Edit: Do you do anything similar?
Originally posted April 30, 2019 on AIXchange
As I’ve noted previously, I regularly visit the AIX Forum. Generally there’s good discussion, and occasionally an interesting question is raised. For instance, about a month ago a forum member asked about sending texts from AIX.
The first reply noted that the curl command can be used for this:
curl http://textbelt.com/text -d number=123456789 -d “message=hello from me”
Alternatively, you could email your provider (assuming they have an SMS gateway). For instance in the U.S. Verizon allows you email the 10-digit mobile number followed by @vtext.com. Messages are limited to 160 characters, including the subject line and recipient’s email address. To include an attachment, enter the recipient’s 10-digit number followed by @vzwpix.com.
AT&T offers something similar. Information about other carriers, along with browser add-ins, can be found here.
So why text through AIX in the first place? Administrators often do this as part of a notification process. If there’s an error in the system, the admin receives an automated text message. Or maybe you want to know when a job completes.
Maybe you want to set up some reminders in your crontab. Although this example runs on Linux, something similar can be set up on AIX.
Of course you must weigh the benefits of getting notified via SMS vs. an email notification, but it’s always nice to have options.