samba - Feb 2003 - Broadcast message with smbclient -M

Hello,

Is there a way to broadcast a message with smbclient -M?

Also, is there some utility out there with user interface where I can select
which machines should receive the message and then send it out?

Thanks,
Tomas

I don't know of a simple broadcast method.

To broadcast to all clients on your network, I can think of two possibilities.
There is a findsmb Perl script which comes with the samba. With nmbd turned
off, it will look for responding machines.
Or, if you have a wins server, 
smbclient -L winserver will list all the servers known to it.

After that, you have to write a script, I guess.

If you just want to broadcast to some clients, this could be another simple
script.

script:
#!/bin/bash
cat MyMessage | smbclient -M netbios1 &
cat MyMessage | smbclient -M netbios2 & 
cat MyMessage | smbclient -M netbios3 &

Then, put your message into file MyMessage and run the script.

To be more organized, you could keep all your users in one file, users:
netbios1
netbios2
netbios3

Then, your script might be :

#!/bin/bash
for i in `cat users`
do
cat MyMessage | smbclient -M $i &
done

I haven't tried any of this stuff out, but, it sure looks simple.

Forget the "user interface" for this stuff. You are better off without
it.

Joel

On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 11:28:32AM -0700, Tomas Florian
wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Is there a way to broadcast a message with smbclient -M?
> 
> Also, is there some utility out there with user interface where I can
select
> which machines should receive the message and then send it out?
>

>Is there a way to broadcast a message with
>smbclient -M?
>
>Also, is there some utility out there with
>user interface where I can select which
>machines should receive the message and
>then send it out?
Not that I know, but any scripting language
can accomplish that without much sweat, e.g.

   for i in $(smbstatus | awk '
BEGIN {do getline;while(substr($0,1,1)!="-")}
$0 == "" { exit }
{print $5 }' | sort | uniq)
   do   echo "Attention." | smbclient -M $i
   done

which pops up and "Attention." window on each
active user's screen exactly once.

It's up to you to add some eye-candy with a
squirt of Tcl/TK or something.

Cheers
Dragan


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