samba - Apr 1998 - SAMBA digest 1647

On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Dejonghe, Koen wrote:
> The way I will set it up is like this: a Progress program will sit on 
> a named pipe and wait for input. As soon as something comes in, it 
> will start reading and pump the data into the database. The bar-code 
> readers can send the information onto the named pipe.
Only thing to watch for is that the barcode reader probably needs to
close and reopen the file after writing data to it.

Brett

 ,------------ |    ------ ,-----------
 `----. ------ |    ------ |       |     COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY
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 Brett Worth - Ph: +61 6 241 5633  Fx: 241 3733 - Canberra Australia

Very very very cool. I have been thinking of this one myself. I 
thought I tested it and that I came to the conclusion that Samba did 
not recognize named pipes, and just treated them like normal files 
(overwriting them when you drag a text file onto them). But I must 
have made a mistake somewhere. It' perfect.
The way I will set it up is like this: a Progress program will sit on 
a named pipe and wait for input. As soon as something comes in, it 
will start reading and pump the data into the database. The bar-code 
readers can send the information onto the named pipe.
Thanks very much.


----------
From:  samba@samba.anu.edu.au[SMTP:samba@samba.anu.edu.au]
Sent:  Tuesday, April 07, 1998 12:29 PM
To:  Multiple recipients of list
Subject:  SAMBA digest 1647

Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1998 14:57:27 +1100 (EETDT)
From: Brett Worth <brett@select.com.au>
To: Multiple recipients of list <samba@samba.anu.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Triggering processes through Samba
Message-ID: 
<Pine.A41.3.96.980406144936.25582A-100000@nermal.select.com.au>

On Mon, 6 Apr 1998 samba@samba.anu.edu.au wrote:
> From: "Dejonghe, Koen" <Koen.Dejonghe@be.origin-it.com>
> To: "'samba@samba.anu.edu.au'"
<samba@samba.anu.edu.au>
> Subject: Triggering processes through Samba
>
> I was wondering if there isn't a more direct way of triggering a
> process through Samba, so that I can get rid of the daemon.
> Thanks for your help.
You could try creating a named pipe under Unix and having your
barcode reader write data to it.

e.g.
$ mknod pipe p
$ ls -l pipe
prw-r--r--   1 brett    sct            0 Apr  6 14:47 pipe
$ cat pipe

Meanwhile over on the PC...

D:\tmp>dir pipe
 Volume in drive D is brett
 Volume Serial Number is 0994-05F2

 Directory of D:\tmp

06/04/98  13:47                      0 pipe
               1 File(s)              0 bytes
                            122,486,784 bytes free
D:\tmp>echo hello > pipe

Then back at the Unix machine:

$ cat pipe
hello
$

Just like magic...
> Koen Dejonghe
Brett Worth

> On Mon, 6 Apr 1998, John Blair wrote:
> 
> > A third (I just thought of this one), rather extreme possibility would
> > be to modify the 'magic script' command to allow you to
specify an
> > arbitrary command that will be executed when an arbitrary filename is
> > closed.  This might not be too difficult, but would involve dipping
into
> > the innards of Samba :) 
> 
> Why would you do this when the shell script that you execute through the
> "magic script" file can execute an arbitrary command anyway?
> 
[snip]
> 
The program creting the data file, might not be able to automatically
create an
arbitry other file (the shell script)  immediately after that.