SUMMARY: Managing remote NT machine from Solaris host

From: Peter Polasek (pete@cobra.brass.com)
Date: Tue Aug 25 1998 - 10:03:59 CDT


Overview:
---------
I had requested for a tool supports rsh from Sun to remote NT machines
to get process and machine status. I received many reponses - many of
them were aimed at running an NT console on the Sun (which is useful,
but not exactly the programmatic interface I was looking for). Some
of the other tools suggested may provide this functionality - I will
need to research them in more detail. I will issue a post summary if
these prove useful or if I identify some way to do this that was not
mentioned.

I made brief reference in my original posting to two packages that
emulate a UNIX environment on the NT machine. Several people requested
information about these, so I have included the associated URL's below:

DataFocus's NTCracker: http://www.aberdeen.com/research/abstract/97090169.html
Softway Systems OpenNT: http://www.gcsweb.com/winnt/wnntadmin3openn.htm

Thanks to the following for the responding:
-------------------------------------------
Otto, Doug <dotto@alldata.com>:
Matt Reynolds <matt@aztek-eng.com>:
Charlie Mengler <charliem@anchorchips.com>:
Rick Lantaigne <lantaign@nortel.ca>:
environment. From your WinCenter window your home directory (or whatever
Richard Skelton <rich@brake.demon.co.uk>:
Dieter Gobbers <gobbers@faw.uni-ulm.de>:
Petri Kallberg - Sun Finland - <Petri.Kallberg@Finland.Sun.COM>:
Stefan Voss <s.voss@terradata.de>:
Cheng, Bruce" <Bruce.Cheng@Aspect.com>:

Peter Polasek

Original Posting:
-----------------
I am certain there many admins who, like it or not, must manage
remote NT machines from Solaris hosts. I would appreciate
comments from them about the approaches used to do this.

I am specifically looking for a software package that allows NT
machine and process information to be collected through an IP
connection from a Solaris host. Ideally, I would be able to
'rsh' from the Solaris machine to the NT machine and pipe the
task manager results to a UNIX file; however, any means to get
the NT results through IP will suffice. I know that there are
NT packages called 'NtCracker' and 'OpenNT' that emulate a UNIX
environment on the NT, but I would vastly prefer to install
software on the Sun server that uses native NT utilities to
collect the information.

Response Excerpts:
------------------

From: "Otto, Doug" <dotto@alldata.com>:
---------------------------------------
To: "'Peter Polasek'" <pete@cobra.brass.com>

What I use is a winframe client that gives me an NT desktop on
my sparc. From there I can run all the standard nt admin apps.

From: Matt Reynolds <matt@aztek-eng.com>:
-----------------------------------------
Look at VNC (Virtual Network Console) - This is the ONLY virtual
console for NT I'v found: http://www.orl.co.uk/vnc/start.html

From: Charlie Mengler <charliem@anchorchips.com>:
-------------------------------------------------
Check out Big Brother at
http://www.maclawran.ca/~sean/bb-dnld/index.html

Monitors: dns, nntp, ftp, smtp, pop3. Connectivity via ping, http servers,
disk space usage, processes, messages and warnings

From: "Rick Lantaigne" <lantaign@nortel.ca>:
--------------------------------------------
WinCenter (www.ncd.com) allows you to open an X-Window from your Unix
environment to the NT environment. I use an alias that does an xhost
and an rsh. WinCenter runs on a wintel box. This allows you to run
Win95, NT type application native on the wintel box and xhosted back to
your UNIX workstation.

TAS (www.syntax.com) allows you to save NT files on you UNIX
environment. From your WinCenter window your home directory (or whatever
you configure) looks like a Windows network drive. The basic TAS comes
free with Solaris (server version I think), all you need to buy are user
licences. TAS will also allow PCs (& Macs) to use your UNIX for file
and print services.

From: Richard Skelton <rich@brake.demon.co.uk>:
-----------------------------------------------
I use vncviewer from http://www.orl.co.uk/vnc/

From: Dieter Gobbers <gobbers@faw.uni-ulm.de>:
----------------------------------------------
ever heard of VNC? It's a free software package which allows to grab the
display and keyboard of a Windows box and control them from a remote machine,
both unix and windows! You can find it for at:

ftp://ftp.deva.net/pub/sources/networking/remote-access/vnc/

From: Petri Kallberg - Sun Finland - <Petri.Kallberg@Finland.Sun.COM>:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Maybe this is isn't what you were looking for, but have a look at

        http://www.orl.co.uk/vnc/
        
VNC (virtual network computing) is a software that allows you to display
your desktop remotely from X or Windows on a X, Windows or browser based
viewer. It's also freely available.

From: Stefan Voss <s.voss@terradata.de>:
----------------------------------------
i don't know, whether standard NT supports rsh, but... We use NT 3.51 with NCD's
WinCenter (based on Citrix WinFrame), and there we have a rsh command. But it
works only from NT to Solaris, not from the Sun to the stupid PC ("Permission
denied: unable to validate user.").

The NT resource kit contains some useful command line utilities, maybe you can
use one of them to collect the data, then transfer them via ftp to the SUN.
I don't know, whether NT's FTP also knows ~/.netrc to do an automatic transfer
(using the AT command).

Or you can simply write the data to a disk which can be accessed from the SUN
too (cf. SAMBA).

From: "Cheng, Bruce" <Bruce.Cheng@Aspect.com>:
----------------------------------------------
For starters, you need a rshd to be running on the NT side.
More complete package such as OpenNT may provide you a lot of emulation
but that's something I haven't tried.
 
You can also look into MKS toolkit (they have a demo, I haven't tried)
http://www.mks.com/demo/
 
O'Reilly's Windows NT Systems Administration book shows ways to do lot
of NT admin from command line.



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