Sending cross-platform messages

[MikeY2K]

I use a Solaris 2.6 on an Sun Ultra 10 as a license server for CAD software. My users are on NT workstations and connect to the Sun box via NFS. When I try to send a message using the rwall command, it returns a message like this:

rwall: Can't send to <clientname>
<clientname>: RPC: Program not registered

I am able to ping the boxes and it will say <clientname> is alive. Any suggestions on how to send a cross-platform message from a Solaris server?

Also...I setup a cron job to reboot my server monthly using the command shutdown. However, this occurs at 3AM and I don't need to notify anyone. I have been told that reboot is not the preferred method. Is it safe to use reboot if users DO NOT need to be notified?

Thanks!

 

[mikeclark]

Normally I would use shutdown -y -g0 -i6 to reboot one of our servers.
(supposedly a bit nicer than reboot)
Also shutdown -y -g0 -i0 to shutdown.