Sending text to process
 

Hi!
I have some TF2 servers running in a screen, now I want to create a little script that sends a specific text to all of these servers. Now finding the PID etc isn't a problem, more the sending text to process. How do I do that?

eg.

You might investigate named pipes: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/...pes-fifos-bash

how would I make the process read the pipe?

Have the receiving process read the pipe; it will block waiting for the input. When data is written, the receiving process will read it and take whatever action is coded.

Well, I still have to write in the process itself
The TF2 server is basically a foreground application for the console where I can type commands and it executes it on the server (eg. I type status and it writes the current server status).
now if I use this:
I won't see any IO of the server's console.

edit: no thats wrong, the process simply stopps until something is in serverfifo..

If you just need a state indication, you could do something like this:
and write the flag flie like this from another process:
That way the flag fle could be used to control as many processes as you wish.

This is WAY too complex..
Is there a way of mapping the stdin of a process to two sources, which would be in my case my keyboard and my named pipe? (And of course stdout to the console). And all this without blocking.

Assuming that this IS possible, it does not sound like a very good idea.......How would the process know which source to pay attention to?

Good point.
I also could set my pipe as stdin and stdout and then use some kind of weird contraption of tee and tail -f to read+write the servers I/O.
But for some reason
doesn't write the servers output to the serverfifo *confused*.

Edit: assuming multiple input sources are possible the process can mix the two because I am 1000% sure, if something writes to the pipe nothing is written to the console. So I think this wouldnt cause any trouble.

Edit2: Damn this can't be so hard to send text to a process. Linux is so powerful, this should be a damn small task for it :(

I did not attempt to understand the details, but the advice offered by @david1941 did not seem all that complex....In fact, I must go back and thank him for getting into my thick head what a "named pipe" is.....

agree. But I don't want to run an additional script if I start the server just to get the pipe work.

Also why isn't program <> pipe writing stdout to the pipe? I still can see all console output and the pipe remains empty.