xmotd 1.16
973 downloads
from Sep 2002 - Aug 2003
|
«Mankind is the animal that makes tools. In each generation, only a few
people get a chance to create new tools. Very, very few get to
contribute to making a tool that changes the lives of first hundreds,
then thousands, then tens of thousands, and someday millions of
people.»
—John Walker, Autodesk
1.17.3 Beta Released July 1st, 2003
What is it?
xmotd is a utility program for network administrators, that
can be used to "broadcast" messages to users logged in across a
network. xmotd runs on each user's workstation when they
login and periodically checks whether a message file has been
modified and pops up and displays the contents of the file, if it
has.
Why is this useful you may ask? Well, let's say that 100GB disk
array you ordered has finally arrived and you want to let everyone on
your network know that the server will be going down for a bit, while
you install the array. If you had xmotd installed on your
network, you would simply update a message file that xmotd
was "watching" and in a few seconds, xmotd would pop-up on
everyone's screens notifing them of the scheduled down-time.
xmotd has many features allowing it to be customized for
your particular site. For example, you can replace the default logo,
that appears in the top left corner, with your company logo; the
title text can also be customized. xmotd can "watch" a
single file, more than one file or it can scan a whole directory
where files are added or removed.
xmotd typically runs when the user logs in and displays
any messages. However, if you have users that never logout,
xmotd can be configured to run as a background daemon and
periodically wake-ups and check files for
modifications. xmotd can be run by
xdm, CDE or startx (and from
~/.login when your users call-in via
dial-up). xmotd can be optionally compiled to display HTML
messages.
What's new with the latest release:
- The 1.17.3 beta is a bug-fix release. xmotd will now detect
that a document has been modified while xmotd was popped-up and
re-display it at the next time-out.
Java port
Wed Sep 26 18:26:51 2001
A Java port of xmotd is
available. This was a student project, so the complete functionality
of 1.16 is not available. It was tested under both Windows 98 and
Solaris 2.6 with Sun's Java Runtime (1.3). We use Samba to export the Unix file-system,
to our Windows boxen.
Andy Roosen's patch
Mon Dec 22 12:41:13 2003: In April 2003, Andy Roosen (NIST)
submitted a patch with some bug
fixes and new features. I have not had the time to incorporate this
patch into the distro but if you want the features, you can apply the
patch:
- The first bug is that (with the current version), the .xmotd doesn't
get updated except in revisitMessagesAndDisplay, so it doesn't
get updated on the initial message run through (or ever, if -wakeup
isn't used.
- The second bug (at least, I think it is a bug) is that the warning
file will pop-up and display each and every time xmotd wakes up
if -paranoid is set. I can't imagine that this would be desired
behavior except for the TRULY paranoid :). I want to warn users when
they first log in, but not every hour thereafter. Arguably the way to
preserve the current behavior would be to have an optional
argument to -paranoid that defaults to the current behavior.
- If the argument to -atom is 'none', then no atom is set. Helpful
for debugging. BTW, there appears to be a bug in that the atom remains
set even when xmotd exits/is killed, so no other can be started.
I dunno enough about X programming to fix this problem.
- Added a '-fork' flag that gives the user more choice about how
xmotd forks itself into the background. there are four options:
0=never forks, 1=forks only after the first run-through even if
-wakeup is set (I wanted this so that users would have to acknowledge
the warning message before continuing with the login process),
2=current (default) behavior (forks immediately if -wakeup is set),
3=forks immediately.
- Added a '-locfile' flag to indicate how xmotd should decide if
the user is still logged in. On my systems, /dev/console is never given
over to the user, so it was always exiting right away. OTOH, an
SSH agent is always started, so I use '-locfile $SSH_AUTH_SOCK'. I
also change the 'checking' code to do a 'stat' on the locfile
and check the UID instead of trying to open the file (the 'open' always
fails on the SSH_AUTH_SOCK).
- I removed the 1-minute minimum for -wakeup for ease of debugging,
which breaks compatability.
- With this setup, I will have Xsession run:
xmotd -wakeup 1 -locfile $SSH_AUTH_SOCK -fork 1 -warnfile /etc/warning -paranoid /var/news
before starting the 'real' session.
Compiling for Solaris 8
Thu May 3 19:33:13 EDT 2001: Jay G. Scott (University of Texas
at Austin) submitted a patch for
building xmotd for Solaris 8 (E450, Solaris 8, 64 bit
kernel) because, "the 32 bit version acted weird".
This is what the patch does:
- "...changes stat() to stat64()";
- "...adds back the -usehostnames option, which appears to
have been an ARL-ism from the start";
- "...prototypes everything";
- "...kludges the -xarch=v9 switches in the Makefile (the
-xildoff flag to ld may not be necessary for
everyone; all it does is turn the incremental loader off)".
What do I need to compile it?
Xmotd requires, a C compiler and at minimum, X11R5 including Xt (the
X Toolkit) for the resource and command-line parsing functions, and
the Athena widget (Xaw) libraries. Optionally, Xm, the Motif toolkit
(LessTif will do just fine
too), is needed if you wish to compile the Motif version; the Xpm
library should be installed if you wish to compile-in support for
colour logos.
xmotd can be built in 4 different flavours:
- with the Athena widget library (default), or;
- with Athena & HTML widget, or;
- with the Motif widget library, or;
- with Motif and HTML widget.
All the flavours can be built from the single distribution. It's just
a matter of defining the correct parameters in the Imakefile and
building (autoconf coming in the next release).
The main distribution is about 180K and contains the HTML widget;
the HTML widget library is not included with the 'lite'
distribution.
If you report any problems you encounter I will help you solve
them.
NOTE:To build the Motif+HTML flavour on Solaris systems you
have to fiddle with the Imakefile (detailed instructions included)
because Sun moved Motif to /usr/dt/ and this change has to
be propagated to the HTML-library Makefile from the top-level
Makefile.
What platforms does it run on?
xmotd and the HTML widget lib have been sucessfully compiled
here for Solaris 2.5.1, 2.6, 2.8 and GNU/Linux 2.4.18
xmotd has also been reported to successfully compile on the
following platforms:
- HP 9000/735 running HP-UX 9.03 (X11R5)
- IBM RS/6000 model C10 (PowerPC) running AIX v3.2.5.
- Intel x86 running Gnu/Linux 2.x (X11R6)
- Intel x86 running FreeBSD
(X11R6; available in the ports)
- Sun SPARCstations running SunOS 4.1.1B & 4.1.4 (X11R6) and
UltraSPARCs running Solaris 2.5.1, 2.6, 2.7 and 2.8 (X11R6)
- Silicon Graphics INDY running Irix 5.3 (X11R5)
- Mips/CDC (running EPIX) and PCS/M68030 (running MUNIX/SysV).
How does it work?
When xmotd runs (under both X11 and dumb-terminals), it
creates a time-stamp file (called ".xmotd", by default) in
the user's home-directory. It uses the date of this file to check
whether the motd has changed. If the date of the message-file(s) is
later than the date on the ~/.xmotd time-stamp file, then
xmotd will display the message; otherwise it will silently
exit.
Running xmotd from the system Xsession file (via
xdm or CDE)
xmotd is meant to be run automatically from the system
Xsession file by xdm (the X display manager), after a
successful login. The Xsession file is in
$ProjectRoot/lib/X11/xdm/Xsession
(where $ProjectRoot is /usr/X11R6 or
/usr).
Put a script that runs xmotd into
/etc/dt/config/Xsession.d for systems running CDE (thanks
to Dave Carrigan for posting this solution).
The message-of-the-day file is passed to xmotd as the
last option after any other command-line options:
xmotd -geometry +20+20 /usr/local/motd
When xmotd is supplied with more than one file on the
command-line, it will selectively display only those files, from the
list, which have a modification date later than that of the
time-stamp.
In the following example, all the files in
/usr/local/messages/ will be checked for modification
times greater than the time-stamp and only those files will be
displayed:
xmotd -geometry +20+20 -wakeup 1 /usr/local/messages/
When more than one file is to be displayed, the user is obliged to
press the "Next Message" button to view the next
message. When the last message is displayed, the button changes to
read "Dismiss". After all the files are displayed, and the
user presses "Dismiss" xmotd will sleep for one
hour (-wakeup 1), then wakeup and check the directory for
changes and pop-up again if any of the files have changed (or new
files have been added).
It can also be configured to pop-down automatically, without
user-intervention, after a specified delay (in seconds) using the
-popdown option.
Please consult the manual page for details about other options.
Running xmotd from ~/.xinitrc
For sites that do not use xdm, xmotd may be run from
user's ~/.xinitrc. Note, however, that with this approach
it is possible for (knowledgeable) users to remove the command
from their ~/.xinitrc file either accidently or with
malice aforethought.
Running xmotd from ~/.login
xmotd can also be run from a user's ~/.login
file. xmotd defaults to text-mode mode when it fails to
connect with an X server (i.e. the DISPLAY environment
variable is not set). Note that only -stampfile and
-wakeup are recognized in text-only mode.
Can I customize it?
Most everything, including the logo, the fonts, the pop-down timeout
period and the colours, can be customized via the supplied
app-defaults file, via editres or via command-line resources.
The simplest customization is the logo. Use xv to create a
mono bitmap or colour pixmap (if xpm support is compiled in), save it
in (for example) /usr/local/logo.xbm and run:
xmotd -bitmaplogo /usr/local/logo.xbm /usr/local/motd
This example (names blanked out
to protect the guilty) illustrates a more complex on-the-fly
command-line customization of xmotd (it's all one line
that's been split-up to make it easier to read):
/usr/X11/bin/xmotd -always \
-xrm "*title.label: Top 10 Disk Hogs\n As of midnight\n" \
-xrm "*title.foreground: yellow" \
-xrm "*form.background: red" \
-xrm "*title.background: red" \
-xrm "*logo.background: pink" \
-xrm "*text*font: -adobe-times-bold-*-normal-*-*-180-*" \
-geometry 500x650-1-1 \
-bitmaplogo /usr/common/choke.xbm \
/usr/common/accounting/top &
Wish-list (future versions)
- a port to Gnome (GTK widgets);
- autoconf build;
- use XmHTML widget (supports inline images and HTML 3.2) when
it is stable;
- automatically switch between HTML and text widget when HTML
support is compiled: detect if 1st char is "<" and assume HTML
tag (add -dumb or -forcetext to force
textmode even if 1st char is "<");
- be able to specify a different pixmap for each file displayed;
e.g. for emergency "The system is going down NOW !!!" messages the
icon should be something more attention getting than the "X"; the
pixmap name is the same as the filename.
- option to allow the filename label to be placed beside the
"Dismiss" button rather than below;
Mail me any other suggestions on the condition that if I implement
them, you are expected to test them.
|
