I am trying to use psexec to run remote DOS commands on a server. Unfortunately I am not permitted to copy the files I am running to the remote machine for security reasons. Therefore I have used the following command...
psexec cmd
This brings up a DOS window and if I type echo %COMPUTERNAME% then the remote machine name is correctly returned. This is fine, but when I type a batch file with the following...
psexec cmd
psexec echo %COMPUTERNAME%
Then the remote machine name is not returned, infact nothing is returned... Due to the fact I cannot remotely move files to the actual server I want to work on then Im assuming performing commands in this way is the only option available. However I cannot seem to execute multiple DOS commands. It is also necessary that I can read the output of the commands I use so that I can perform conditional processing.
If it helps I am able to use VBS scripts to perform these tasks if that provides the correct functionality... Ideally though a pure DOS solution would be great.
Thanks in advance...
This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.
Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.
If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.
Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.
Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.
Access the answers to your technology questions today.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.
Try it out and discover for yourself.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.
Review this post and the comments from 'sirbounty' - he is a scripting genius.
There were several other posts at about that time for using 'PSEXEC' with different scripts, so let me know if you need more.
Vic
http://www.experts-exchang
Thanks for the help so far,
Could you also show me how to format the command for use on a computer with ip address of say '999.9.9.9', also the command I will be using will return a load of information which I will need to process before running further commands, so instead of (in the above example) echoing the computer name and then 'hello' I might want to retreive the computername, and then based on the result execute another command?? Is that possible?
Is this script actually required to run *on* the remote PC, or is it supposed to run from *your* PC, based on just info about that computer?
I don't see why you want to remotely perform a task on a remote computer, based on it's computer name, when your pc should already know the name of that pc.
Anyway, you can just run the command remotely to an IP address by using the following. By the way, I write most of my stuff in VBS, so put this text in a VBS file:
'=============
strComputer = InputBox("Please enter a computer name or IP Address:", "Remote Computer")
strPSExecPath = "\\server\share\psexec.exe
strCommand = "cmd /c """ & strPSExecPath & """ -accepteula -e -i \\" & strComputer & " cmd /c echo %computername% && echo hello"
Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shel
objShell.Run strCommand, 1, True
'==============
Now, if you want to do *other* stuff on that remote PC, like run multiple commands, you would be better off running another script (with PSExec), so that, more logically, you can just alter that other script with the assumption it will be run "locally", so you would do something like:
strCommand = "cmd /c """ & strPSExecPath & """ -accepteula -e -i \\" & strComputer & " cmd /c wscript.exe \\server\path\otherscript.
Bear in mind though, that through using PSExec, you are not running any process under the actual profile of a user logged in to that remote PC, so you cannot change "user related" settings. You are actually running that process using your credentials that you used to run the script.
I hope that helps. Also, just FYI, instead of having two separate scripts, I have written a script that calls itself from the remote machine, so you can keep all of the functionality to one script, to make things easier to follow.
Regards,
Rob.
Here's the self-referencing script that I have written, which is run by you, you type in a remote computer name, and PSExec runs this script from the target computer.
You need to write your own "admin" commands into the last procedure:
'===============
Option Explicit
Dim objShell, objProcess, strUserName, strHostName, strCommand
Set objShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shel
Set objProcess = objShell.Environment("Proc
strUserName = objProcess("USERNAME")
strHostName = objProcess("COMPUTERNAME")
If WScript.Arguments.Count < 1 Then
Call Normal_User_Commands
ElseIf WScript.Arguments(0) = "AsAdmin" Then
Call Admin_User_Commands
Else
MsgBox "Unknown Argument received"
End If
Sub Normal_User_Commands
'MsgBox "Running as initiating user"
strComputer = InputBox("Enter computer name to map a printer to:", "Enter Computer", "172.16.2.40")
'*************************
' This command assumes that PSExec.exe (available from Microsoft) is stored on the shared folder
' below. It runs PSExec as the Admin user, on a remote machine, or the current machine if it is a
' logon script. It re-runs this file again, this time passing the "AsAdmin" argument, so the script
' knows it has been run under an Admin account, and can safely execute the Admin_User_Commands Sub.
' NOTE: If the Admin is running this script from a mapped drive, the client must have the same drive mapped,
' because of the use of WScript.ScriptFullName below. It is best to run this script from a UNC path,
' so the client machine can access the file via a UNC path and not rely on a mapped drive.
strCommand = "cmd /c \\server\share\psexec_182.
objShell.Run strCommand, 0, True
' NOTE: In the above two lines, you can change the cmd /c to cmd /k and the strCommand, 0, True to strCommand, 1, True
' if you wish to see some output for debugging / testing purposes.
End Sub
Sub Admin_User_Commands
' Now the script has detected that "AsAdmin" was passed to it, and will run these commands.
' Now running as Administrator on the target macchine
' MsgBox "Running as Admin"
' Now you can run as many commands as you want, which acts
' as if the script was run by the Administrator on the remote machine
End Sub
'==============
Regards,
Rob.
Ok, these are the specifics....
I need a script that I can run on computer 'A' which is capable of shutting down computer 'B'. Due to very very strict security I am unable to physically transfer a file to the remote machine 'B' and then run it using the psexec -c command.
Now I know that if I personally open up DOS from computer 'A' and type 'psxec \\B cmd.exe' then a command window will open, where I can then type a command like echo %COMPUTERNAME% and 'B' will be returned as the remote machine location all without physically transfering a file. Infact any commands I type in that window sequentially will act as if I were physically on the remote machine 'B'.
I am having trouble writing a DOS script to perform sequential statements in this way. When I write sequntial psexec statements in a DOS file they do not seem to work... I have no idea why, perhaps timing issues??? Also the script is a little more complex then just running shutdown.exe remotely... I need to perform a number of queries on the remote server in this way and process the information returned (all this needs to be done from machine 'A' without transferring files to machine 'B').
The machines I am shutting down will be using clusters (which is another new topic for me) so I need to query the cluster node setup for the machines, process this information locally and depending on the information returned perform additional psexec statements to change the clusters before the machine reboots.
The VBS Script from Rob looks good, ill have to wait until Monday to test it though... A pure DOS solution would be preferred if possible though.
If my solution works for you, you can test some DOS commands in the Admin_User_Commands using the following few lines:
Set objShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shel
strCommand = "dir /s C:\ > ""C:\Spaced Folder\Files.txt"""
objShell.Run strCommand, 1, True
strCommand = "type ""c:\Spaced Folder\Files.txt"""
etc, etc. In my example, for any file paths that have spaces in them, you need to enclose them in quotes in a DOS prompt, so in a VBS string, you type two double-quotes to represent one in the string.
If that happens to work for you, and you really want a DOS version, I'm sure someone like SteveGTR could emulate my functionality using a Batch file, but I'm not good enough with them, so I'll pass the buck there!
Regards,
Rob.
There are several issues here that will exclude psexec as the tool of choice, at least with the restriction about copying files to the remote machine:
* Running psexec against a remote computer *will* already copy file(s) to this machine, namely the psexec.exe file which will be (temporarily) installed and run as a service on the remote machine; so by using this, you're already violating the rules imposed.
* Putting the commands you need into a batch or VBS file and then running it on the remote machine using psexec will require you to copy this file to the target machine as well, because you can't start it over the network -- unless you feel like using psexec's "-u <User>" and "-p <Password>" arguments, which is *far* more of a security risk than copying a file over, because the password will be transmitted in clear text.
Now, this restriction is actually rather silly -- if you have administrative permissions on the remote machine and are able to run all sorts of command, then it's definitely not a security risk to copy a file running all of these commands one after another to this machine; at least it's not more of a security risk than letting you run these commands from the command line.
That said, you can create a scheduled task on the remote machine to run the script for you. You can create this task to run under an account with domain admin credentials, so this task would be able to run a script from a remote location.
But creating and debugging a script that way will take, oh, I don't know, probably something like 10 times longer than necessary to develop and debug.
HOW TO: Use Schtasks.exe to Schedule Tasks in Windows Server 2003
http://support.microsoft.c
Now, that said, too, you can usually query pretty much everything remotely that needs to be queried, so it should be possible to create a script that you can run on Computer A that will run the status queries remotely against Computer B, do all the processing on Computer A, and then shutdown Computer B.
For a cluster, for example, this would be cluster.exe (http://technet2.microsoft
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: younghvPosted on 2007-06-23 at 08:48:18ID: 19348133
Hang on a minute - I posted something on this a few months ago.
Vic