Any pointers to make a shell script in cronjob or using at to be user interactive. We have a requirement to script a program where it prompts the users in CUI for feedback and capture the output in a text file and act based on the feedback.

For eg: At pre-defined time i should prompt the acitve users whether it is ok to shutdown, whose feedback would be captured in a text file. Post which act on the updates in the text file.

Regards,
Kiran

Kiran this sounds remarkably like a homework question?

...in any case you're invited to post any (pseudo) code you've got together with any errors to receive possibly constructive comments.

Below is the shell script we are using, which works fine when executed at shell prompt, but fails to come to foreground when scheduled in cron. I know that the cron cannot be attached to tty device, but is there any alternate solution..??? also should be compatible for CUI only, and NOT GUI.

#!/usr/bin/ksh

DIR=/var/power_shutdown/scenario1
export DIR

echo "***************************************************"
echo "# ------URGENT------ #"
echo "#### AUTO POWER SHUTDOWN STARTED #####"
echo "# ------------------ #"
echo "****************************************************"
echo " "


cntr=0


[ `wc -l <$DIR/users.temp` -eq 0 ] && input='Y' || input='N'


while [ $cntr -eq 0 ]
do
echo "DO YOU WANT TO SHUTDOWN[Y|N]"
read -t10 input
if [ $input != 'Y' -a $input != 'y' -a $input != 'n' -a $input != 'N' ]
then
echo "INVALID INPUT !! ENTER INPUT AGAIN"
# Read the input again
cntr=0
else
if [ $input == 'Y' -o $input == 'y' ]
then
USER=`who am i | awk '{print $1}'`
echo "$USER::Y">>$DIR/fd.txt
cntr=1
else
USER=`who am i | awk '{print $1}'`
echo "$USER::N">>$DIR/fd.txt
echo "-----------------------------"
echo "DEFAULTLY SNOOZED FOR 1 HOUR"
echo "-----------------------------"
cntr=1
fi
fi
done
-------------------------end of the script---------------------------

If you would be dealing with the GUI the process would be to find out find out which target user is logged into which $DISPLAY, export the DISPLAY for the process that will be using it, get yourself Xauth'ed for the target users Xsession and fire off a Zenity, Gdialog or equivalent script. For the CLI the same won't work unless you force everybody to use say GNU/Screen (or tmux?) and manage to mess up "-X" to do Something Completely Different. The CLI (Command Line Interface) and GUI (Graphical User Interface) TLA I know but CUI (Composite User Interface?) I don't know about...