I have a windows server 2003 up in the internet.
But sometime I need to restart it.
After restart, I want one of the applications to run.
I want to do this all programatically.
I can now remotely restart the server.
But the question is how can I ask that piece of software to be executed (more precisely, I want to execute a .BAT file to ask a tomcat to run)?
Because I don't want to manually log in to the machine and start that application. That is time consuming. Is there any possible way, once the machine is started, my application will be run as well?
If you're developing an application that should always be running on the server, you probably need to implement it as a Windows service. For C#, see the classes in the System.ServiceProcess namespace -- you will need to inherit from ServiceBase.
Alternatively, you can set the program to be run as a scheduled task on boot. See the Task Scheduler API to do this.
You can install Cygwin and then do it the same way we'd do it on a Linux box: via ssh, using keys.
OpenSSH is not part of the default Cygwin install, so be sure to select it. It's in the Net category.
Then, after you've installed Cygwin and sshd, read /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/openssh.README to learn how to set up sshd as a service, so it will answer requests automatically, without you having to start the ssh daemon manually.
Finally, set up keys, as described in the link above.
Part of the ssh protocol is a way to ask a remote machine to launch a program. Setting it up with keys lets you do it without needing a password.
You could try xCmd, which is a freeware app to run a command on a remote machine.
Related
Our team has ~80 Windows development machines, and activities of each developer are logged as text files on the local storage of those machines.
To analyze the logged activities, I want to gather all log files from those machines. Additionally, the log files are updated constantly, so It is desirable to gather files with the command-line from my machine.
I’ve searched and found some solutions, but all of those are not suitable for our situation:
We cannot use PsExec, because tcp/135 and tcp/445 are both closed (countermeasure for WannaCry).
Administrative share is disabled.
telnet service is not up and is banned by security reasons.
WinRM is disabled on those machines by default.
It is difficult to install new software like OpenSSH on those machines (because of the rule of this project)
RDP is the only way to connect those machines. (I have an account on all machines)
How can I copy files from remote Windows machines with command-line through RDP?
Or, at least, is there any way to execute a command on remote Windows machines with command-line through RDP?
I think you can do this, though it is very hacky :)
For a basic setup, which just copies files once, what you would need to do is
Run a script in the remote session when it logs in. I can think of three ways to do this:
Use the "Alternate Shell" RDP file property. This runs a specified program in place of explorer.exe on login; you can use it to run "cmd.exe /c [your script]" for instance.
If that doesn't work (e.g. the remote machine doesn't respect it), you might be able to use a scheduled task that runs the script on login, but perhaps only for a specified user, or maybe the script could check the WinStation type to make sure this is actually an RDP connection before doing anything.
It's also possible to do this by connecting in RemoteApp mode and using the script as your "application", but that only works for Server and Enterprise editions of Windows.
Enable either drive redirection or clipboard redirection on the RDP connection, to give you a way to get data out.
Drive redirection is much simpler to script; you just have the remote script copy files to e.g. "\\tsclient\C\logs".
Clipboard redirection is theoretically possible - you have the remote script copy, then a local script paste - but would probably be a pain to get working in practice. I'm only mentioning it in case drive redirection isn't available for some reason.
You would probably want to script to then log the session off afterward.
You could then launch that from command-line by running "mstsc.exe [your RDP file]". The RDP files could be programmatically generated if needed (given you're working with 80 machines).
If you want a persistent connection you can execute commands over, that's more complicated, but still technically possible. Two ways I can think of:
Use the previous method to run a program on logon, but this time create a custom application that receives commands using a transport that isn't blocked and executes them in the session. I've done this with WCF over HTTP, for instance; it's not secure, of course.
Develop and install a service on the remote machine that opens an RDP virtual channel, and a corresponding RDP client plugin that communicates with it. You can then do whatever you want across the connection. While this solution would be the most likely to work, it's also the most heavyweight and time-consuming to implement so it's probably a last resort.
currently I am writing a deployscript for our build system.
I have an ec2 machine that i want to push my installer to, install the program and then run the program (exe). The program is in fact a server that should run forever. I already tried doing this with Powershell Remoting, this is not satisfying because a permanent connection is needed (if the powershell remote session disconnects, the process terminates).
Now I am looking into Invoke-WMIObject, is this really the best way to go, or am I missing something obvious?
Requirement is that the whole build process can be run from a powershell script (which is executed by our build server).
The server is running windows 2008 Server R2
kind regards
You could run your server program as a Windows Service - just wrap it with one of available free service wrapper utilities like nssm. You can use PSRemoting to recreate and start the service on the remote server each build by running Stop-Service, & nssm remove, & nssm install and Start-Service.
Alternatively (though probably not so easily managed in your build), you could remotely create and run a task in Task Scheduler with Scheduled Tasks Cmdlets.
You can use PsExec from SysInternals, but that's a standalone utility. However, you can still embed the logic in your PS script. If you are still in need of WMI, then you might wanna check this. It includes snippets of VB scripts and a detailed explanation of what to do.
I have an program which I need to run on multiple PCs (>100) all in same domain and share the same user and password.
If I run a program manually, it opens a console windows where I can see the logs running. I can remote desktop and still be able to see the console windows open and logs running. It helps in debugging as I can see whats going on. Issue is I want to avoid running it manually on all PCs.
I have following requirement
a. It should be able to run program on multiple pcs remotely
b. program should open in foreground where console logs can be seen.
c. launching PC should launch program on PC1 and then (without wait for the program to finish on PC1) it should launch the program on PC2 and so on.
I explored STAF it needs to be installed on all stations. Its heavyweight, needs complex configuration.
I explored power shell , it needs to be enabled on all stations and also probably (read somewhere) has issue with running tasks in foreground.
psexec can run the program but it does it in background, if I use -i option I need to give session id so only it will show the console for a specific remote desktop session. Another major issue with -i is that it will interactive so it waits until the program exits.
Looked a paexe, its simillar to psexe and doesn't solve the issue I am facing with psexe.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
If you have a server, you can put the program on the server and create a shortcut to it (assuming the program is small/simple enough to run on a network share).
You can use One-Click to deploy the programs, and give each of your users a link.
You can change the program into a website for central access.
You can use group policy to deploy the program when a user logs in, assuming you can create a .msi file from it.
I have an application running only on Windows and a batch file that launches it.
I want to invoke this batch file from Linux, meaning something like Linux batch will launch the windows batch with parameters and this in its turn run my application.
Can I do that? How?
You could install an ssh server in the windows box (Cygwin has one), then from linux do something like:
ssh user#windows-box c:/path/to/batch.cmd
and that should launch your application in the windows box.
The most direct way is probably to install an ssh server on the windows box. Cygwin includes an ssh server.
Depending on how precise your timing needs are, you might be able to have an "at" job on the windows box that runs periodically (every 5 minutes?) and runs if it sees that a particular file exists, deleting the file. Then you could use Samba/smbclient to create the file. You would need to turn on filesharing on the windows box for this to work.
If the windows box has a web server, you could write a CGI, and trigger it using wget or cURL.
Our build process currently goes the other way: a windows sever kicks off things on the Linux server using plink (part of PuTTY). You might be able to set something similar up.
This may cause a security issue. Our information security person did not allow me to invoke any programs directly.
The safer way is to set up server on Windows computer. This can be a web-server for example. And then invoke your process inside PHP/Perl/Python script.
Also look at winexe that allows you to execute windows commands/batch scripts without running ssh server.
This is a Windows 2003 (or later) machine that gets switched on every morning, but no one logs on until some hours later.
I want to use the time in between to run a backup script c:\script\backup.cmd
How can I start this unattended after the machine has come up?
I tried 2 registry keys, but this resulted in the script being run after a user logs on (which is too late):
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServices
In the end I used Windows TaskScheduler, who has such an option, but I was wondering if there is another possibility?
Short answer: GPEDIT.MSC (Start, Run, GPEdit.msc)
Windows 2000 and above [1] offer a computer Startup Scripts collection in the policy editor:
Computer Settings -> Windows Settings -> Scripts (Startup/Shutdown)
There's an equivalent logon script area (i.e. after computer startup, when a user logs on) in the User configuration bit.
Longer:
GPEDIT.MSC is the Group Policy editing console, and runs against the local computer's Local Group Policy store when it's used directly, so it's useful for setting local-only parameters. When using Active Directory, a similar interface is used to edit AD Forest-hosted group policy objects (GPOs), so the same settings are available across a bunch of machines.
The computer startup scripts run in the computer context, i.e. as LocalSystem, as you noted, so they often can't access network drives which require a certain user or group membership to work. When domain-member computers access network resources, they generally (with exceptions) authenticate using their MACHINENAME$ account - which lets you set Share/NTFS permissions to allow a computer to access those resources.
A startup script is a quick and easy way of getting a process running when the machine boots.
The computer startup process will be affected by the time it takes to run the program, though, so you might want to ensure you call it with the START command from a batch file, or specifying not to wait for the executable to complete in whatever script language you use. (the key point there is: run the script asynchronously unless it's critical, or doesn't need to be run asynchronously cos it will always take no time at all. Long boots = unhappy users).
Using a Win32 Service is an alternative option - you can use the SRVANY utility from the Resource Kit to "service-ify" pretty much any executable. VS.Net 2002 and later also let you build a managed service directly.
And Task Scheduler gets much more capable as of Vista/2008, able to run scripts at startup, on idle, and/or when Event Logs are generated or certain other conditions are met: it's pretty cool! Scheduled Tasks has the possible advantage of being able to specify the user account under which the task runs, if that's important to you.
Caveat Scriptor:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/256320
Run Startup Scripts Asynchronously:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms811602.aspx
Vista Task Scheduler (what's new):
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/appcompat/aa906020.aspx
[1] Windows XP, 2003, Vista/2008, Windows 7/2008R2, Windows 8/2012, Windows 8.1/2012R2, Windows 10/Windows Server 2016. Everything. But NT4 didn't!
You have already outlined a good solution:
Setup a scheduled task to run at Start Up and allow the job to run when the user isn't logged on.
You can run a script at system startup using group policy gpedit.msc
The way you aleady do this seems fine to me; however if you want an alternative approach then services get started when the machine boots so you could write a service that detects if it's a new day (to allow for reboots) and if it is then run your backup.
If I was doing this as a service I'd use TCL because I know it and like it and it has an extension twapi that allows you to run a script as a service. Other scripting languages may well have similar facilities.
There is, if you're using Active Directory. If you can isolate the computer to its own OU or use WMI filtering, you could assign a GPO which has a startup script for the computer. This would ensure that even if someone went in via safe mode and disabled the Task Scheduler, upon startup and connection to the domain, the script would run.