On Mon, 2007-05-28 at 18:52 +0100, Mick wrote:
Hi All,
What is the way to send a console warning to anyone logged on a machine
before
I reboot it?
shutdown(8) does this for you. In addition there is wall(1).
If the user is logged on a console I will only need to send it to the
console;
in addition if the user is running webmin, or phpadmin, then I would really
like a popup of sorts to alert them to log out (something like the net send
command on MS Windows running with the messenger service).
Is there such a thing?
I could give a long explanation on why in practice this never works
(even for wall msgs), but it's not interesting. Instead I'll give you
some real-world examples of what I've seen.
* Don't plan reboots during production or when production is at
peak unless absolutely necessary. In the latter case most
people will be expecting a reboot because they are aware of a
problem that is affecting production.
* For small shops, it's just as easy, and more effective, to just
go door-to-door letting everyone know there's going to be a
reboot.
* Nearly every medium-large place I've worked had an overhead
speaker system (dunno why, call me lucky) where unexpected
crashes and reboots were broadcast.
* For planned reboots, one site I worked sent out broadcast emails
periodically before a scheduled reboot. There was a monthly
schedule sent out as well as an email the week ans shortly
before the reboot. This was a multi-platform, nation-wide
operation and basically there was no universal way to let
everyone know. Even for the single-platform shop I worked at,
not everyone (that was affected) sat in front of a terminal. All
relevant people or their supervisors were on the mailing list.
If you didn't know, you didn't need to know.
* Not even the Windows shop I worked at used net send to alert of
reboots. Maybe nice idea, but it doesn't work. People are away
from their computers, have the messenger service turned off,
just click OK without reading the message, etc. etc. All that
net send every did in my experience is generate a lot of phone
calls from people who didn't understand what it was or what it
meant.
* The most effective way I've seen was a recent job. They simply
announced on the loud speaker for everyone to log off and shut
down until further notice. There was no reboot announcement, no
explanation. Nothing. Even if a person wasn't affected
everyone was told to log out and turn off their machines. This
eliminated the phone calls from people asking does this mean
me? We just had everyone off. For stragglers, VPN users, etc.
They were manually disconnected. Let them figure out what
happened when they get back.
As for webmin and phpadmin users... well those people are
administrators... shouldn't they already know? I wouldn't want a fellow
admin bouncing a server without tapping me on the shoulder or giving me
a call. Technology is rarely a good replacement for common sense.
--
Albert W. Hopkins
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
