I have a windows network (not connected to domain) and I need to provide some automation on each PC at certain time of the day. There are several tasks - launch executables, managing FS, transfering files. All this actions must be implemented via RDP, using C#. What is common approach to achieve this? I don't have experience using RDP within software. So are there .NET classes or free libraries I can use to get RDP functionality in my software. Thank you!
All the tasks you have listed relyed much more on security issues for machines within your network and a user logged-in priveledges a rather than a usage of RPD.
Within a windows domain the tasks like yours are usually delegated to ActiveDirectory administration and policies.
In case of a not Windows Domain Network you will need to use a mechanism that will be presented in following configuration:
a client installed on each particular machine under proper permissions. The client should implement a subscriber pattern.
a server installed on a "commander" machine. the server should inplement a publisher pattern.
There should be a lot of ready solution that should implement the concept of content disribution and starting specific scripts. I think that your investment in such tools research and evaluation will be much more time- and cost- effective rather than writing an app that "uses RPD functionality"
But if there is a reason that prevents usage of 3rd parties, I would go for implementaion of WCF service that will be installed on all clients. This service should be "trained" to do all your suff on client. Server side you will need an appliaction or a service that will publish events for clients or trigger known clients methods.
Please bear with me as I am beginner to Windows service / WCF service. After much research I have not been able to find satisfactory solution to my problem. Let me describe my problem in brief:
I want to run one Windows service / WCF service on a machine on LAN. I want to make that service to be consumed by applications running on another machines on the LAN, provided following conditions must be satisfied :
1) I should not need to host Windows service / WCF service to IIS.
2) The URL of service should be configurable in the applications running on other machines on LAN. I should not have to hard code the URL anywhere in those applications (e.g. in App.config or so). Service URL should be accepted from the application user. At the best, the application should find the machine on which the service is running and should call the service from there.
(As a side note, the applications running on other machines are in-browser Silverlight applications.)
Is it a tall order? If not, which of the Windows service and WCF service will suit my requirements? Please provide me any resource if you have.
I have a client-server application written in c#. I am hoping someone can give some direction on where to look in order to set it up where a user could connect to the server from their workstation, most likely through http but that's not a requirement, and download the client. The mechanism would need the following features:
Check for updates on client startup and automatically apply them.
Allow multiple clients (connected to different servers) to download on the same machine
Client can be downloaded by a non-local admin
Possibly install any prerequisites needed on the workstation
I currently use ClickOnce but it isn't quite working out. Currently the server sits in IIS and uses WCF services.
I am going to be coding up a windows service to add users to a computer (users with no rights, ie just for authentication). (As a side note, I plan to use this method.)
I want to be able to call this windows service from another computer.
How is this done? Is this a tall order? Would I be better off just creating a Web Service and hosting it in IIS?
I have some WCF services hosted in IIS on the calling computer (they will do the calling to the proposed windows service). I have found that Hosting in IIS is somewhat problematic, so I would rather not have a second IIS instance to manage unless I need to.
(I will be using Visual Studio 2008 SP1, C# and Windows Server 2003 (for both caller and service host).
Thanks for the help
If you are thinking of hosting a web service in IIS just to communicate with an NT-service on that same machine, that is definitely more trouble than it is worth in this case.
As other answers have indicated you can make a WCF service with the operations you need and host that within the same NT-service that you want to interact with. You can easily secure this with certificates, or user accounts to make sure it is only controlled by the right people/machines.
If you need to control the NT-service itself, there are existing programs such as sc.exe to start, stop, configure, or query the status of your NT-service remotely.
However, you may want to consider seeking a solution without the overhead of creating an custom NT-service and a custom WCF service to interact with it. If you do, the Net User commands (sorry no link - new user limitation) or the AddUsers (see kb 199878/en-us) utility may be sufficient. If your remote "controller" can invoke these commands directly against the target machine you may not have to create any custom software address this need. Additionally you would have less software to maintain and administer on the target machine. You would just be using the built-in OS capabilities and admin utilities.
Finally, you will need to think about the security aspect, NT-services and IIS are usually run under very restricted accounts, many auditors would flip-out over any service running with sufficient permission to create or modify users locally, and especially on other machines. You'll want to make sure that the service could never be used to create users that do have more than the "authenticate" permission you indicated.
Edit: The net user command may not work against another machine's local users, but check out. pspasswd that along with PsExec to create users, should do what you need remotely.
Simply host a WCF service in the Windows Service. You'll then be able to call it remotely.
You can host a WCF service inside a Windows service. Take a look at the TCP binding (NetTcpBinding class). Both client and server will have to use WCF, but that doesn't sound like it will be an issue with your implementation.
Also, the section entitled "Hosting in Windows Services" in this MSDN article provides a walk-through of the process
If the windows service publishes a remoting interface then it can be accessed via that remoting interface.
Otherwise it's the same as accessing any other process running on a remote machine except that there may be some tools (e.g., sc) with built in support for executing against a remote machine (barring firewall complications).
Any IPC mechanisms applies; sockets, web services, remoting, etc...
You could expose a WCF service directly from your windows service. When you start up your windows service, in addition to spinning up any other background processes, you could create an instance of ServiceHost<T> for your service implementation. This would allow you to not only provide WCF access, but also avoid the extra instance of IIS like you requested, and provide TCP, Named Pipes, and WsHttp endpoints. This should give you some nice flexibility in the performance tuning arena, since it sounds like this service will be consumed internally on your network, rather than externally.
You could create a WCF service which will talk to your Windows service on the remote box. Host the WCF component in IIS (or however you'd like so that you can communicate with it) and then call the WCF component from your remote machine.
You'll have to pardon me as I wasn't sure where to place this. This overlaps in the areas of C# Web Services and Network/Security management I suppose.
I have a server that runs various web applications. One of them is a web service. The account everything runs under is a local account on the machine. It is not a domain account. I don't know why this was done how it was, but it's one of those things that's just the way is because it's the way it was done.
Super, huh?
Okay so my domain account name is given full permissions on the web serivce. Now, while the account the web service runs under is not a domain account, the machine is on our domain and in our network. So, from my computer, I can fire up a browser and type in the url to the web service in this fashion:
http://serverhere:porthere/servicename
Now the fun part. From a different machine on the same network and logged in my domain account, I cannot load the web service.
Here is the really, really nutty part. From both machines A and B, I cannot ping the server hosting the web service. Might be because pinging is turned off.
So the million dollar question is, does any one have any idea's at all as to why computer B cannot access the web service while computer A (my machine) can?
The server hosting the web service is running windows 2000. My machine is running windows xp. The machine that cannot load the web service is running Windows 2003 SP 2.
Check to make sure the subnet masks for both machines are the same; if one subnet is more restrictive than the other, it'll basically ignore messages from that machine.
There are too many options for this. And I would not bet on account permission issue. You should check the communication with network sniffer, like wireshark or network monitor. Check proxy settings. and post more information about the error you receive.
Silly suggestion, but did you check the firewall settings on the 2003 machine?