# Providing feedback to users at command line

**URL:** <https://community.openpbs.org/t/providing-feedback-to-users-at-command-line/3439>\
**Category:** Users/Site Administrators\
**Created:** [February 7, 2023, 8:01pm UTC](https://community.openpbs.org/t/providing-feedback-to-users-at-command-line/3439 "2023-02-07T20:01:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sijisaula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/779978/32.png) [@sijisaula](https://community.openpbs.org/u/sijisaula)\
**Post date:** [February 7, 2023, 8:01pm UTC](https://community.openpbs.org/t/providing-feedback-to-users-at-command-line/3439/1 "2023-02-07T20:01:21Z")

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Hello,

We are curious if there are any workarounds to the inability of PBS hooks to send custom messages to STDOUT where a user initiated a “qsub” from.

Currently, a rejected event can send custom messages, but we have several use cases for sending custom messages where the event is accepted. Any assistance that might help would be appreciated.

Thanks,  
Sam

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**Author:** ![dtalcott](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/community.openpbs.org/dtalcott/32/410_2.png) [@dtalcott](https://community.openpbs.org/u/dtalcott)\
**Post date:** [February 7, 2023, 11:14pm UTC](https://community.openpbs.org/t/providing-feedback-to-users-at-command-line/3439/2 "2023-02-07T23:14:22Z")

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You don’t want the message to go to qsub’s stdout. That is often used by scripts to learn the submitted jobid.

As an ugly, untested hack, you could put a wrapper around qsub. When the qsub succeeds, the wrapper could do a qstat looking for a value for the job’s “site” resource (which is normally unused). If the wrapper finds something, it outputs that to stderr. The hook’s job is then to set the text of the site resource to whatever custom message you want.

I suspect, though, that extra messages from qsub will mostly just annoy users and be ignored.

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**Author:** ![sijisaula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/779978/32.png) [@sijisaula](https://community.openpbs.org/u/sijisaula)\
**Post date:** [February 8, 2023, 6:24pm UTC](https://community.openpbs.org/t/providing-feedback-to-users-at-command-line/3439/3 "2023-02-08T18:24:20Z")

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Thanks for confirming the wrapper script approach, however, I do think we need to rethink our core messaging strategy. Maybe an email to the user from the hook might be best solution here.