what time the backup is they can still become involved with data entry and loose track of the time which means they loose whatever they were working on ... it would be better if there was a 3 to 5 minute warning popup on the users screen so they can finish what they are doing in time for the shutdown.

 

[Morsing]

If they are on the server 'wall' will send a message to all users.

Cheers Henrik Morsing
Certified AIX 4.3 Systems Administration
& p690 Technical Support

 

[gregor weertman]

#!/bin/sh

# To send message to tty with less destructive impact for the screen.


ttys=`ps -ef|grep progres|egrep -v "root"|awk '{
print $6}'|grep tty|sort|uniq`

x=1
while [ $x -le `expr length "$*"` ]
do
bs="$bs\b"
x=`expr $x + 1`
done

for tty in $ttys
do
echo "$*$bs\007\c" > /dev/$tty
done


I hope the backspace option of echo works on AIX

regards Gregor Gregor.Weertman@mailcity.com

 

[danielhozac]

I think you need to use the [tt]-e[/tt] option to echo to use backslash'd characters. At least I have to on my systems. //Daniel