Fire a script on Windows from Linux

[TechFly]

I have a process that I am working on that requires me to run some script on my linux hosts, and have that script start a batch script on a windows host. I have been having trouble finding a good way to do this. I could install SSH on windows, but most of the non-commercial packages are many years out of date. I have not found anything on cpan that quite does what I need. On the windows box, there is a batch script that I need to start. It does some logging, and then starts a service. I am unsure as to how to proceed. Has anyone done this before?

For extra background, the windows host is a windows 2008 R2 server that runs a critical app in my environment. The 'powers that be' would prefer I not install, or mess with the windows box any more than required. Cygwin is out of the question in this case for political reasons.

[Limbic~Region]

TechFly,
Let me give you a somewhat unconventional answer - use a web page. You can use IIS and whatever CGI available on the box (Actionscript, Asp, PHP, Perl, etc). Create a simple web form that when submitted tells the windows box what to do. The form can then render a page with the results that the remote process can parse for feedback.

This may seem like a lot more work than is necessary and depending on your "powers that be" may not be acceptable. On the other hand, by divorcing the direct interaction you create the ability to be implementation agnostic.

This same concept could be done in a myriad of ways. For instance, if both hosts shared a file system (Samba, NFS, etc) then you could communicate by placing files in the directory and having processes on each end monitor for.

[dasgar]

The first thing that comes to mind is to do something like what Limbic~Region suggested - which is to have Perl scripts running on the two systems that communicate with each other somehow (web interface, files on shared storage, etc.).

Here's a general idea of what I used between two Windows systems, but should work for you. On one system, I used IO::Socket::INET::Daemon to create a "telnet" server that would run do something with local hardware and return information to the client. I used Task Scheduler to start the script on system start even if no user is logged on. Then I used Net::Telnet from another system to interact with the "telnet" server.

Regardless of the route that you choose to go, the basic idea is that you have to have some kind of service (such as web/telnet/ssh server or script/executable running) on the Windows system, which means that you will have to make some kind of change to the Windows system so that something is running so that your remote system can interact with it.

[syphilis]

Has anyone done this before?

I'm sure it has been done by lots of people.
I used to do it via TCP socket connections - a server (perl) script on the Windows machine listens on a particular port for the message/ping from the Linux machine.
Upon receipt of the message/ping, the server script then sets in motion the desired process and resumes listening (or whatever).

Chapter 17 of the "Perl Cookbook" is one resource for how to set this up, giving examples of both the "server" side and "client" side code requirements. There are, no doubt, other resources.

Cheers,
Rob

[1s44c]

I've done this.

I tried out every RSHD for windows I could get my hands on and the only one that worked for me was Denicomp RSHD. I'd much prefer open source but none of it 'just worked' like the denicomp version. It's only 45 USD per machine. See http://www.denicomp.com/rshdnt.htm

RSHD uses IP based authentication so your security people might disallow this.

The other approach I considered was a timed script on the windows machine that checks for input in some shared directory and does its thing if it finds any. Run it every 5 minutes or so.

Whatever approach you take make sure you have monitoring to check it keeps working.

[codiac]

putty was last updated in late 2013 (1).

gitbash is more recent (2) and has ssh embedded.

1: http://lists.tartarus.org/pipermail/putty-announce/2013/000018.html

2:https://github.com/msysgit/msysgit/releases/download/Git-1.9.4-preview20140611/Git-1.9.4-preview20140611.exe