Morning Glory Technologies

Remote Batch Copy 7.7.0 (23-Feb-2007)

Theory of Operation

Remote Batch Copy uses four main mechanisms to interact with the SMB network:

o Remote WMI queries: Remote Batch Copy exercises the Windows Management Interface (WMI) service to get network information regarding remote nodes. On some Windows environments this service is included automatically others must start it manually.

o DOS Shell commands: Shell scripts are created dynamically to generate a list of Domain/Node hierarchies, ping remote nodes, and to get other information regarding the local node. This permits Remote BatchCopy to build scripts that can query remote nodes that cannot run the Window Management Interface (WMI) service such as SMB aware unix servers. The shell scripts pipe their output to text files on the local root folder. The last message written by a dynamic shell script is an END OF PROCESSING token. Remote Batch Copy monitors these text files for the appearance of this token with a timeout (currently 32 seconds) and then parses the text file to get the needed output. This allows asynchronous DOS shell scripts to inform Remote Batch Copy when they have completed.

o Windows SMB \\host\C$notation: Remote Batch Copy prefixes destination names and folders to source file names.  It specifies the Windows Admin Share (C$) on the remote node for the root drive to use. The resulting SMB syntax is used to copy source files using LOCAL file system objects after first contacting the remote node using the credentials of the user that started Remote Batch Copy. If the remote node does not recognize the Remote Batch Copy user, Remote Batch Copy will prompt to supply a username and password to send to the remote node.

o mpr.dll / advapi32.dll function calls: Remote Batch Copy calls functions in these libraries to ascertain permissions on the remote node and to conduct network logins for unconnected nodes.

Known Problems and Workarounds:

There are by now, several thousand downloads of Remote Batch Copy from Morning Glory Technologies. Who knows how many from other sources? Remote Batch Copy has proven to be a useful and reliable tool for Windows Administrators since it's initial release in 2001.  I`ve tested the install script and Remote Batch Copy functionality in the following Operating Environments:

Operating Environment	Read/Write File system	Issue ICMP pings	Monitor remote files	Issue WMI queries	Remote Management Sessions
Windows XP Pro	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Windows XP Home	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Windows 2003 Advanced Server	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Windows 2000 Pro	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Samba <= 3.00143	YES	YES	YES	NO	NO

o Remote Batch Copy writes to folders it creates under the Admin Share (C$) on the remote node. On XP Home machines, this share is not created automatically and must be manually configured to persist past reboots.

o Issuing WMI (Windows Management Interface) queries to remote nodes without sufficient privileges causes the query to return immediately without any data.  Remote Batch Copy detects remote Security Descriptors and offers to add those missing on the remote node by invoking the Network Login Dialog against the remote node.  This allows batch copies to proceed on nodes where Remote Batch Copy is running without a remote Security Descriptor (a Windows account on the destination machine), but this impersonation is not used for WMI queries. Much is avoided with DOMAIN Administrator privileges.

o SMB aware nodes such as a UNIX server running SAMBA, must have a share name called C$defined before Remote Batch Copy could be used to send files to it.

Find any new ones?

jeffreymartinj@yahoo.com

V7.4.5 (23-Jan-2007)	Show Copy Paths Clipboard.
	Fixed Configuration File Save/Gets.
	Fixed Aborts during Selected Node queries.
	Fixed range selections in the Available Nodes tree view.

V7.0.2 (15-Jan-2007)	Substitute Sources List with Copy Paths.
	No more Save Source Folders option. What you see in the Copy Paths is what will be copied where when the Start Copy button is pressed.
	Save Configuration Files using XML tags to save Copy Paths hierarchies and run time options. The old Configuration File format will no longer be supported after this release.

V4.2.5 (05-May-2006)	Use advapi32.dll(LookupAccountName) to validate Remote Batch Copy's Security Descriptor (SID) on the remote node.
	Use mpr.dll(WNetAddConnection3) to connect to those remote nodes without a valid Remote Batch Copy Security Descriptor (SID).  Let WNetAddConnection3 decide if default credentials are sufficient for the remote node or if it should prompt Remote Batch Copy for the username/password to use.
	I don't know if all this works on WIN95, ME, WIN98 yet (I don't want to install those anywhere to test it).  The docs seem to suggest it should but the docs on Windows security issues are endless.  Let me know if 4.2.0 doesn't work on your WIN98/ME machine (it should).
	Remote Batch Copy and Log Dispatcher now cooperate better.
	It's OK now if you want to edit the Remote Batch Copy configuration files by hand but only if this is first proceeded by a backup of the configuration file.  The configuration subsections` order shown in the file must not be disturbed or Remote Batch Copy could become confused while parsing it. The configuration file is best edited by Remote Batch Copy.
	If the first line read in a Remote Batch Copy configuration file doesn't = # --- REMOTE BATCH COPY CONFIGURATION FILE --- Remote Batch Copy says the configuration file is invalid. (If there are enough manual Remote Batch Copy configuration file editors out there, I'll turn the configuration into an XML schema and allow Remote Batch Copy to be configured remotely.  It will be more code tho and Remote Batch Copy is supposed to be minimal.)