remote desktop COM object

odsska

Hey all. I am trying to create a link on a webpage that opens remote desktop (mstsc.exe) and passes it the hostname to connect with.

It appears I need to do this as a COM object in php, which I have set up as the following:

<?php
$hostname = trim($_GET["hostname"]);
$path = "mstsc.exe /v ".$hostname;
$shell= new COM('WScript.Shell');
$shell->Run($path);

?>

This appears to be very simple, but it does not function correctly. When I run the webpage from the machine that the webserver is on, it works like a charm. However, when I try to run it from any other computer I get an error.

Note this error is identified by the windows error sound on my machine, it is like it is trying to run mstsc on the server rather than locally.

At first I tried to specify the ip address in the COM constructor (using the ip of the machine viewing the webpage) but that didnt help the situation. Then, I tried looking at the security on mstsc.exe and it is set to allow the IIS USER account to read/write. I checked around in my IIS config and it doesnt appear to have anything else to set.

Any ideas??? I have been stumped for 2 days so far on this and cannot find any information online that helps.

Thanks!

AstroTeg

What you're finding is the correct behaviour. You're PHP code is running mstsc.exe on your web server. It will be borderline impossible for it to run locallyl on the client's computer (not counting IE security issues). PHP runs strictly on the web server. It can make requests out to other computers, but they're not going to execute code unless they're authenticated on the same network and the user account has permissions (and even then, I think you have to use a different command to have it execute on the other machine).

For something like this, you'd have to use ActiveX and have the client be running IE on the PC. Or if you're really smooth, you try to take advantage of one of IE's many security holes... But that's probably a topic for another forum.

odsska

Originally posted by AstroTeg
What you're finding is the correct behaviour. You're PHP code is running mstsc.exe on your web server. It will be borderline impossible for it to run locallyl on the client's computer (not counting IE security issues). PHP runs strictly on the web server. It can make requests out to other computers, but they're not going to execute code unless they're authenticated on the same network and the user account has permissions (and even then, I think you have to use a different command to have it execute on the other machine).

For something like this, you'd have to use ActiveX and have the client be running IE on the PC. Or if you're really smooth, you try to take advantage of one of IE's many security holes... But that's probably a topic for another forum.

Thanks for the reply... that makes sense. Considering this is on a coporate intranet, they are all on the same domain. Do you think that would help?

I looked into the PHP docs and it looks like COM objects can be passed a username / password. If I can do it that way it should work right? (I should be able to pass domain credentials through PHP to the COM object) of course I am a little new to this type of functionality so I could be wrong. I guess technically if the app was launched on the webserver its only 4 of us that would need it, so it shouldnt take up very many resources.

All 4 people that need this are in the domain as admins on the machines (including the webserver), so to me it seems like a matter of configuring the COM object to use those permissions

All of our machines use IE on a PC so ActiveX is an option, the thing is I have no idea where to start. If this would be easier through ActiveX, I'll do it that way. If at all possible someone could give me a starting point it would be much appreciated.