Working with windows applications remotely - windows

I am working with some applications which are located on remote windows server. In that case I need to login remotely to this machine (using remote desktop). Having two desktops (local and remote) on one monitor is uncomfortable (I need to all the time switch between them).
Is there any similar tool to xming? I will be better for me using remote applications like a local (integrated with my local desktop).

Good day Pawel.
Could you specify your situation?
1. If you need to call and retrive exit codes from windows objects(programms and etc) remotely try to use WMI
2. If you need to execute your code remotely try to use some kinds of frameworks for example Pyro(it's implemented in Python programming language)
3. in case of using file systems locally you neede to can create share on client machine and mount it in your host machine
Best Regards,
Dmitry.

Related

copying files from one windows server to another

I have to copy a file from a windows 2008 server to one or more windows 2008 servers. I have accounts on the target machines with enough privileges to let me use powershell remoting and use wmi. The remote machines do not run ftp, ssh or similar file transfer mechanisms. I am not allowed to install software or run new services on the target server. I can run services on the source server.
The file copy action must be initiated from the source server. i.e. I cannot manually logon to the target machines and initiate the copy - though an automated way to do this is acceptable.
Is it possible to use WMI or PowerShell Remoting to push or pull the file from the source to the target ? Is it possible to invoke some sort of built in http client or invoke the BITS service/agent on the remote servers to pull files from the source server ?
Other suggestions please.
Yes it is possible to copy files using the constraints you've been given. Basically, you will need to ensure the source server has a file share that's accessible by the target host. You will then need to follow the process created by Frank White, here on SO, and fully fleshed out and referenced here, though you'll have to translate from VBS to PS1:
Trying to copy file from one XP PC to another using WMI, since RPC and UNC are not available

Collect EventLogs from remote XP machines

I want to collate EventLogs from different machines onto one machine. Is there any way that this can be done non-programatically using Windows XP?
I think that there is no automatic way to do that provided by system. You could use Remote Desktop or SSH to access machines, but You will have to connect and retrieve logs from every machine manually.
Of course You can make your own program to do this for You.

ec2 workflow microsoft / apple

I'm switching over to EC2 and obviously it's easiest to manage instances through a command line rather than some crappy web interface, but I work on a PC and have everything set up in Windows. What is the best way to work with dev server instances? Putty? Is there an alternative? What do you guys use?
Thanks!
It depends what you mean by "manage instances".
If you mean the ability to launch new instances from an AMI, configure security groups, manage EIP's and so on, the ElasticFox plugin to Firefox is great (in spite of having occasionally buggy releases). The command line tools supplied by Amazon for this purpose could be a good basis if you're writing automated scripts, but I find ElasticFox much better for my work.
To work directly on the instances, I use WinSCP for both Windows and Linux instances (I installed a third-party SFTP server for Windows), PuTTY for Linux and Remote Desktop for Windows.
I manage both Linux and Windows EC2 instances for a couple of different businesses.
For the Windows boxes I normally connect via Remote Desktop to do virtually everything. For Linux I use WinSCP and PuTTY consoles.
For EC2-specific operations I use the Amazon web console or the Amazon-supplied scripts from my PC.

Best way to interface between Windows dev platform and Linux test platform?

my project is a PHP web application. This applies to my test server (local), not production server! I am also the solo developer on this project (however, that may change in the very far future). Also, all my source code is committed to a repository and the production server gets the source code from the repository.
I do my development in Windows while my test server runs on Ubuntu (perhaps you can also recommend me another distro that is easy to use and can serve as a good web server). I need an elegant way to interface between the two environments. Currently, I do my coding in Windows and then FTP the changed files to the test server. However, this is quite cumbersome and tedious since I have to manually go to my FTP client each time. Suggest me something elegant please! Perhaps FTP sync? or OpenVPN (where the root www directory on test server is acts like a folder in Windows)? Thanks for your awesome time!
Easiest would be in Ubuntu, right click a folder then click "Sharing Options", then share the folder. In Windows, connect to the share, and work on that copy.
If you're using version control, using continuous integration like Hudson ( http://hudson-ci.org/ ) would help if you create a task that builds/exports the website for the testing server. This approach would be better in the long term, but you'll waste a day setting it up initially.
I prefer SFTP to FTP.
That said, ExpanDrive lets you map SFTP servers to local drive letters, which then means you can use any text editor to access your files directly on the test server, or use other mechanisms to keep the files in sync. Since they show up as two local drives, you can use just about any product out there.
If you want to use FTP, you can just map the drive in Windows Explorer. If you open up My Computer, then go to Tools > Map Network Drive, you can map a FTP server folder to any local drive. Just type in the address as the folder, ie. ftp://mscharley#192.168.0.10/htdocs
This will atleast save you a trip to the FTP client...
Is there any reason you couldn't just test on your local computer? At my job, we all develop and do developer testing locally, most of us using Windows. Our production and test servers are all linux based. Working locally is really nice, because you don't need to worry about making changes on the server with every small change.
Another option would be to create a checkout or working copy of your code on the server, and then run svn up or svn export (or equivalent using your version control software) each time you change the code on the server (assuming you are sshd into the server). This is kind of slow, but it's easy. The other option would be to write a script that goes through the svn logs for the recent commit and only exports or updates the ones that changed. This is much faster, and for all I know, there is already something out there that this.
Finally, some IDEs allow you to edit files live over ftp\sftp. Basically the IDE downloads a copy of the code and then reuploads it when you save.
Currently I develop on windows (PHP) as well and deploy on a Linux box for testing and production. This is how I do it.
Set up a local development server with e.g. WAMP.
Set up your code base in version control, e.g. Subversion.
Checkout your code base onto the testing/staging server, not just only on your local dev. environment.
In the early stages of development you want to deploy to the testing environment A LOT to sort out any discrepancies between your windows and linux environments. When your programming efforts turn more into program flow type programming this constant testing will probably slow down. But still take the effort to test on a regular basis.
To test your code base on staging do an svn update. I just log in with an SSH session to do this. A key thing here to note is that you do not have to make any config changes to your code base. If you do need to make config changes to your environment on staging it worth while spending the time to SCRIPT this process rather than this being a manual process.
Do the same for production. I use an Subversion check out on production as well. Make sure you set you .htaccess file to deny access to your hidden .svn folders and script the deployment especially if there a config changes necessary.
Some ideas:
Use a server environment under windows (e.g. EasyPHP).
Use a development tool that can save over FTP (e.g. ultra edit).
Use a network drive connected to the remote machine via FTP.
Use a network drive connected to the remote machine via Samba.
Run a linux distro inside a virtualization tool (e.g. virtual box) and write from the windows host to a share directory of the guest host.
Use dropbox to sync files between machines (there is more a hack than an "enterprise" solution).

Modifying files on remote Ubuntu server from Windows PC

I am developing some Python programs that I'm running on a remote Ubuntu Linux server (hosted on Slicehost). I would like to work on the source in an IDE on my Windows Vista PC, and have all file modifications sent directly to the Linux box without my intervention (i.e. without having to manually SFTP the files each time I change them). What is the very easiest way I can do this?
WinSCP includes a basic remote file editor, though if you want to use a proper IDE for your development this won't be much help.
I'd suggest you run a version control system like subversion, which would allow you to write a post-commit hook to automatically rsync your code the server with each commit.
Use PuTTy and SFTPDrive.
PuTTy is an SSH client, and SFTPDrive ($39 USD) will allow you to mount your remote file system locally as a drive letter.
Install Samba and OpenVPN on the server, and OpenVPN on the client. Setup Samba to share the directory tree you're interested in, and access it over the VPN for security. Perhaps Vista has non-sucky WebDAV support by now, and you could use WebDAV over HTTPS, but it was always crap under XP.
Ben's suggestion of a local dev environment using a VM is also a winner.
You could install cygwin and then have rsync run on cron every minute.
Or you could use Netdrive to access the server via FTP like a local disk:
http://tech.xptechsupport.com/netdrive-turn-your-ftp-into-a-drive-letter.html
Or you may be able to achieve something similar using cygwin and FUSE - you can on linux, but never tried it on cygwin.
Also, would it not be easier to set up a full dev environment locally? Maybe using a virtual machine? It'll be much quicker for testing. And then you can set up a shell script to transfer the current version to the slicehost server.

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