Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!ukc!mupsy!vax1!sqkeith
From: sqkeith@csvax.liv.ac.uk
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: PHONE : no useful.
Message-ID: <391@csvax.liv.ac.uk>
Date: 17 Feb 88 13:03:12 GMT
References: <8801151553.AA18190@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <860001@otter.hple.hp.com>
Lines: 44
Organisation: Computer Science CSVAX (VAX1), Liverpool University


In article <860001@otter.hple.hp.com>, tjfs@otter.hple.hp.com
(Tim Steele) writes:
> There's a similar one in the DECUS library that I wrote some time ago, called
> NOTIFY.  It has the advantage (if you're a paranoid system manager like me)
> that messages from ordinary users are checked to make sure they're not too
> long and get prefixed with a banner, like:
> 
> ***From T_STEELE: Why do we all try and write the same tool?
> 

I have also written one called TELL which works via a detached process
which processes TELL 'packets' sent to a mailbox from ordinary users - sort
of mimics OPCOM.

The advantage of using such a process is that the interactive user doesn't
have to hang around waiting for his/her TELL command to complete when the
message is to be sent to a remote DECnet site. In addition, $BRKTHRU can
be used with longish timeout values.. Status messages/errors are transmitted
back to the sender via a broadcast.

TELL also provides:

*  a tele-conferencing system - every user shares the same channel with the
   tell-server performing the necessary message duplication and distribution
   on the local node and all participating remote nodes.

*  a rejection facility - users may prevent others from sending messages
   to them and may leave a message in the tell-server to be automatically
   transmitted on receipt of 'trapped' users' messages.

*  Aliasing is, of course, provided for fun-loving systems managers eager
   to have users ripping each others throats out.

*  Alarm clock messages may be queued.

There are extra functions concerned with eavesdropping and command activity
monitoring on a per user basis; these are essentially ad-hoc. As soon as
the tell-server has been modified so that it declares itself as a decnet
task and I've tidied some other parts of the code, I'll make it available
to interested sites.

Keith Halewood
"How is it possible to remember that which did not take place? - Eunuchs
(Un*x) accounting strikes again"