terminal question

gonzalezjay · 10-15-2003, 11:25 PM

I know this is a really foolish question but hey why not ask. I'm running a machine that has Mac OS X (Boo!) that allows me to access it's unix core through terminal. My other machine running Mac OSX resides on a network that I can ssh into. I was wondering if there is a way that I can remotely send a message to a user on my other machine through my terminal.

Thanks
Jay

iainr · 10-16-2003, 04:41 AM

No idea if this will work on Mac OS X but...

Assuming you are logged onto the box with SSH, you can send a message to a particular terminal session.

The w or who command should show you which terminal or pseudo-tty a session is on as. Then you just write to that device.

e.g. echo hello > /dev/pts/3

Iain.

gonzalezjay · 10-16-2003, 11:13 AM

Thanks! I'll try that and let you know if it works.

frieza · 10-16-2003, 11:17 AM

yeah, it should work, macos x is mostly posix compliant

gonzalezjay · 10-16-2003, 12:41 PM

I tried to do what ianr said. I have already ssh into my comp on my network away from home. Because no one is using has the terminal app on the other end, I have remotely launched it by entering open -a terminal. After this point I have entered e.g. echo hello > /dev/pts/3 and my comand line returns an error that reads "command not found" What exactly does /dev/pts/3 signify ? Is this a path to some kind of directory that I need to change according to my own machine ?

Thanks for your patience. I'm new to this stuff.

gonzalezjay · 10-16-2003, 01:02 PM

Actually my command line returns an error that reads "/dev/pts/3 directory or file not found." Sorry about that bit of wrong info.

Shade · 10-16-2003, 02:43 PM

you need to follow his first advice which is to use w or who to see what port the terminal is running on

it's not going to be /dev/pts/3 for everyone.

Another utility you can use is write, and also talk.
Talk sets up a two way messenger like relationship on the console.
Not sure if OSX has all these unix utils.

-Shade

gonzalezjay · 10-16-2003, 06:05 PM

both talk and write worked perfectly. Thanks for the info everyone!