Bootstrapping Windows Nodes via RDP

winrm is disabled by default for many windows installs, including cloud
providers such as Azure.

I’m contemplating a way around this limitation by either finding a way to
turn on winrm, or just executing commands via RDP instead.

I found an interesting from blog entry from 2008*[1] that suggested using
the rdesktop executable (on linux) to run commands/scripts.

rdesktop -r disk:local="/tmp/dir/" my.new.server -s “cmd.exe /K net
use x: \\tsclient\local & x:\setupwinrm.bat & shutdown /t 0 /r”

However that obviously requires shelling out to run a binary on Linux that
requires the presence of an X server.

I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions or has seen any ruby gems or
libraries that we could use to make something like this cross-platform.

The ideal scenario would give us the ability to run commands via the RDP
procotol from plain ruby (no X or Linux required).

Then we could do something like:

knife bootstrap windows rdp my.new.server

[1] http://www.singularity.be/2008/03/using-rdesktop-to-script-windows.html

Chris - winexe ships as part of samba 4 and can run on linux or osx. It is synonymous with psexec on windows.

Personally, with all of the quirks of winrm and powershell 3 constantly dumping due to memory issues, I am wondering if winexe is just the way to go for all remote shell operations…

P

On Jan 17, 2013, at 1:11 AM, “Chris McClimans” <chef@hippiehacker.orgmailto:chef@hippiehacker.org> wrote:

winrm is disabled by default for many windows installs, including cloud providers such as Azure.

I’m contemplating a way around this limitation by either finding a way to turn on winrm, or just executing commands via RDP instead.

I found an interesting from blog entry from 2008*[1] that suggested using the rdesktop executable (on linux) to run commands/scripts.

rdesktop -r disk:local="/tmp/dir/" my.new.server -s “cmd.exe /K net use x: \\tsclient\local & x:\setupwinrm.bat & shutdown /t 0 /r”

However that obviously requires shelling out to run a binary on Linux that requires the presence of an X server.

I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions or has seen any ruby gems or libraries that we could use to make something like this cross-platform.

The ideal scenario would give us the ability to run commands via the RDP procotol from plain ruby (no X or Linux required).

Then we could do something like:

knife bootstrap windows rdp my.new.server

[1] http://www.singularity.be/2008/03/using-rdesktop-to-script-windows.html

Seems like we could do knife bootstrap windows exec and use different
backends.

PsExec on windows
winexe on Linux and OSX

The requirement of a full samba4 install is something we should noodle
around.

Are there static linked binaries for OSX and Linux?

On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 3:38 AM, Paul Morton - BIA
pmorton@biaprotect.comwrote:

Chris - winexe ships as part of samba 4 and can run on linux or osx. It is
synonymous with psexec on windows.

Personally, with all of the quirks of winrm and powershell 3 constantly
dumping due to memory issues, I am wondering if winexe is just the way to
go for all remote shell operations...

P

On Jan 17, 2013, at 1:11 AM, "Chris McClimans" chef@hippiehacker.org
wrote:

winrm is disabled by default for many windows installs, including cloud
providers such as Azure.

I'm contemplating a way around this limitation by either finding a way to
turn on winrm, or just executing commands via RDP instead.

I found an interesting from blog entry from 2008*[1] that suggested using
the rdesktop executable (on linux) to run commands/scripts.

rdesktop -r disk:local="/tmp/dir/" my.new.server -s "cmd.exe /K net use x: \\tsclient\local & x:\setupwinrm.bat & shutdown /t 0 /r"

However that obviously requires shelling out to run a binary on Linux that
requires the presence of an X server.

I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions or has seen any ruby gems or
libraries that we could use to make something like this cross-platform.

The ideal scenario would give us the ability to run commands via the RDP
procotol from plain ruby (no X or Linux required).

Then we could do something like:

knife bootstrap windows rdp my.new.server

[1]
http://www.singularity.be/2008/03/using-rdesktop-to-script-windows.html

Paul,

http://eol.ovh.org/winexe/ has direction for building winexe, but I'm not
finding winexe as part of the samba4 in Ubuntu 12.04.

At what version did Samba4 start including winexe?

On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 11:52 AM, Chris McClimans chef@hippiehacker.orgwrote:

Seems like we could do knife bootstrap windows exec and use different
backends.

PsExec on windows
winexe on Linux and OSX

The requirement of a full samba4 install is something we should noodle
around.

Are there static linked binaries for OSX and Linux?

On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 3:38 AM, Paul Morton - BIA <pmorton@biaprotect.com

wrote:

Chris - winexe ships as part of samba 4 and can run on linux or osx. It
is synonymous with psexec on windows.

Personally, with all of the quirks of winrm and powershell 3 constantly
dumping due to memory issues, I am wondering if winexe is just the way to
go for all remote shell operations...

P

On Jan 17, 2013, at 1:11 AM, "Chris McClimans" chef@hippiehacker.org
wrote:

winrm is disabled by default for many windows installs, including cloud
providers such as Azure.

I'm contemplating a way around this limitation by either finding a way to
turn on winrm, or just executing commands via RDP instead.

I found an interesting from blog entry from 2008*[1] that suggested using
the rdesktop executable (on linux) to run commands/scripts.

rdesktop -r disk:local="/tmp/dir/" my.new.server -s "cmd.exe /K net use x: \\tsclient\local & x:\setupwinrm.bat & shutdown /t 0 /r"

However that obviously requires shelling out to run a binary on Linux
that requires the presence of an X server.

I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions or has seen any ruby gems
or libraries that we could use to make something like this cross-platform.

The ideal scenario would give us the ability to run commands via the RDP
procotol from plain ruby (no X or Linux required).

Then we could do something like:

knife bootstrap windows rdp my.new.server

[1]
http://www.singularity.be/2008/03/using-rdesktop-to-script-windows.html

OpenSUSE builds statics for most Linux distros:

https://build.opensuse.org/package/show?package=winexe&project=home%3Aahajda%3Awinexe

On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 12:18 PM, Chris McClimans chef@hippiehacker.orgwrote:

Paul,

http://eol.ovh.org/winexe/ has direction for building winexe, but I'm not
finding winexe as part of the samba4 in Ubuntu 12.04.

At what version did Samba4 start including winexe?

On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 11:52 AM, Chris McClimans chef@hippiehacker.orgwrote:

Seems like we could do knife bootstrap windows exec and use different
backends.

PsExec on windows
winexe on Linux and OSX

The requirement of a full samba4 install is something we should noodle
around.

Are there static linked binaries for OSX and Linux?

On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 3:38 AM, Paul Morton - BIA <
pmorton@biaprotect.com> wrote:

Chris - winexe ships as part of samba 4 and can run on linux or osx. It
is synonymous with psexec on windows.

Personally, with all of the quirks of winrm and powershell 3 constantly
dumping due to memory issues, I am wondering if winexe is just the way to
go for all remote shell operations...

P

On Jan 17, 2013, at 1:11 AM, "Chris McClimans" chef@hippiehacker.org
wrote:

winrm is disabled by default for many windows installs, including cloud
providers such as Azure.

I'm contemplating a way around this limitation by either finding a way
to turn on winrm, or just executing commands via RDP instead.

I found an interesting from blog entry from 2008*[1] that suggested
using the rdesktop executable (on linux) to run commands/scripts.

rdesktop -r disk:local="/tmp/dir/" my.new.server -s "cmd.exe /K net use x: \\tsclient\local & x:\setupwinrm.bat & shutdown /t 0 /r"

However that obviously requires shelling out to run a binary on Linux
that requires the presence of an X server.

I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions or has seen any ruby gems
or libraries that we could use to make something like this cross-platform.

The ideal scenario would give us the ability to run commands via the RDP
procotol from plain ruby (no X or Linux required).

Then we could do something like:

knife bootstrap windows rdp my.new.server

[1]
http://www.singularity.be/2008/03/using-rdesktop-to-script-windows.html

Hi Chris,

We run a small recipe using windows_batch initially to turn on and
configure winrm. It has worked well for us. Following this , we have not
had to RDP to any box to execute scripts. If and when needed we use knife
windows to run commands remotely.

Ranjan

On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 2:41 PM, Chris McClimans chef@hippiehacker.orgwrote:

winrm is disabled by default for many windows installs, including cloud
providers such as Azure.

I'm contemplating a way around this limitation by either finding a way to
turn on winrm, or just executing commands via RDP instead.

I found an interesting from blog entry from 2008*[1] that suggested using
the rdesktop executable (on linux) to run commands/scripts.

rdesktop -r disk:local="/tmp/dir/" my.new.server -s "cmd.exe /K net use x: \\tsclient\local & x:\setupwinrm.bat & shutdown /t 0 /r"

However that obviously requires shelling out to run a binary on Linux that
requires the presence of an X server.

I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions or has seen any ruby gems or
libraries that we could use to make something like this cross-platform.

The ideal scenario would give us the ability to run commands via the RDP
procotol from plain ruby (no X or Linux required).

Then we could do something like:

knife bootstrap windows rdp my.new.server

[1]
http://www.singularity.be/2008/03/using-rdesktop-to-script-windows.html

Ranjan,

How do you run that initial recipe... I'm looking at targeting cloud
providers that may not enable winrm by default... or at locations that
already use RDP. Basically trying to find a way to bootstrap bootstrap
nodes via available default protocols.
Winrm rarely seems enabled by default. psexec and winexec require smb ports
which cloud providers rarely allow access to, but RDP seems to be
everywhere and mostly be default.

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 12:36 AM, Madhurranjan Mohaan <
maadhuuranjan.m@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Chris,

We run a small recipe using windows_batch initially to turn on and
configure winrm. It has worked well for us. Following this , we have not
had to RDP to any box to execute scripts. If and when needed we use knife
windows to run commands remotely.

Ranjan

On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 2:41 PM, Chris McClimans chef@hippiehacker.orgwrote:

winrm is disabled by default for many windows installs, including cloud
providers such as Azure.

I'm contemplating a way around this limitation by either finding a way to
turn on winrm, or just executing commands via RDP instead.

I found an interesting from blog entry from 2008*[1] that suggested using
the rdesktop executable (on linux) to run commands/scripts.

rdesktop -r disk:local="/tmp/dir/" my.new.server -s "cmd.exe /K net use x: \\tsclient\local & x:\setupwinrm.bat & shutdown /t 0 /r"

However that obviously requires shelling out to run a binary on Linux
that requires the presence of an X server.

I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions or has seen any ruby gems
or libraries that we could use to make something like this cross-platform.

The ideal scenario would give us the ability to run commands via the RDP
procotol from plain ruby (no X or Linux required).

Then we could do something like:

knife bootstrap windows rdp my.new.server

[1]
http://www.singularity.be/2008/03/using-rdesktop-to-script-windows.html

Hi Chris,

In our case we interact with Vmware infrastructure. As part of the base
template we've added a startup job that runs chef client and in turn pulls
the required recipes . One of those recipes is the winrm recipe . Our flow
is as follows:
Template -> VM creation task -> Vm comes up and runs customization ( where
it joins the domain , hostnames change , it gets the ip address, licenses
are applied etc) -> Vm reboots and on startup it runs chef-client. If
you're worried about what recipes to run at startup , one way is to even
precreate the node and then assign it the required cookbooks so that it
runs it. I hope this is of some help with your cloud provider. Let us
know.

cheers
Ranjan

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 11:38 PM, Chris McClimans chef@hippiehacker.orgwrote:

Ranjan,

How do you run that initial recipe... I'm looking at targeting cloud
providers that may not enable winrm by default... or at locations that
already use RDP. Basically trying to find a way to bootstrap bootstrap
nodes via available default protocols.
Winrm rarely seems enabled by default. psexec and winexec require smb
ports which cloud providers rarely allow access to, but RDP seems to be
everywhere and mostly be default.

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 12:36 AM, Madhurranjan Mohaan <
maadhuuranjan.m@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Chris,

We run a small recipe using windows_batch initially to turn on and
configure winrm. It has worked well for us. Following this , we have not
had to RDP to any box to execute scripts. If and when needed we use knife
windows to run commands remotely.

Ranjan

On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 2:41 PM, Chris McClimans chef@hippiehacker.orgwrote:

winrm is disabled by default for many windows installs, including cloud
providers such as Azure.

I'm contemplating a way around this limitation by either finding a way
to turn on winrm, or just executing commands via RDP instead.

I found an interesting from blog entry from 2008*[1] that suggested
using the rdesktop executable (on linux) to run commands/scripts.

rdesktop -r disk:local="/tmp/dir/" my.new.server -s "cmd.exe /K net use x: \\tsclient\local & x:\setupwinrm.bat & shutdown /t 0 /r"

However that obviously requires shelling out to run a binary on Linux
that requires the presence of an X server.

I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions or has seen any ruby gems
or libraries that we could use to make something like this cross-platform.

The ideal scenario would give us the ability to run commands via the RDP
procotol from plain ruby (no X or Linux required).

Then we could do something like:

knife bootstrap windows rdp my.new.server

[1]
http://www.singularity.be/2008/03/using-rdesktop-to-script-windows.html