OS X (Apple)

On our home network, with 2 Macbook pros running OS X 10.6.*, I would like be able to popup a message to the user of the other computer.

Is there a way I can "call" from one computer to another not using skype, or ichat or any application that the user has to have running?

I guess first I would need a command to show me who is on the network and then a command to write a message.

have a look at the commands "wall" and "talk".

Do you have ssh access to the other computer? Apple script can do this.

Code:

#!/bin/bash

# send apple script command from the shell to display message

/usr/bin/osascript <<EOF

tell application "System Events"

display dialog "hello World!"

end tell

EOF

exit 0

Of course you don't have to script it, you could just code into a one liner as well.

That's only allowed for root or local consoles, my friend's home server tells me.

There's probably not one that wouldn't require some preconfiguration; if it existed you'd be getting spam on it like the old Windows Messaging service.

you can use write command also it will message to specific user only
o r u can use echo
echo "hi" dev/pts/0

That is why I said to do the ssh and applescript, you can also use the 'say' command and have the Mac's voice utility do text to speech for an audio alert.

I ssh-ed to a friend's mac and tried it. It wouldn't let me run applescript scripting GUI events since I was a remote user. You'd have to set up a sudo arrangement in advance to allow you to run these things with elevated privileges to get around that. I haven't tried 'say' but I doubt that's likely either.