john kumpf's community posts

Can we be creative? If it were a local host, I would run a ping in a terminal window constantly and arrange my windows so I can see it almost constantly.

I know there's ping in RUT but looks like that's for local hosts (NetBIOS or IP) only.

Is there anything I can do from the command line on my viewer to just check whether a remote host is up?

I just browsed https://www.remoteutilities.com/support/docs/viewer-parameters/ and there are several tantalizing options.

I can imagine a -telnet -powershell Get-Date

which would log onto the host and print the date, or not.

I don't think I can specify powershell code or script file via command tho.

What happens when I run a viewer command line and the host is not online? Does it return an error code, by any chance?

-ftp and copy a file to my local host, but I think it just brings up the GUI window.

-remoteexecute -filename:program_name -hidden

But I believe this has to be an .exe, not, eg, a powershell script. I could run ping.exe but I dont think I could pass parameters.

But if I could find a .exe program that could create a log somewhere I could see, maybe...

Oh, maybe screen recorder? Something like low resolution every minute? Might even catch error messages. But I guess -screenrecord just brings up that GUI, it doesn't trigger a screenshot at that moment.

Oh, wait. I could bring up a terminal with ping running and just check that. That would work, right?

(I see you can *add* an entry to "your address book" from the command line. That seems useful for other things. I assume "your address book" is "general address book" not a specific one you added.)

One thing I missed before I posted the above and until now, is that in the address book manager you can have CHECKED and UNchecked address books. In my testing seems like you can have hundreds of UNchecked address books, as long as the CHECKED address books amount to less than or equal to your number of remote hosts/controlled devices allowed in your license.

That helps.

I have a remote host PC that's giving me trouble. I would like to monitor it using remote utilities, since I'm logged in there already. I know there's a desktop alert for when a remote host becomes available (https://www.remoteutilities.com/support/docs/checking-online-status/).

I don't see anything for when a remote host becomes UNavailable (goes down). Does something like exist? I just want to be alerted when the remote host goes down or becomes unreachable.

This is NOT a question about the address book feature of Remote Utilities. That is covered in many places.

This IS a question about the <optAddressBook> element of the config_4.xml file.

This element contains the "list of address books" which are loaded when Viewer starts.

Would you be willing to share the format of this data?

The file is XML.

The <optAddressBook> appears to be base64. Decoding that produces a binary format that I can't identify.

For context, I swap in and out address books all the time. All my address books have just 1 host in them. Because there is no grouping of 2 or 3 that I need all the time. I am always mixing and matching. And if I have more than 1 host in an address book, I wind up running out of my paid slots (20) too soon.

But I have a use for "groups of address books". For certain situations I am much more likely to use certain hosts than others. But in both situations host lists vary considerably.

I will be experimenting with saving and restoring the config_4.xml file but I thought that modifying the optAddressBook directly might be easier (once I know the format)

I had this problem yesterday on a laptop. Windows 10.

I had set the "Lid closed" setting to "Do Nothing". So the display is up. I can access it via Netbios (network shares).

In remote utilities, preview thumbnails work. The terminal (I tested powershell) is up. The remote registry works.

It would be nice to be able to use one of these working methods to be able to set "Use legacy capture mode". I did find a rut registry parameters value but it is in binary and long. But I bet there's a way to set it in there.

I could even use rut terminal to restart the host if I needed to.

But, today, when the lid was up, I did use the rut GUI to set "Use legacy capture mode" on. So again tonight, when the lid was down, I COULD indeed use the rut remote display and interact with the desktop.

Unfortunately, the w10 settings app graphically malfunctioned. When I returned to the "Home" page of the w10 settings app, what was displayed was some of the previous page superimposed/overlayed onto the settings home page. IOW it looked jumbled/scrambled. I do have "capture alpha-blending windows" on already.

I could not get RDP to work, either locally from my rut viewer, or remotely from another PC on the same local subnet (which I was accessing with rut). I did use rut terminal to the closed-lid laptop to set the RDP registry settings, and they seemed to work. But RDP sill didnt work. This laptop has two (2) IP static addresses because of a medical device attached that requires a specific static IP address. Maybe that's why RDP does not work.

msiexec /i path\to\host.msi /qn /a /jm /quiet

or are /a and /jm already defaults?

Does /qn imply /quiet?

/a 	Specifies administrative installation.
/ju 	Advertise the product to the current user.
/jm 	Advertise the product to all users.
/quiet 	Specifies quiet mode, which means there's no user interaction required.

Building on this idea (6 years ago), rather than sending email could the host installer securely log into "your account" at remote utilities and store ID and password. The host installer has the public key and the remote utilities server has the private key? And then the viewer could also allow you to log into "your account" at remote utilities and retrieve the new host installation credentials. All securely?

Of course, at that point, you could just log into your remote utilities account and set the id/password there beforehand.

I found both these two pages:

https://www.remoteutilities.com/support/docs/installing-and-uninstalling/

https://www.remoteutilities.com/support/docs/remote-install-tool/

As well as:

https://www.remoteutilities.com/product/unattended-access.php

"Access Headless Machines".

I understand that if you have local network access from viewer to target host PC you can use remote install with windows security to install on the remote computer using admin$ share.

However, I don't have that. What I have is remote access using remote utilities to computer A and I need to install Remote Utilities Host on remote computer B.

I have NETBIOS network access to files from A to B.

I also have PStools (sysinternals) command line (cmd.exe) from A to B.

Note that my situation is the same as a headless machine on which you can't run the GUI installer.

Now I could install the *viewer* on computer A. But that seems like overkill. I would be installing the viewer on on ePC for the sole purpose of installing the host on another PC? Seems awfully wasteful.

So, how do I install host?

Eg is there a host-7.6.2.0.msi" -silent or something?

I have 6 PCs connected to a KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse switch) and all are running remote utilities host.

I can connect and disconnect the KVM to all of them and maintain RUT video except one.

An HP ProDesk G9 SFF. It is running a video card (I can't check the type right now).

On this one host, the steps to reproduce are:

1. connect to host via KVM.
2. connect to host via RUT
3. disconnect KVM

Result: the RUT video freezes, the mouse does not move, and I can't control anything. If I disconnect and reconnect it hangs on the globe-map screen.

All other RUT functions work on this host with KVM disconnected: login, terminal, file transfer, remote execution (eg notepad.exe). Only local viewer video doesn't work.

When I reconnect KVM, remote RUT video works again.

I suspect the problem is that when the 'V' of the KVM is disconnected, that the graphics card changes something and RUT can't understand/find that.

It appears that:

loopback 	Remote screen connection. Started. 	Session: {CEF1E8C0-5BAE-4B7C-8CAD-F5B472D94E95}
loopback 	Access granted. 	Session: {CEF1E8C0-5BAE-4B7C-8CAD-F5B472D94E95} Free: 55c14b7e9110523429557ab3afbbb5c0

record a start/logon event, and,

loopback 	LogOff command. 	Session: {CEF1E8C0-5BAE-4B7C-8CAD-F5B472D94E95}
loopback 	Remote screen connection. Closed. 	Session: {CEF1E8C0-5BAE-4B7C-8CAD-F5B472D94E95}

record an end/logoff event.

That session's IP checks out for me.

But is this IP [216.158.232.18] the default RU server?

  	08.09.2024---08:35:08:866 	96 	  	Internet-ID ErrorCode <> 0 	Error code: 1
  	08.09.2024---08:35:47:112 	96 	  	Relay node: OK 	ID: MY-ID-1234; Port: 5655; Try count: 3
  	08.09.2024---08:36:02:414 	96 	  	Relay node redirect: OK. 	Relay redirect. To: 216.158.232.18
  	08.09.2024---08:36:02:734 	96 	  	Relay node: OK 	ID: MY-ID-1234; Port: 5655; Try count: 1
  	09.09.2024---08:35:11:326 	96 	  	Internet-ID ErrorCode <> 0 	Error code: 1
  	09.09.2024---08:35:31:339 	96 	  	Relay node: OK 	ID: MY-ID-1234; Port: 5655; Try count: 1
  	09.09.2024---08:35:58:843 	96 	  	Internet-ID ErrorCode <> 0 	Error code: 1
  	09.09.2024---08:36:52:910 	96 	  	Internet-ID: Unable to connect to ID server. 	Address: id72.remoteutilities.com; Port: 443; Connect timed out.(EIdConnectTimeout)
  	09.09.2024---08:36:57:911 	96 	  	Internet-ID ErrorCode <> 0 	Error code: 1
  	09.09.2024---08:37:06:892 	96 	  	Relay node: OK 	ID: MY-ID-1234; Port: 5655; Try count: 1
  	09.09.2024---08:37:10:463 	96 	  	Relay node redirect: OK. 	Relay redirect. To: 216.158.232.18
  	09.09.2024---08:37:10:783 	96 	  	Relay node: OK 	ID: MY-ID-1234; Port: 5655; Try count: 1