launch application remotely over network

alantc

Hi,

I'd like to know how I can launch an application, using a shortcut on on computer, on another computer on the LAN. Symantec PC anywhere seems to do this but it's a lot more than I need. I just want to program to launch, no information needs to be returned and no switched are needed for the program. Just make it run. I found one link on google groups for a program
someone had written but it was dead. Anyone any ideas?

...the network is all windows computers. One is windows server 2003 and the rest are Windows 98. All the launching wil be done from a windows 98 PC.

Thanks


will

Capt'n Midnight

there was a "server tools for windows" that allowed a windows 95 box to run SOME stuff on an NT box - not sure if would work with 2K3

if the clients were NT/2K/XP or 2003 then you could simply use the AT command or the SOON command (reskit) to run commands remotely - just add the options to the line.

win 95/98 don't have RPC running , which means they are immune to many of the nastiest internet worms , but also means you can't force something to run. So you'd most likely need an app polling at the win 9x end, and it would have to run as a service on startup - messy. McAfee used to have a util like this so you could schedule tasks remotley - but it was never 100% - found it easier to stick stuff in the login script..

LoLth

just a quick thought...

could you not create a shortcut to the UNC path of the shared out application and run it from there?

not pretty I grant you, but if it works....

axer

or u could just run RealVNC to remote the desktop and its free!
www.realvnc.com

Capt'n Midnight

For NT/2k/XP/2K3 psexec is a nice util to start console apps in the background on a remote machine that you have start a service rights to.

remote.exe is a similar M$ util but has NO security - anyone can connect , avoid !

How to create a User-Defined Service - Microsoft - again not for win9X

another way - really messy, had to do this on an NT3.51 system since VNC could not send a Ctrl-Alt-Del was to have a batch file running in the background that looks for another named batch files every 5 minutes or so. If it finds it then it calls it and then deletes it when finished so it won't run again.

NB. you can't change directory when you call a batch file , and any errors stop the whole thing - but you could drop a file in a folder preferrably with output piped to a text file and then wait to see what happened.

Y.B.Sober

if you're running server 2k3, is terminal services not an option. have no experience in this but from what i gather it might suit your needs.

fatherdougalmag

On XP there's rexec which behaves similar to regular Unix rexec. Only problem is that there's no RPC/server side support in Windows. You could look at the MKS Toolkit for this support. Maybe you could cobble something together using Cygwin.

spongebob

Another way is to run the application (.exe) as a service and launch the service from elsewhere on the network (which then launches the application) . easy to do on demand . The NT res kits or sysinternals.com would have this utility , google ' run application as a service '

M