Send text message to a cell phone via an HP UNIX 11.0 system

[William McElvain]

Recently, it has become important to check the vital statistics of our servers during the weekend, but I am not allowed access to the system from a home computer. What I would like to do is set it up to text message my cell phone in the event that there is a problem. Coding the message to check the status of the various systems isn't a problem, I just need to know how to send a text message to a cell phone, or if it's even a possibility. Thank you in advance.

[Patrick Wallek]

It is entirely possible.

The cell phone I have allows me to just send an e-mail to it. The message must be short, but it works. The syntax for my phone is:

# echo "message to send" | mailx -s "subject" 5555551212@mobile.phonecompany.net

You would just need to check with your wireless provider about the correct address syntax for sending an e-mail to your phone.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

If your cell phone can except email then this is straight-forward.

Create a text file:
Help, I am in trouble. I have a bad disk.

mail 6011234567@pagemci.com < textfile

or simply:
echo "Help. I am in trouble" | mail 6011234567@pagemci.com

If you have sendmail configured then that should do it.

Now, here is something more worrisome: How do you send a message when the network is down and thus email is unavailable?

Brief messages can be sent as numerical message. The idea is that you use a modem to dial you cell phone and send a numeric page. For example, anything I get that begins with '9' I know is really bad.

[Steven E. Protter]

All you need to do besides the actual email is insure your cellular service will accept the input as an email.

My Nextel from work has no email address associated with it becasue someone doesn't want to pay for it.

My personal Sprint PCS phone is set up with an email address and further, I've programmed it to flash its little red light if it gets email(I use simple email for this, not text messageing) if my servers at work or my private business send email.

The downnside for me is Sprint has no spam protection on the account and I'm getting 45 offers for various services on the account.

Quite useful, quite possible. Good luck. Let us know if you have specific issues with your cellular carrier. I've helped a few friends resolve this issue.

SEP

[William McElvain]

Your suggests all would work, but I failed to explain the all the details. My cell phone doesn't have email, but it does allow for text messaging. Is there a way to text message a cell phone from a script?

[Darren Prior · Accepted solution]

Hi William,

In the UK it _used_ to possible to send text messages by connecting to a dialup service. It's worth contacting your cell phone provider to find out what they offer. Other alternatives could include one of the email to text services that are offered on the web, or perhaps one of the web pages that allows you to send texts. It's a matter of automating your interface to the web page.

regards,

Darren.

[RAC_1]

If your cell service provider can give that facility, you may try following.
If you can reach internet from your box, you can do this. There are few free SMS sites that you can use. Check one that actually does give free SMS. Then from your box, you may post "web_page" request with your details. This may need some http get, put requests knowledge and command line tool to do that. You may want to have a look at utility called curl available at HP porting centre.

Anil