N37dev - LanTool Readme

LanTool Remote Network Administration Tool

Preamble

Redistribution and use in binary forms, without modification, is permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
No modifications or reverse engineering of the Software is permitted. You may not remove any proprietary notices or labels from the Software and you may not modify, alter, reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble, or create derivative works based on the Software.
You may not remove or alter any legal notices, such as trademark or copyright notices, affixed on or within the Software or any accompanying documentation.

Disclaimer

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Caution

Use this software for evaluation purposes only. It is not complete yet and there are issues that will need to be resolved. Though proven stable and somewhat problem free during alpha testing, there is absolutely no guarantee you will have the same experience. The Software is a time-limited beta evaluation version and, as such, will time out after a certain period to encourage you to update to a newer, possibly more stable version.

By installing and using this beta release, you're being given the opportunity to take part in the development of this software. Your suggestions and bug reports will make LanTool a better remote network administration tool.

Requirements

LanTool is supported on the following operating systems:

Windows 2000
Windows XP
Windows Server 2003

Additionally, to use the features of LanTool, your computer must be running as part of a network.

A Windows 9x client may be introduced, dependent on sufficient demand.

Windows NT 4 is not supported.

Introduction

When managing a number of computers on Local or Wide area networks, sometimes controlling aspects of them remotely is necessary or desired. LanTool can make aspects of is possible without the need of being familiar with the inner workings of the operating system.

Installation

It is likely you have already installed the application if you are reading this! However, if this is not the case, just run the installer and follow the prompts from there.

If for whatever reason you need to stop the service, run the stop.bat file and likewise run start.bat to start. To completely uninstall use the Add/Remove Programs option in control panel, or the Uninstaller in the start menu.

Once the service portion of LanTool has been installed properly and started up, it will create a log file. View this to determine what's going on.

After installation, you can either use the GUI or command like tool 'remote.exe' to get going. More about that later.

Overview

The core of the program is the service, LanTool, which responds to commands sent to it via TCP/UDP over IP. To send a command, you can either use NetAdmin, the LanTool GUI, or remote.exe. This section discusses how to use LanTool via the command line.

You issue a command using the following format:

remote <IP address>[:<Port>] <Command> [<Param1>, <Param2>, ...]

If no port is specified, the default port (50000) is used.

For instance, to send a message to someone using the service running on port 12345 on localhost, type:

remote localhost:12345 msg Hello! This is a test!

Some of the commands available are listed below:

Control Commands

shutdown*: Shuts down the target computer
restart*: Shuts down and restarts the target computer
lock*: Locks the target computer
logoff*: Logs off the current user on the target computer
poweroff*: Powers the target computer down
wake <MAC Address> <IP>: Issues a wake on LAN command to the target. Wake on LAN must be enabled in the target computer's BIOS.

Messaging

msg <Message>: Sends a 'net send' style popup message to the target computer
imsg <Message>: Sends a baloon popup message to the system tray of the target computer (requires a user to be logged in)

Other Miscellaneous Commands

info: Request information from the target computer
pulse: Sends a pulse to the target computer
send <IP/Hostname> <filename>: Sends the specified file to the target computer's incoming directory

Commands listed above with an asterisk (*) can be disabled. See the Configuration section for more details.

Other commands may be available, and may be listed in the GUIs. When issuing commands via remote you should bear in mind that the command requires you to specify the target computer as the first parameter. This is independent of any parameters that LanTool requires.

Configuration

This has been something undocumented for so long and, for what it's worth, the configuration file may just be a stop-gap until a better way to store the settings is determined either via GUI configuration, stored in a binary file or, dare it be said, the registry! Ick!

One of the reasons this file has remained undocumented is, because although features may have been implemented, not all of them are completely ready! So be cautious!

Variable	Acceptable Values	Description
Debug	0 to 1000	Debug Level: 0 - Basic (Errors only) 1000 - Full
Heartbeat	ON or OFF	Pulse mode
HBInterval	1 to 2^32	Pulse frequency in seconds
HBIP	IP address or Hostname	Host or IP to send pulse to
NetworkKey	Any characters	Note that anything after the equal (=) sign will be considered to be part of the password, even comments!
TCPPort	1 to 65535	Port to use for packets the service sends over TCP (file sends)
UDPPort	1 to 65535	Port to use for service commands sent over UDP. This can be the same as the TCP port setting.
PacketSize	512 to undecided	Size of packets sent
ServerMode	ON or OFF	For now, both versions are merged, so use this to determine mode. Server mode does not respond to the potentially commands listed above with an asterisk.

Note that there must not be a space between the variable name, the equal sign (=) and the value. Any spaces will be deemed to be either part of the variable name or the value. So, for example, to set the TCP port to port 12345, you would use the following:

TCPPORT=12345

Any of the following variants would not be picked up by the service and should therefore not be used:

TCPPORT = 12345
TCPPORT =12345
TCPPORT= 12345

This will be addressed in a future version when more important fixes and features are completed.

Troubleshooting

Please note, this is a work in progress and it is likely things won't work as they are supposed to. At this point, miniumum error checking code is enabled.

If LanTool is installed correctly, it will create a log file in its installed directory. You can use this to work out what could possibly be going wrong. If the computer you're using LanTool on is 'behind' a Router or Firewall, you must ensure that the appropriate ports are forwarded as dictated by TCPPORT and UDPPORT for the target machine.

If you're still stuck, post your problem on the LanTool forums. We're always listening.

Acknowledgements

Found a bug? Got a suggestion?

It's highly likely that you'll find bugs or problems, and you might even think that something could be done better in a different way - that's the nature of beta software development. If you do have a suggestion, or find a bug and would like to submit a report then we'd love to hear from you.

When supplying bug reports, it's helpful to supply as much information as possible, such as:

Your hardware configuration, including memory available, and your processor type and speed.
Your software configuration, operating system, and any applications you're using that could be causing a conflict - specifically, if you're running a software firewall or any other programs which interact directly with your network.
What you were doing when the problem occurred.
Any error messages you received.
Steps to take to reproduce the problem.
The LanTool log file would also be helpful, but we understand that this may contain confidential or personal data, and realise that some people may not wish to supply this. It should be noted, however, that the sole interest of the log file is for fixing faults.

It would also be helpful, in the case of a crash, to get hold of the Windows crashdump files. This only applies to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 installations.

Once you have all this, head over to the LanTool forums and submit a bug report. We'll be happy to offer any assistance and a fix if possible.

Contact Us

Get in touch with us using any of the following methods:

Web:: http://www.n37dev.com
Forums:: http://www.n37dev.com/forum/
Email:: info@n37dev.com

We look forward to hearing from you, and hope you enjoy using LanTool.

LanTool Readme

Version 0.1.7.2650 Revision 2