Various Network Utilities

As a Network Admin you must find ways to automate certain tasks to help get your job done in a timely matter and to avoid the problem of inadverantly forgeting to do something something. To help me in my job, I created quite a few scripts to do this. This page contains some of these scripts.

Some may be wondering why I chose KiXtart to create these. To me, Kixtart seems to be like Python on Linux. It is very easy to pick it up, very easy to modify and you do not need to recompile if you edit it. Also, along with Kixforms, you can create very powerful scripts with minimal effort.

In the near future I am going to be focusing on creating apps using Mono on Linux (using C# among other languages), so I may re-create these scripts using Mono on Windows, but for now these should do a very nice job for you.

For these to work properly, You must:
• Be Logged in as a Domain Admin on a Domain or Active Directory type Network
• Disable the Firewall within XP and Vista
• Enable the Remote Registry Service within Vista
• Ensure that Vista's Network is set to a Private Network

These scripts allow you to remotely install Free Software applications across the network onto Microsoft Windows based workstations. These scripts will work for any Windows NT type workstation - Windows NT Workstation, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Professional and Windows Vista Business. These scripts are created for Networks utilizing Samba Servers but should also work when using NT4 Servers or Microsoft Active Directory Servers.

Features include: Point and Click installation to remote computers Show either all the Domain Computers or only the ones turned on Detects if App is currently running on remote computer and skips computer if it is Maintains list of computers on which installation has been completed Still needs work with: NT4 Workstations will not detect if app is running, causing errors if it is Sometimes a Workstation that is not on will still be in the "running computers" list If an error occurs, the timeout can sometimes be lengthy before moving on to the next computer The Script seems to "Not Respond" when running - in fact it is working fine

I have written Network Installation Utilites for the following apps:

Mozilla Firefox

OpenOffice.org

Various Open Source Software apps
             - including Audacity, Blender, Dia, Gimp, Inkscape, etc.

Cygwin Bash Shell

This application will allow you to either shutdown or restart computers on your network. This is a must have utility for every administrator! Download Executable here or here. Download Source here or here.

Reset application links

Windows sometimes re-adjusts links to point to the originating computer when you copy shortcuts from one computer to another. This script will reset all the links in the "All Users" local profile to point to the local computer. This is ran remotely on a list of workstation computers.

If users without domain admin priviledges get a username/password dialog box when trying to launch an application, run this script.