> From: william.wells [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>
> After-hours access via an ISP is one example.
>
> I've had various cases where I could telnet to our company remotely
> (colleges, friends, training companies, other countries, ...)
> but any GUI
> interface wasn't going to happen. In many cases, neither was
> dial-up since
> many places don't have dial-out modems. I find that its
> easier to get to the
> Internet while traveling to non-homes than to get to a modem.
>
> I can administer our UNIX systems, but not NT (and not an
> increasing number
> of other items). Telnet is still the lowest common
> denominator so is the
> most certain to be available wherever you are (worldwide).
> Especially when
> X-Windows, HTTP, PCanywhere,... aren't generally supported
> when coming into
> a company from the Internet. We don't support them.
Telnet generally isn't the best solution (password sniffing and other
mischief) - why not use a VPN connection? Then all your tools work just
fine.
> GUIs are nice but rotten for remote administration unless you
> tote along
> your own environment which I don't find desirable, especially
> when you don't
> anticipate getting called.
I've never had a problem.
> (GUIs are also rotten for automating maintenance functions
> since you can't
> automated clicking a button unless you get another tool. Each
> tool increases
> the complexity of the support/automation environment which leads to
> additional failures, more tools, and so forth. For example,
> how easy would
> it be to automate an incremental backup of an NT server and
> then check the
> list of files backed up for a specific files and, if they are
> not there,
> send a mail message and trigger an SNMP trap?)
This is very easy, depending on what you use to backup the machine.
Assuming NTBackup as an AT job, just run a command script that includes
NTBackup (with the appropriate switches), shell a quick perl script to parse
the log and pop off a mail, or SNMP trap, if it failed. I don't see your
problem.
Just because the GUI exists doesn't mean you can't achieve the same from a
script. Coming from a Unix background you really should have thought of
this!
John Wiltshire
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