Is it safe to run multiple powershell scripts concurrently? - windows

I've adapted a powershell script from here https://www.pdq.com/blog/using-powershell-to-set-static-and-dhcp-ip-addresses-part-1/ to set an IP address on a NIC adapter in Windows. I have Python code that spawns a powershell process and points to the script that does the work. This may be a very obscure question but I am wondering how safe it is to run multiple such scripts simultaneously assuming they all modify the same adapter?
My code isn't what I'm worried about. I'm worried that there may be race conditions on the adapter or it may cause other unforeseen errors. What do you think? Also, would using ip addr add on unix systems pose similar risks?

There is nothing to worry about having multiple scripts for the same job. The script you copied is already checking if your parameter is changed, if not it does nothing. Otherwise it will change it to your defined parameter.

Related

ReadDirectoryChangesW and determining which process caused the change

How can I determine which processes are making changes to which files.
I did find this:
FileSystemWatcher: how to know which process made the change?
But I'm curious if anything has changed lately? Is it possible yet to determine which process is making changes to the file system, either using ReadDirectoryChangesW or anything else? I'd prefer not to have to write or use a kernel driver.
Create a security audit on the files you want to track. The information will be recorded in the security event log.
While it may be possible to find out the process that changes a file using kernel drivers (for example, process monitor), there will always be a problem identifying the process in case the folder is shared on the network, and a process on another computer modifies the file over the network.
Even the kernel drivers would in this case identify the network share process as the one accessing the file, not the process on the other computer.
I can't seem to comment yet. I would be interested in your Python code that creates a security audit on files or paths. It's a bit of a shame if it messes with the system security event log, but you can't have everything! :-)
Up until this point, I have been using GetForegroundWindow at the time of the change to eventually get the associated process. It only works well for changes initiated by the user, but that is primarily what I've been interested in. Besides background processes, the only minor issue is that sometimes a process is spawned just to accomplish a task (like a batch file) and it is non-existent by the time you want to learn more about it (like what process spawned it). I imagine that is a problem even with a security audit, though.

Turning on a specific program at a specific time and turning off the computer at another specific time

I decided to write a program in RUBY in which the following things should be done:
1 - this program must run a specific program (for example utorrent) at a specific time (for example 1 pm).
2 - this program must turn off my computer at another specific time.
I don't have any idea about the algorithm and manner of writing such program.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to simply send kill signals to the processes, requesting the app shut down normally (Linux), or in Windows use taskkill.
To shutdown a machine in Windows, you can use shutdown /s /f which forcibly closes any programs that are running, and turns the computer off.
No matter which way you do it, you'll basically be running the enter link description heresystem() command in Ruby, which runs command line commands. To make your app portable, you simply look up how to do these tasks in each target OS, and you're done.
Two more alternatives that work the same as your Ruby proposal, but which are not as easily portable:
Write a batch file in Windows that calls taskkill, or a bash script on Linux. Unless the program in question provides a specific way to shut it down via its own command-line parameters, this should work for any/all applications.
You can also use Task Scheduler in Windows, or cron in Linux to do the same thing.

Scripting for safe file backup under windows

I need to back up some large files that are being written to disk by a process. The process is perpetually running, and occasionally dumps large files that need to be moved over the network. Having the process do this itself is not an option, as the process locks out users whilst it is doing file dumps.
So, this runs under a windows machine, and as a primarily linux user, I am not entirely certain how to do this...
Under linux I would simply use a cron job in the folder (I know the glob that will match the output files), then check lsof, to ensure that the file is not being written to, such that I don't try to copy a partially complete file. Data integrity is critical, so I would normally md5 the files before and after the copy.
So I guess my question is -- how does one do this sort of stuff under windows? I feel like I am kneecapped from the start -- I can use python, but I can't emulate lsof, nor cron to do the task scheduling.
I tried looking at "handle" -- but it needs admin privelidges at execution time, which is also not an option. I can't run the backup process as an admin, it has to run with user privs.
Thanks..
Edit: I just realised I could keep the python instance running, with a sleep, so task scheduling is not a problem :)
For replacing cron you can use the "Task Scheduler" in windows to start your script every few minutes (or specific times).
For lsof the question was discussed here : How can I determine whether a specific file is open in Windows?

Windows service porting to linux

I am porting an application which runs as a background service in windows at startup, we are porting the application to linux(SUSE Enterprise server), I'am completely new to linux. Can somebody help me on how to proceed with this. Like
Should I build the linux executable
After builiding the binary, what changes should I make to linux startup files to run this executable
How my service can register call back function to modify or change or send commands to my service while it is running
Yes, you should build a Linux binary. You may want to rephrase your question since I doubt this is the answer you want :-)
You should generally create what is known as an "init" file, which lives in /etc/init.d. Novell has a guide online which you can use to author the file. Note that while the init file is common, the exact method of letting the operating system use it varies depending on the distribution.
This is going to be a marked change for you. If you are doing simple actions such as re-loading a configuration file, you can use the signals functionality, especially the SIGHUP/HUP signal which is generally used for this purpose. If you require extended communication with your daemon, you can use a UNIX domain socket (think of it as a named pipe) or a network socket.
Another task you are going to need to accomplish is to daemonize your application. Generally this is done by first fork()ing your process, then redirecting the stdin/stdout pipes in the child. There are more details which can be answered by reading this document
See how-to-migrate-a-net-windows-service-application-to-linux-using-mono.
Under Linux, deamons are simple background processes. No special control methods (e.g start(), stop()) are used as in Windows. Build your service as a simple (console) application, and run it in the background. You can use a tool like daemonize to run a program as a Unix daemon.

When running a shell script, how can you protect it from overwriting or truncating files?

If while an application is running one of the shared libraries it uses is written to or truncated, then the application will crash. Moving the file or removing it wholesale with 'rm' will not cause a crash, because the OS (Solaris in this case but I assume this is true on Linux and other *nix as well) is smart enough to not delete the inode associated with the file while any process has it open.
I have a shell script that performs installation of shared libraries. Sometimes, it may be used to reinstall versions of shared libraries that were already installed, without an uninstall first. Because applications may be using the already installed shared libraries, it's important the the script is smart enough to rm the files or move them out of the way (e.g. to a 'deleted' folder that cron could empty at a time when we know no applications will be running) before installing the new ones so that they're not overwritten or truncated.
Unfortunately, recently an application crashed just after an install. Coincidence? It's difficult to tell. The real solution here is to switch over to a more robust installation method than an old gigantic shell script, but it'd be nice to have some extra protection until the switch is made. Is there any way to wrap a shell script to protect it from overwriting or truncating files (and ideally failing loudly), but still allowing them to be moved or rm'd?
Standard UNIX file permissions won't do the trick because you can't distinguish moving/removing from overwriting/truncating. Aliases could work but I'm not sure what entirety of commands need to be aliased. I imagine something like truss/strace except before each action it checks against a filter whether to actually do it. I don't need a perfect solution that would work even against an intentionally malicious script.
You can prevent a script from overwriting through I/O redirection by
set noclobber
Preventing overwriting by cp and the like is harder. My inclination would be to reset the PATH for the script to run with PATH containing just a single entry, a "blessed" directory where you place commands that you know are safe. This might mean, for example, that your version of cp is arranged always to use the --remove-destination option (probably a GNU-ism). In any case, you arrange for the script to execute only commands from the blessed directory. You can then vet each such command individually.
It would be good if you could prevent a script from executing a command by absolute pathname, but I don't know how to do that. If you are doing installations in your regular directories, a chroot jail probably does not help unless you do a lot of loopback mounting to make those directories visible. And if the directories into which you're installing contain dangerous commands, I don't see how you can protect yourself against them completely.
Incidentally, I tried and failed to learn if install(1) removes the desitination before installing. It would be interseting to learn.
Bash script I presume? Is the script very long? If not, you can do this manually:
if [ ! -f /tmp/foo.txt ] #If file does not exist
then
...code
fi
But I think you're asking for a way to wrap this around the script. You can certainly monitor the file writes with strace but AFAIK it doesn't have the functionality to interrupt them, unless you set up some sort of Intrusion Detection System with rules etc.
But to be honest, unless it's a huge script, that's probably more trouble than it's worth
Write your own safe_install() functions and make sure they're the only methods used. If you really need to be sure, run two processes. One would have permissions to make changes and the other would drop all privileges early and tell the other script to do the actual disk work.

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