Windows Remote Log in

[Tim Golden]

[TJG: I've slightly rearranged the posts so they read top-to-bottom]

> From: Jesse [mailto:redrumjack at hotmail.com]
> 
>I guess it is how can I have a user enter their NT Domain Authentication 
>and the script use it to log into NT Domains the computer it is running 
>on it not a member of.

> From Tim:
>
> I suggest you have a look at WMI. 
> Try using it without any particular security qualifiers
> first; if you really need an explicit log on (you probably
> won't if you're a Domain Admin and using your own or a 
> trusted domain) then you can specify an explicit wmi 
> moniker in the constructor.
> TJG

> From Jesse:
> This is a mixture of NT 4 and Win2K Servers.  
> WMI may not be installed on all the remote systems.

Does that mean it could not be? It's available for both (and
is, I think, there by default on Win2K). Maybe there are
political reasons or fears for stability of long-running
NT4 servers? We have that problem here.

> We have quite a few NT domains that our servers are spread out over and 
> sometimes the machine I would execute the script from would not be in 
> the same Domain and need different Logon Credentials to access the 
> remote machine. 

Understood.

> Often certian services for the applications we maintain will need to be 
> restarted on these remote machines.  I've found a way to this this with 
> a Python Module called WService.

I've not come across this module; is it one you've written yourself? 
Or could you give a URL where it could be found? Assuming, in any case, 
that it's based on Mark Hammond's win32service, a quick browse of the docs
for that suggest that, although you can control services on other machines,
there's no way of authenticating yourself in the process.

Here, I think, WMI would probably serve you best, because it does
allow explicit domain-credential logons (in a slightly roundabout way), 
and once you're in, stopping and starting services is a snap. Having
said that, getting the combination of local security and remote
credentials right is a bit of a pain. Judging by past threads, I 
think other people on this list have more experience of that than I.

Maybe something like this would suit:

<code>

import win32com.client
import wmi

def list_services (machine, username, password):
  locator = win32com.client.Dispatch ("WbemScripting.SWbemLocator")
  remote_wmi = locator.ConnectServer (machine, "", username, password)
  remote_machine = wmi.WMI (wmi=remote_wmi)
  #
  # This just lists all services; obviously it
  #  could stop, or start, or delete or whatever.
  #
  for s in remote_machine.Win32_Service ():
    print s.Caption, s.State

</code>

TJG

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