Sending "pop up" messages to peer machines

[Gordon Messmer]

Don Russell wrote:
>> Don Russell wrote:
>>>
>>> In researching "net send <bios-name> <text>" I discovered a program 
>>> like WinPopup is needed on the windows machines... further 
>>> investigation into that looks like it's old information, pertaining 
>>> to Windows 3.1, 95 and 98, explicitly NOT supported in Windows NT... 
>>> and I'm assuming Windows 2000/XP.

You can use winpopup, where it's available, or "net send" to send 
messages to some Windows hosts.  However, the Messenger service that 
receives the popups will be disabled on newer Windows installations, and 
you'll need to turn it on.

>>> The question is... how do I make my FC7 box "aware" of all the other 
>>> machines on the peer network so it knows who to send messages to?

You could write a script to use "smbclient -N -L <browser>" and parse 
the output for a list of Windows hosts, and then use "smbclient -M" to 
send messages to each one individually.  I've never used LinPopup or 
LinPopup-2, but you could see if either of those would work.

Bear in mind, any solution that you pick is going to depend on proper 
firewall configuration on your Windows machines, proper configuration of 
the Windows Messenger service, and will not apply to your Mac OS or 
Linux hosts.

> Of course, the pop-up should not take the focus away from the current 
> application running.... I hate that...

You won't get any control over that.  It's a function of the window 
manager (or the Windows shell application).

> I'm thinking I may have to write my own little specialized client/server 
> thingy for this.... not the end of the world, but it seems so basic I 
> thought I'd check "what's out there"... :-)

Don't do that... You'll save yourself a tremendous amount of time if you 
just use Jabber instead.  Openfire is a great Free Software Jabber server:
http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/index.jsp

Between Jabber and Windows Messenger, it seems like one or the other 
would fit your needs.  Writing your own would be a huge waste of effort.