I'm using C#.
I have C# console applicaiton that I want to get the output from another C# application.
I'm get my process as follow:
Process[] proc = Process.GetProcessByName("MyConsoleApp");
How can I get the output?
I can't run the application from my another C# application, I'm only can get the process by name.
What I'm trying:
proc[0].StartInto.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
proc[0].StandardOutput.ReadLine();//Throw an exception
And I'm got an exception:
standard out has not been redirected or the process hasn't started yet
So How can I read the output without to run the process?
If you want to redirect standard output, process needs to be run by your program, otherwise OS won't let you do it [security measure, you wouldn't want random programs to access your password store or browser when you are logging in to your bank account, would you?], in such case, you first need to set UseShellExecute to false.
So like this:
proc[0].StartInto.UseShellExecute = false;
proc[0].StartInto.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
proc[0].StandardOutput.ReadLine();
But if you really are unable to run process from your program, you need to set up other way for them to communicate, be it a temporary file somewhere on disk, pipe, Azure Service Bus, there are many ways, but you cannot make one process just find other process and read it's output.
You cannot access the standard output of any random process on Windows unless you use the Win32 debugging APIs.
The only way to do this is to create the process yourself.
Related
I can't figure out why - but it's not working!
In similar web application project, with same code - it's working well,
but from website - nothing!
I tried to use all kinds of possibilities from: System.Diagnostics.
ProcessStartInfo info = new ProcessStartInfo(exePath);
info.CreateNoWindow = true;
info.UseShellExecute = false;
Process.Start(info);
and tried another way using:
Response.Redirect(FilePath); //with and without the extension
and i got that it worked for all other kinds of extensions (like pdf,html..) but never for the .exe!
One more thing: It's did make small window asked if i want to save or open current file, but the file name changed from fileName.exe to: fileName_exe
(and then: which program you want to open the file with question...)
Thanks For Advance!
You can't pass through browser. You should have some "backdoor" to execute it, and this backdoor should be process what have neccesary permissions.
As to solution of this problem you should create service what can accept requests to execute some file, and invoke it himselft. Then you just run service on you server and send your service this requests.
I have a console application that runs .bat and .vbs files.
The method which starts these processes is as follows:
public void runProcess(string aPath,string aName,string aFiletype)
{
string stInfoFileName;
string stInfoArgs;
if(aFiletype == "bat")
{
stInfoFileName = (#aPath + #aName);
stInfoArgs = string.Empty;
}
else
{ //vbs
stInfoFileName = #"cscript";
stInfoArgs = "//B //Nologo " + aName;
}
this.aProcess.StartInfo.FileName = stInfoFileName;
this.aProcess.StartInfo.Arguments = stInfoArgs;
this.aProcess.StartInfo.WorkingDirectory = #aPath;
this.aProcess.StartInfo.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Normal;
this.aProcess.Start();
Console.WriteLine("information passed from batch: ???");
this.aProcess.WaitForExit(); //<-- Optional if you want program running until your script exit
this.aProcess.Close();
}
The current .bat files which it is starting are used to send data over ftp (ftp, ftps, or sftp).
When the process is running all information is shown in the process windows e.g. an error might occur, the file is not transferred and a message detailing this is displayed in this "child" process window. Once the process has finished the "child" window disappears along with the messages.
Can I somehow return this useful information to my main console application window?
Check process exit code (Process.ExitCode) and/or capture console output.
See Capturing console output from a .NET application (C#)
Though you should better use some native .NET SFTP/FTP library.
For SFTP, see SFTP Libraries for .NET
For FTP and FTPS, use can use the FtpWebRequest from .NET framework.
If you want all-in-one solution, I can humbly suggest you my WinSCP .NET assembly. With the assembly, you can have the same code for SFTP, FTP and FTPS. Internally, the assembly actually runs WinSCP console application. So it is doing the same thing you are trying to code yourself.
If you set this.aProcess.StartInfo.UseShellExecute to false then the child process should use the existing console window.
For batch files, this change also means you'll need to explicitly invoke cmd /c to run them, in exactly the same way you're currently invoking cscript /B to run .vbs scripts.
I made new project (ASP.NET MVC Web Application) using Visual Studio Web 2013 Express Edition. Loading index page, redirects and everything works fine, except that in some part of my code I need to create Process and execute it, wait for it to finish, parse output of that external application and show that output to the user. However I get nothing. While debugging the code line by line:
ProcessStartInfo info = new ProcessStartInfo();
info.FileName = Tool;
info.Arguments = filename + " " + avArray;
info.CreateNoWindow = true;
info.UseShellExecute = false;
info.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
Process p = new Process();
p.StartInfo = info;
p.Start();
p.WaitForExit();
Process exits immediately, someone would say it is pretty fast program, but application needs at least 5 seconds (sometimes 20 seconds) to complete.
What I think is happening is that process is not created in the first place, as my IIS settings or whatever other settings are not allowing me to run this EXE. What do I do to change this?
I've been trying to this for the past 2 weeks, I've read probably every post about it, and tried every solution suggested. I am choosing to write on this post since it is the most recent.
First of all, I am using VS2013, testing on IIS Express, and then on IIS 8.5., the webpages version is 3, and the target framework 4.5. And I am assuming that (as with my case) the goal is to launch the process on the server.
What I learned:
Using IIS Express should allow you to run the process without problems. You can try to allow it to launch the window, or start your process through the shell just to be sure that it is actually launching (a shell window should popup and close). If this happens, verify that you are giving the correct path to to your program, etc. So far so good.
Going into the IIS 8.5 is a totally different matter. Theoretically, the bad way of doing it should be preatty straight-forward: you create an app-pool for that server, give it a high privileged account (local system or network system, for instance); go to AdministrativeTools->Services->IIS, LogOn tab, and allow interaction with the desktop. You should be able to do the same as in IISExpress, but in my case is just the same as with a low privilege account.
I actually started by trying just to use impersonation, but also was not able to launch the process with IIS8.5. EDIT: I retried this again today, and the api won't even run if I enable impersonation.
I've spent more time than I would like with this, any input on why I can't get this to work properly with IIS8.5 (#clzola: IIS Express should do the job) is very welcome.
Background
I'm writing an web application so I can control an Ubuntu Server from a web site.
One idea I had was to run the 'screen' application from mono and redirect my input and output from there.
Running 'screen' from mono:
ProcessStartInfo info = new ProcessStartInfo("screen", "-m");
info.UseShellExecute = false;
info.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
info.RedirectStandardInput = true;
var p = new Process();
p.StartInfo = info;
p.Start();
var output = p.StandardOutput;
var input = p.StandardInput;
but running 'screen' with the RedirectStandardInput gives out the error:
Must be connected to a terminal
I've tried many different arguments and none seems to work with 'Redirecting Standard Input'
Other ideas for controlling a server will be greatly appreciated
I think this is the typical question in which you're asking how to implement your solution to a problem, instead of asking how to solve your problem. I don't think you should do hacky things like making a web app that tunnels the user actions to the server via a terminal.
I think you can bypass all that and, without writing a single line of code, take advantage of what the platform (Gtk+ in this case) already provides you:
You could run gnome-terminal in the server with the Broadway GDK backend. This way the gnome-terminal app will not run in the server, but open a web server on the port you specify. Later, you can use any WebSockets-enabled browser to control it.
This is the easiest and less hacky solution compared to the other ones offered so far. If you still are excited about using Mono for web development you still can, and you could embed this access in an iFrame or something.
(PS: If you don't want to depend on GTK being installed in the server; you could just use WebSockets in your client part of the webpage to be able to send events from the server to the client, and the library SSHNET to send the user's input directly through the wire.)
screen will need a terminal of some sort. It's also gigantically overkill.
You may wish to investigate the pty program from the Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment book (pty/ in the sources) to provide a pseudo-terminal that you can drive programmatically. (You'd probably run the pty program as-provided and write your driver in Mono if you're so inclined.) (The pty program will make far more sense if studied in conjunction with the book.)
The benefit to using the pty program, or functionality similar to it, is that you'd properly handle programs such as passwd that open("/dev/tty") to prompt the user for a password. If you simply redirect standard IO streams via pipe() and dup2() system calls, you won't have a controlling terminal for the programs that need one. (This is still a lot of useful programs but not enough to be a remote administration tool.)
There may be a Mono interface to the pty(7) system; if so, it may be more natural to use it than to use the C API, but the C API is what does the actual work, so it may be easier to just write directly in the native language.
A different approach to solve the same problem is shellinabox. Also interesting is this page from the anyterm website that compares different products that implement this kind of functionality.
Using shellinabox is very simple:
# ./shellinaboxd -s /:LOGIN
(this is the example given on their website) will start a webserver (on in your case the Ubuntu server). When you point your browser to http://yourserver:4200 you'll see a login screen, just like you would see when opening a session with ssh/putty/telnet/... but in your browser.
You could provide the required remote access functionality to the server's shell by just including an iframe that points to that service in your application's webpage.
Here is the premise:
I have a desktop that I need to be able to start up and stop applications on, but cannot get remote access to. What I had in mind is setting up a service on the machine that will start/stop a list of applications as told. This windows service will periodically pole a web service for new commands and execute them accordingly.
These are my questions.
1) Is this the easiest solution? What else would you recommend?
2) How hard is it to run an exe from a windows service? How about stopping one?
This isn't for a project or anything, just something I am interested in implementing (mostly for fun). Any answers or even thoughts are appreciated. General discussion is also welcome (feel free to leave comments).
As for creating the Windows service itself in C#, see my post here.
The polling mechanism would work, but in general, I prefer event-driven processes instead of polling processes. You didn't mention what version of .NET you were using, but if it is .NET 3.0/3.5, I would suggest using WCF. When the command is posted to the web service, the web service could send the command to the Windows service to be executed. Pretty straightforward. Juval Lowy, the author of Programming WCF Services, offers a bunch of WCF examples/libraries that are free to use at his website.
So I guess PsExec is out of question?
Other than that, it's not hard to implement running of programs inside a Win service. Simply use the .NET Process class to do it, sample from my code:
ProcessStartInfo processStartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo (programExePath, commandLineArgs);
consoleLogger.WriteLine (log, Level.Debug, "Running program {0} ('{1}')", programExePath, commandLineArgs);
processStartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
processStartInfo.ErrorDialog = false;
processStartInfo.RedirectStandardError = true;
processStartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
processStartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
using (Process process = new Process ())
{
process.StartInfo = processStartInfo;
process.ErrorDataReceived += new DataReceivedEventHandler (process_ErrorDataReceived);
process.OutputDataReceived += new DataReceivedEventHandler (process_OutputDataReceived);
process.Start ();
process.BeginOutputReadLine ();
process.BeginErrorReadLine ();
if (false == process.WaitForExit ((int)TimeSpan.FromHours(1).TotalMilliseconds))
throw new ArgumentException("The program '{0}' did not finish in time, aborting.", programExePath);
if (process.ExitCode != 0)
throw new ArgumentException ("failed.");
}
I have done a service that starts other exe files. There are some things to consider: As a service you have no visual desktop -> no direct interaction is possible. Also, the program must be designed to run a long while.
Stopping an exe is to kill the process. Consider the usual side-effects.
It wouldn't be too difficult - you can just have it poll some webservice for a list of "banned" applications every so often, and then on another timer, have it check for a banned application that's running and kill it if it is. Here's some code to get a list of processes, and you can use the methods on the process class to launch or kill something:
http://www.vbdotnetheaven.com/UploadFile/prvn_131971/machineprocessvb11182005001454AM/machineprocessvb.aspx
The timers could run independently as well - it can check the webservice once/day for a new add/prohibited list, but then check the processes running on the computer every 2 minutes, for example.
I'll answer question 2 first:
To start or stop programs, you just need to use the System.Diagnostics.Process object, and the example code is right in the MSDN library.
For question 1:
You could have it poll a web service periodically if you want to do that.
As an alternate, you can set up the service for remoting and have it just listen on a tcp port for function calls, then write a Windows app that can use remoting to call the service. I've had to do this for a legitimate business app and it works very well.
However, I would be very irresponsible if I didn't include this warning:
Either way, setting up a computer so that it can execute arbitrary code is a bad idea and should be done very carefully. Just because it can be done doesn't mean it should be done. If you go the web service route, how are you going to ensure that someone doesn't tamper with the web service and get malicious code to execute? How do you know someone won't mess with your app.config and point the app to their own web service? In the remoting scenario, how to you ensure that some other .Net developer doesn't just create a proxy of their own?
In all honesty, I'm amazed that Microsoft even allows the System.Diagnostocs.Process to be used in a .Net application. You can literally do anything you want with it, including launching the cmd shell and executing system commands. Therefore, I'd urge you to seriously consider if this is truly necessary to do. You may be better served installing vnc or using remote desktop, or another app for remote access.
One other question you need to answer is "should the application be visible to the user on that remote machine?" If so, then you need to ensure that the service is set up to run under that user's context. otherwise, you could, for example, launch Word using the local system account, and it would never be visible to the person logged into that machine.