Hey guys,

I work at a help desk and whenever I log onto one of our servers and wish to restart the server or software or something I need to make sure no one else is on. So right now I go around the office asking people to make sure, slow eh? ya. So is there a command I can run which will tell me if there is anyone currently logged on to the same server as me? and also is there a command I can do to broadcast a message to everyone logged on like "I'm restarting the software now."

If anyone knows that would be great, thanks!

who shows you who is logged in

shutdown has options to restart the server in a certain amount of time and append a warning message.
http://www.linuxvalley.it/encycloped...shutdown.8.php

In addition to who(1) there's w(1); it's a bit shorter to type and gives more information. last(1) also comes to mind.

You can use write(1) to write a message to another person's terminal. Maybe you could write a script that takes the first column of who(1) and uses write(1) to broadcast a message?

Lyle

Thanks darthtux!

That helps alot

and Thanks lyle thats sweet as well :P