Remote-managing Windows XP

Background: we're currently running the UW IMAPD using generic Berkeley mbox-style files. This means that it's not safe to use more than one IMAP client concurrently.

Guess what? I left my laptop at home, and it's logged in and grabbing my e-mail every five minutes. If I kill the imapd process on the local server, then my laptop is helpful enough to notice that the server died and reconnect, restarting things.

I want a way to reach out, from work to home, and slap down my laptop. Further complicating things is a Linksys firewall/NAT box. I can normally get through it to log into my PowerMac at home via ssh, but that doesn't seem to be working right now, either. (Giving me "no route to host", with a traceroute getting close, but it's not clear whether the problem is my router or whether it's upstream from that.)

So....

Assuming I could connect to the PowerMac, I'd be on the same LAN as the offending laptop and the router. At that point, I could either try to remote administrate the router, maybe using that to cut off the laptop, or maybe I could try to connect to the laptop itself. It's not currently running sshd, but maybe there's some Windows thing that can be done?

Thoughts? I imagine I'm screwed for today, but what's the "right" answer to solving this problem in the future?

XP does have a Telnet server that can be enabled via the Services admin panal. Though I don't know if it will be of any use, as it may not have the needed commands to stop processes.

Background: we're currently running the UW IMAPD using generic Berkeley mbox-style files. This means that it's not safe to use more than one IMAP client concurrently.

Unless it's been configured strangely, surely UW imapd uses lock files and throws off later clients if an earlier one is still connected?

Peter

You can get Windows XP remote desktop to run over an ssh tunnel. Of course, to do this, you'll need to get ssh working.

You can get a remote desktop client for most versions of Windows -- it's available as a separate install on the XP CD. I think you can grab it from microsoft.com/downloads as well.

As for the port numbers, I don't recall. Try a google?

I often have two IMAP clients connected to one account on a server running UW-IMAP. Never had a problem.

Never had a problem.

Even when both are trying to do mail refiling, spam classification, and all that other good stuff?

In past experience, it doesn't like that, depending on the actual format of the mailstore. Berkeley mbox is one that didn't like being accessed twice at the same time.

what's the "right" answer to solving this problem in the future?

Run Cyrus IMAPd.

So I've experimentally started my IMAP client at work after explicitly killing the home IMAP client. What seemed to be happening is that there are two IMAP processes running on the server. One's PID is staying constant and the other is killing itself and restarting.

I tried sending myself e-mail to see what would happen next. The mail simply disappeared. It's not in /var/mail, nor is it in my personal mbox. It's just gone. Also, both of the old imapd processes died, and there's a new one running (connected to the work machine).

At this point, I'm just going to disconnect everything and scan my personal mbox file by hand for the day. Yuck.

Run Cyrus IMAPd

I'll second that. What's really nice about Cyrus IMAPd is that
you don't need to create unix user accounts for your users,
instead have all authentication done by a windows PDC/BDC.
And it's a much better performer than UW IMAP too.

Pim

I want a way to reach out, from work to home, and slap down my laptop.

This is trivially easy. Borrow a coworker's cell phone and call 911. Tell them that you have suffered a home invasion and that you have locked yourself in the attic. Try to be appropriately anxious as you give them the address. They will usually cut the power before the SWAT team goes in so, assuming your local PD is not big on prolonged negotation and your computer needs a password to sign back on to e-mail, you should be all set.

Dang, I forgot. A laptop. What's your battery life like?

Dang, I forgot. A laptop. What's your battery life like?

About two hours, although if the A/C gets cut with the power, that could have a negative impact on the cat -- this is Houston in the summer. (And, I wouldn't want to be responsible for the SWAT officers taken out by our angry kitty.)

Now, I suppose I could call Southwestern Bell and ask them to "test" my DSL line for problems. The last time they did that, their probing took out my DSL router entirely, requiring a power cycle to resurrect it. Hmm...

At some point in this thread i am sure we will discover that he lives only five minutes from his work

It seems like you can admin the local box, so can you add your laptop's ip to the hosts.deny or whatever the proper file is?

Matthew

It seems like you can admin the local box, so can you add your laptop's ip to the hosts.deny or whatever the proper file is?

The Mac and the PC laptop are peers behind the Linksys NAT/firewall box. However, if I could get through to the Mac (which is not working for apparently unrelated reasons), then I could use the Web interface to he Linksys and probably do something to boot the laptop off the Internet.

I'm curious if anybody's tried installing the cygwin sshd on a WinXP box and whether shell commands are enough to kill processes or not. Running my cygwin shell locally and typing 'ps aux', all I see are bash and ps running.

Can't you just tell the local imap server to ignore the laptop? You already tried killing imapd, so you must have some acess to it...

Failing that, how about changing your password and turning off the imap server again so your laptop has to relogin? (I don't have the slightest clue what authentication imap uses, however, so perhaps that's compleetly off base)

Matthew

I don't have root on the imap server, so I can't just go telling it to ignore the laptop, although changing my password is an interesting thought. If it weren't already the end of the day, that would be my likely approach to solving the problem.

You can get Windows XP remote desktop to run over an ssh tunnel. Of course, to do this, you'll need to get ssh working.

SSH for Windows can be found here.

As for the port numbers, I don't recall. Try a google?

3389

One problem with using ssh to tunnel remote desktop -- it won't allow you to connect to the same machine on which the client is running. This means that you need another box to act as the client end of the ssh tunnel.