Hi folks,

I have a network which contains 4 linux machines and 1 Win XP machine.
From a bash script that checks on the tape drive attached to one of the Linux machines I use smbclient to create a popup message on the windows machine if a problem is found. This uses the built-in alerter and messenger programs of Windows. It does exactly what I need.

I need to find a way to popup a message on one of the Linux machines at the same time.
I have tested using xmessage to disply a remote message and it only has one flaw. It waits for its return code before the rest of the script can be executed. I can have it timeout but I would rather send the message and just carry on. Is there a way that I can pipe in the return code on the command line and if so would that make the message on the remote machine dissappear?

Any other ideas?

Linux Machines are Mandrake 8.2.

Thanks.

Would linpopup be of any use ?
http://www.littleigloo.org/downloads_002.php3

Unfortnueatley no.
It doesn't have the command line fiunctionality I need.

Thanks anyways.

So you want XMessage, but you don't want to wait for a return... So how are you trying to call XMessage - is this a script (Perl, Shell) or a "program" (C/C++)?

[Edit - OK, read the post again]

Since this is a script - why not just background the xmessage?

xmessage --center "Hey, Check this error" & >/dev/null 2>&1

Wouldn't this do what you need?

PERL does not honor the & at the end of the command so here is the fix.

I moved the xmessage command into a bash script.
The line in that script included the & at the end.

I then call that shell script from the perl script using the system() function like this
system("my_xmessage.sh","$variable1","$variable2");

I use variables because the messages are dynamically built.

Now my perl script continues on with it's business and does not rely on the user input from xmessage to be returned.

Thanks to those who replied.