Sending a message to all users on a storage system

Purpose of sending a message

You send a message to all users on your storage system 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.

Broadcast prerequisites and limitations

Some clients might not receive broadcast messages. The following limitations and prerequisites apply to this feature.

Windows 95 and Windows for Workgroups clients must have the WinPopup program configured.
Windows 2003 and Windows XP Service Pack 2 clients must have the messenger service enabled. (By default, it is disabled.)
Messages to users can only be seen by Windows clients connected using NetBIOS over TCP.
Note
Network configuration can also affect which clients receive broadcast messages.

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 storage system	Go to Step 2.
	Send a message to a specific CIFS user connected to the storage system	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"**