Sending a message to all users on a filer

Purpose of sending a message

You send a message to all users on a filer to tell them of important events. The message appears in an alert box on the users' computers.

Data ONTAP automatically sends a message to connected users after you enter the cifs terminate command. However, if you want to send a message without stopping CIFS service, for example, to tell users to close all files, you can use Server Manager or the Data ONTAP command line to send a message.

Prerequisite for displaying the message

Windows 95 and Windows for Workgroups clients must have the WinPopup program configured before they can display any messages you send from the filer.

Note
Messages to users can only be seen by Windows clients connected using NetBIOS over TCP.

Sending a message to all connected users from Server Manager

To use Server Manager to send a message to all users on a filer, complete the following steps.

Step	Action
1	Select your filer from Server Manager.
2	From the Computer menu, choose Send Message as you would when sending a message to users on a Windows NT server. Example The following example illustrates sending a message to all users on TOASTER.

Step

Action

Select your filer from Server Manager.

From the Computer menu, choose Send Message as you would when sending a message to users on a Windows NT server.

Example

The following example illustrates sending a message to all users on TOASTER.

Sending messages to connected users from the command line

To use the Data ONTAP command line to send a message to one client or to all clients connected to a particular volume, complete the following steps.

Step	Action
1	If you want to...	Then...
	Send a message to all CIFS users connected to the filer	Go to Step 2.
	Send a message to a specific CIFS user connected to the filer	Go to Step 3.
	Send a message to all CIFS users connected to a particular volume	Go to Step 4.
2	Enter the following command: *cifs broadcast "message"**
3	Enter the following command: *cifs broadcast client_name* "message"**
4	Enter the following command: *cifs broadcast -v volume* "message"**