Connect to iDrac Virtual Console programmatically - server

I frequently connect to the virtual console provided by iDrac on many Dell servers which I manage. I'm looking for a way to connect to the virtual console programmatically, or whatever method that's faster than logging into the web interface manually and going through all the prompts.
Dell's racadm tool does not support this, apparently. iDrac is not set up with domain auth, just using a local account configured on iDrac. I would be connecting from a Windows machine, any browser.
Is there any way to automate this? Even partially?

I use a shell script for this, you can make a .bat file on Windows. See some simple instructions to start iDrac console from command line here

Related

Connect to console app running as a system task on Windows server

I run several game servers on a single windows-server-2012-r2. Many of the game servers run as console-application. I have created scheduled-tasks to run each on windows startup even if I'm not logged on. I would like to be able to attach to the consoles of those apps when logged on to the server, similar to what can be done in linux. Perhaps I'm going about this in the wrong way. Is there a way to attach to console apps running as tasks? Is there a software tool that accommodates this sort of thing?
Update:
Been searching high and low for a solution but haven't found anything yet. Have decided to write a wrapper for console app that will redirect Stdin, Stdout and Stderr of a process to a Telnet connection. Will use nssm to run the wrapper as a service.
I produced a solution: https://github.com/ccourson/Banjo
Banjo will launch a specified console application and route its streams to and from a telnet connection.
Pull requests welcome.

How do I connect to a SQL Server which is usually a machine I remote desktop into

Typically I remote into a machine with IP Address 00.00.00.00 and then I have an account in a domain, let's call it myspecialaccount\firstname.lastname.
Then I use Windows auth to connect to SQL Server instance for example:
ABCLACSQLC123\DEV04A
So my question is HOW can I connect from my laptop through SSMS directly to the machine (pending ports are open etc..)
In order to use Windows Authentication, you'd have to add the credentials you use to login to the laptop as a "Login" to the SQL Server. That can only be done if
You login to your laptop with a domain user and
The user is in the same domain in which your SQL Server instance resides
Otherwise, you have no choice but to use SQL Server Authentication.
In this case, you login to your laptop with a user in "Corp" domain, but SQL Server instance is in "Services" domain. So it won't work. Unless I think both domains are part of the same Forest.
Look at this answer : https://stackoverflow.com/a/1615431/3317709. There is no trick to login, unless you get rid of the "Network related..." error. If you are getting this error, SSMS is not even able to find your server let alone logging into it. Once you get "Login failed..." error, from that point, we can tinker and try to get thru using your windows auth.
Try creating a shortcut to runas.exe, pointing to SSMS.
C:\Windows\System32\runas.exe /netonly /user:myspecialaccount\firstname.lastname "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\VSShell\Common7\IDE\Ssms.exe"
(The path to your SSMS exe may vary.)
When you double-click the shortcut, this will open up SSMS. You should then be able to connect to your instance (ABCLACSQLC123\DEV04A) as if it were on your local machine.
See here for more info on the runas command: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771525.aspx
Install SQL Server Management Studio Express on your laptop. Microsoft has made the download link obscenely hard to find on their own site, but I did manage to find it here. Download the one for your system, probably x64.
Installation isn't much easier. Once everything is extracted, run the program, and switch to the installation tab, and choose "Standalone installation or add new features". Continue along the installation, and just install the management tools.
Once installed and running, use the Connect to Server dialog (it should open when you start the program, but if it doesn't, it's the first option under the File tab), and target wherever you want to connect (IP or server name should both work). If your laptop also authenticates to the same server that handles Windows authentication for your database, you can use Windows authentication, otherwise, you'll have to create a SQL Server account to use for login.

connecting from Linux to windows without logging off the current user on windows

what I'm trying to achieve is to log from linux to a windows machine which is already being used by one user who should not be logged off and the system should be working with both the users simultaneaously .I'm using krdc to connect to windows machine from linux,which logs off the user when other user logs in.Is there any other way to achieve my intension.
Thanks and Regards
You need to have the real Terminal Services installed. Usually the windows (Home,Professional, etc) can be enabled to have Terminal services but only for a 1 single session. If you install Terminal Services you will need to pay the license for users.
To allow multiple connection you should use VNC/teamviewer (is the most simple way to achieve what you want).

Testing AppServer/Database Availability Remotely in Progress 4GL

We have Progress appservers (OE 10.0B05) running on AIX UNIX and I want write some code to check if they are up and running. The code to check the appserver would be run from a WIN2008 server. I can pull up Progress Explorer on the WIN2008 server to check the status of the appservers, but I need to write some code that can check their status programatically.
Is there any way to programatically check whether my AIX UNIX Progress appserver is up and running from a remote WIN2008 server?
To get app server status information you can use "asbman".
To get it remotely you would need some means to invoke a remote process and return a value. I'm a unix guy so I usually use "ssh" for that sort of thing.
There are Windows versions of SSH (look at the PuTTY suite for a really good free option). If you set it up to use pre-shared keys or an "agent" there are no messy login prompts to get in the way. Something like (untested):
plink -i sshkey.ppk user#server.name "asbman -name appServer -query"
"asbman" also supports -host and -port parameters if you happen to have it running on the windows box that you want to make the inquiry from.
If you have a small program that can open a socket connection, that would do it. If the program can open a socket, you can be reasonably confident the appserver is running.
You -might- be able to use the ABL SOCKET functionality to do this. Failing that, any other program which can open a socket on a remote machine and then close it will work.b

Running a cgi perl script as an Administrator

I'm writing a perl script for a website, and I need to be able to control VirtualBox via the website. I'm not sure where to start, or if I'm even trying to debug in the right area, but here goes.
My server is running IIS7 on Windows Server 2008 R2. I'm also running 2 virtual machines through the vboxmanage command line interface. These VMs are running under SERVER\administrator.
When I open my website, it requests a login. I login to the website as SERVER\administrator and click a link that calls my script using an xmlhttprequest. Now, normally, it doesn't matter what user I run these as, but with vboxmanage, if I run the command as a different user, the list of VMs is different. I tried whoami, which returned SERVER\administrator, but %DOMAINNAME%\%USERNAME% returns the domain that the server is connected to as dommainname and SERVER$ as the username. The vboxmanage command then fails.
On the website, impersonation is turned on. When I turn impersonation off, the whoami request changes to be iis apppool\website. Any ideas on how to get around this?
As a final note, I've thought about using runas, but since it prompts for a password, there's no way to call it through scripting (and that would be a poor security decision, I'd imagine).
This is an oft recurring, well-known and well-solved problem. Instead of having one big program dealing with requests from the Web and managing the VM (strong coupling), separate the concern and write two programs, each doing exactly one task.
The user facing program running in the Web server context can continue with limited privileges. The VM manager is a stand-alone program running with the necessary admin privileges, either repeatedly from the scheduler or as daemon/service.
Have the first communicate with the second over a message-queue.