This message is more appropriate for the twisted-python list, as it has nothing to do with "web", so I've cross-posted it there. On 3 Jun, 10:57 pm, woahyeahyeah@yahoo.com wrote:

I've got a simple little chat server set up that people can telnet into.� The code is as follows:

from twisted.internet import reactor from twisted.internet.protocol import ServerFactory from twisted.protocols.basic import LineOnlyReceiver import threading

^ This is where things start to go (horribly) wrong. The protocol looks basically correct, but this part:

def Test(): ��� global test ��� factory.sendMessageToAllClients('Hey.') ��� test = threading.Timer(1.0, Test) ��� test.start() test = threading.Timer(1.0, Test) test.start()

is very, very wrong. You cannot call Twisted APIs from a thread. Ever. This is very important :). The behavior to you appeared to be some strange timing issues, but you can get anything from corrupted data to crashing the entire program.

Is there any way to get this to send the message and have it show up for a client even when they're idle?

Yes. Use the reactor's timed-event APIs rather than threads. In other words, do this, after you create your factory: from twisted.internet.task import LoopingCall LoopingCall(factory.sendMessageToAllClients, 'Hey.').start(1.0) You may be interested to also read about these APIs: http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/8.2.0/api/twisted.internet.task.LoopingCa... http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/8.2.0/api/twisted.internet.interfaces.IRe...