At 08:01 25.02.1998 -0600, Mark wrote:
>I'm looking more for a command line prompt - definitely not interactive.  I
>want to issue that command from the unix box - something like a 'TELL' or
>'TELLOP' to the console so the operators know to check something.  They are
>trained to watch the HP3000 consoles for messages like that coming from the
>HP3000s.

Okay, here is another idea how Samba could be (mis)used for a purpose like
described above, either from a Unix system or even from Windows PC... While
I am a little hesitant to post this (as I do not want Samba/iX to become
kind of "overhyped"), I still decided to do it as this might trigger some
creative ideas for using the SMBD server on the 3000 in non-standard ways.

To send data for TELLOP or similar 3000-side activities you may use the
WinPopup feature of smbclient (-M) or equivalent PC utilities, as mentioned
in my previous posting, but you may also use a specially configured "printer
share", something like

 [tellop]
   comment = Pseudo Printer to send TELLOP messages
   path = /tmp
   guest ok = yes
   print command = /usr/local/elsewhere/bin/mytellop %s

The trick is in the mytellop script. Remote printing with Samba works in
such a way, that the printout file is first written to a server share (is
mapped to /tmp in the above example) and then processed by a configurable
script on the server side. In the Samba/iX sample config this is the RawLP
utility but it can be anything else, for example a small shell script that
takes the printfile name as argument and sends one or more lines from the
file to the console using CALLCI TELLOP and finally deletes the tmp file.

Haven't tried it but it should work properly (similar to the preexec or
postexec examples that are mentioned in the sample smb.conf and that use
the sample /usr/local/samba/lib/mytellop script/command-file)...

The client would do something like

  echo "Hi there, MPE folks" | smbclient '\\your3k\tellop' -P -c 'print -'

or, if not Unix but Windows box

  echo Hi there, MPE folks > \\your3k\tellop

which doesn't seem too ugly, does it?  ;-)

By the way, you might want to add some filtering in the configuration of
this special "tellop" printer share to restrict access to certain client
machines and/or client users as you certainly would not want to end up
some people send their favourite wordprocessor or spreadsheet printouts
to the \\your3k\tellop "printer" by accident... (oops)

You might use smb.conf directives like "allow hosts" or "valid users" or
else utilize tricks like "include %M" or "include %I" to make this part
of smb.conf only "visible" to certain clients.

Thanks for your patience ;-)

Lars.