people with administrator access to PrimeNet

[James Heinrich]

Originally Posted by TObject

PowerShell is not on Windows 7 by default. It can be installed.

Strange, I have it available on both my Win7-HomePremium and Win7-Pro machines, and I've never made any special effort to install it (I've actually never used PowerShell), cmd works for everything I've needed.

[TObject]

Originally Posted by James Heinrich

Strange, I have it available on both my Win7-HomePremium and Win7-Pro machines, and I've never made any special effort to install it (I've actually never used PowerShell), cmd works for everything I've needed.

Yes, looks like I was wrong about that.

[Madpoo]

Originally Posted by chalsall

Thanks for that information. Although I choose to never work with Windows (server or client) personally, this is useful knowledge when speaking to those who do. And I wasn't explicit -- I meant how to admin Windows servers using a command-line interface; Putty is, of course, a very useful Windows client to SSH into serious (read: Unix based) machines...

Yeah, there are SSH servers for Windows. It's possible to do quite a bit remotely from the command-line of another Windows box. Powershell, WMI, other remote admin tools, etc.

For ease of use, I just remote desktop into Primenet because if I'm working in SQL and doing a lot of stuff, sure, I could open up firewall ports to hit SQL remotely, but if you're pushing lots of bits, it won't be any fun. You will probably have a bad time.

For low bandwidth things like updating a file here and there, polling SNMP (which I had to shut down from my work monitoring system, sorry George, but we ran out of seats and I had to reclaim that), etc.

Originally Posted by chalsall

Separately... Does anyone know how to access PowerShell from Windows 7 et al? I was trying to help debug an issue with OpenVPN from a Windows 7 machine a few months ago, and I wanted to open a shell to try a "telnet [HOST] [PORT]" and ping and traceroute etc. to see if a firewall was causing the issue.

Click, click, click... Click, click, click... CLICK, CLICK, CLICK!!! "Where the f' is the shell?!?!? How can anyone work without shell access!?!?!?!"

I ended up using Internet Exploder to do a simplified test ("http://[HOST]:[PORT]'), but surely there's a better way...?

For simple things where I don't want to RDP into another box, I use PSEXEC (nice tool from Sysinternals). A simple command like "psexec \\<remote machine> tracert www.google.com" will do the trick. Of course it relies on a few things like open ports through any firewalls, having either a trust to that machine or you can use -u/-p in the command, etc.

It works fine for things you don't need to interact with, but if you're wanting to run something remotely and expect to interact with it, this is not the program for you.

For an SSH server (and SCP) I like "Bitvise SSH Server". They have a free version that is fully functional with just a limit on commercial use and # of accounts. It can use built-in accounts or setup your own, etc. If you SSH in you get a command prompt just like you'd get if you were on the box and ran CMD. It probably won't have a good time if you run non console apps but other things should be fine.
https://www.bitvise.com/ssh-server

It's not fancy but it works and that matters the most.

[Madpoo]

Originally Posted by Madpoo

...For an SSH server (and SCP) I like "Bitvise SSH Server"....

Reading other replies, it sounds like maybe you were having trouble doing this when actually logged into the Windows machine itself, not trying to do it remotely.

Yeah... just run cmd.exe or run powershell.exe. Easy breezy.

Telnet is NOT included by default in modern versions. I don't know the reasoning... maybe just because it wasn't used by most people. You can still install it but you need to go into control panel, "Programs and Features", turn features off/on, and click the "telnet client" option. In Windows Server it's in the roles/features installation.

For myself, I just stick with Putty. The Windows Telnet client is pretty basic and bad.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by TObject

All versions of Windows have a feature called “Command Prompt,” it is under “All Programs–Accessories” on the “Start” menu. It is the original shell access for Windows that works similar to the old DOS Command prompt.

OK, thanks for the reply. I was probably wrong wrt what version of Windows I was trying to work with. Perhaps it was Windows 8 rather than 7 (owned by a pretty young thing who didn't have a clue how to use her computer) -- all I know is it didn't have a "Start Menu", just a bunch of "pretty rectangles". And after much clicking, I couldn't figure out how to access a shell.

If you know how to access the "Start Menu", or the "Run..." command under such versions, I would very much appreciate insight on how to go about accessing this.

Again, I very rarely use Windows (and it will always be a client's machine), but knowing how to do this would be useful and appreciated.

[James Heinrich]

Sounds like the mythical beast called Windows 8.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/w...ed-run-command

[science_man_88]

Originally Posted by James Heinrich

Sounds like the mythical beast called Windows 8.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/w...ed-run-command

really all I do in my windows 8 version is right click on the taskbar and go to run. edit:though I guess my machine has 8.1

[legendarymudkip]

For run, in windows 8/8.1, you can just press windows key + R.

Edit: Nevermind, I should read articles posted before posting myself. Anyway, you can also rightclick on the windows logo in 8.1 (left of the taskbar) to bring up cmd or powershell. It's by default cmd, you can change it to powershell but I've forgotten how.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by legendarymudkip

For run, in windows 8/8.1, you can just press windows key + R.

Thanks for the information. Sincerely.

If I ever find myself in front of a WinBlows >= 8 system and need to get serious, I'll remember that.

[James Heinrich]

Originally Posted by chalsall

If I ever find myself in front of a WinBlows >= 8 system and need to get serious, I'll remember that.

Actually Windows+R has worked as far back as (I believe) since the Windows key was introduced with Windows 95.

There's a whole pile of keyboard shortcuts involving the Windows key. I thought I knew most of them but there's even more than I thought there was:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/w...oard-shortcuts

[Madpoo]

Originally Posted by science_man_88

really all I do in my windows 8 version is right click on the taskbar and go to run. edit:though I guess my machine has 8.1

I can't say enough good things about:
http://www.classicshell.net/

I like Windows in general because I know my way around, but man... when they came out with Win 8/Server 2012 and the whole Metro interface... good gravy, what a disaster. I hope entire teams of people were fired over that crappy decision.

But yeah, Classic Shell is literally among the first couple programs I install in *any* Win8 / 2012 system I build. I even put it on my Win7 boxes just because now I've come to like the extra customizations and skins.

In general I do my very best to hide the fact that something called Metro is there at all.

That said, even with the default Metro crud you can still click on where the start menu *should be* and still type in "cmd.exe"... that still works kind of like Win7 with the search box, or if the Metro junk is already showing all the tiles, just start typing "cmd.exe"