Summary
Do you need to remotely manage NT boxes from your Linux workstation? From native commands to Unix ports and from shells to daemons, you may be surprised how many Linux-like options you really have on NT. Gerald Carter stocks his command-line NT administration toolkit with free and commercial utilities in this month's There and Back Again. (3,400 words)

Suddenly another voice spoke, low and melodious, its sound an enchantment. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard; and if they did, they wondered, for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves.

--Description of the voice of Saruman in JRR Tolkien's The Two Towers

ne of the major complaints launched against Windows NT from an administrative viewpoint is that it has very weak command-line capabilities. When compared to Linux, this may be true. But Windows NT isn't as crippled as some people claim. Now, I'm not saying the Windows NT command interpreter cmd.exe competes with bash on any level. But there are some functional command-line tools available for Microsoft's premier operating system. Not many of them actually come from Redmond, though...

But that isn't important. By and large, what any administrator wants most are scripts and other features to automate his or her work. Since this is such a noble goal, there are actually many ways you can perform common tasks using console applications. With experience, you can wean yourself from the NT GUI and eventually get to the point where you will prefer using cmd.exe to Windows Explorer.

Native command-line tools
First let's look at some of the tools with command-line capabilities that ship as part of the basic operating system. Rather than try to write a command reference section, what I've done is list some Windows NT commands and their functional equivalents under Linux. The functionality may not be an exact match -- for example, the Linux mount command and the NT net use command. However, the match will be close enough to illustrate the general idea.

Table 1: Linux commands and their Windows NT equivalents
Description	Linux command	Windows NT equivalent
Mount a remote filesystem	mount -t nfs bilbo:/export/home /home	net use h: \\bilbo\users
List user accounts on the local machine	cat /etc/passwd	net users
List user accounts in the network database	ypcat passwd.byname	net users /domain
List groups on the local machine	cat /etc/group	net localgroup
List groups in the network database	ypcat group.byname	net group
Create an exported share	vi /etc/exports killall rpc.mountd /usr/sbin/rpc.mountd	net share newshare=c:\export
Stop/start a service or daemon	Use the appropriate SystemV init script. For example, /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S30nfs {start|stop}	net [stop|start] Server
Gather statistics on shared file service	netstat or rpcinfo	net statistics Server
Synchronize with a remote time server	use the xntp protocol	net time \\bilbo /set /yes
Schedule a job to execute at a some time in the future	crontab -e (or use the at command)	at 10:00pm cmd.exe
Change permissions on a file	chmod 700 testfile # sets access perms chown jerry testfile # set ownership chgrp users testfile # set group ownership	cacls testfile /p jerry:c
Check the integrity of a filesystem	fsck /usr	chkdsk c:
Compare the contents of two files	diff file1 file2	fc file1 file2
Edit a text file	vi file1.txt	edit file1.txt

While Table 1 isn't a complete list of all possible things that can be done from the command line with a vanilla NT installation, it does give us a place to start. In addition, Windows NT provides its own versions of:

• ping

• traceroute (called tracert.exe under NT)

• ftp

• netstat

• route

• arp
• rsh, rcp, and rexec

One final command that I tend to use a lot under Windows NT is the ipconfig.exe command. This tool allows you to manually release and renew IP address and related information via DHCP. If you assign static IP settings, you can still use ipconfig.exe to view the assigned information without launching the network control panel GUI. It does not however, allow for the setting of static IP address information.

Next page >
Page 1 Command-line NT: It does exist!
Page 2 Ports of Unix tools
Page 3 Windows NT Resource Kit
Page 4 Administering remote Windows NT clients from the command line

Printer-friendly version Select this link to find a printer-friendly version of this story. Mail this story to a friend Select this link to mail this story's URL to a friend.

Resources Virtually UN*X! http://www.itribe.net/virtunix/ The GNU-WIN32 Project Page http://www.cygnus.com/misc/gnu-win32/ Gnat & GDB download sit ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/languages/ada/compiler/gnat/distrib/winnt/ Perl5 for Win32 http://www.ActiveState.com/ Tcl/Tk http://www.scriptics.com/ New Technology Shell (NTsh) http://ntsh.home.pages.de/ Source to New Technology Shell http://wwwcip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/user/mnwaitz/zips/ntsh-src.zip Servers rshd server for Windows NT: Silviu Marghescu's home page http://home.us.net/~silviu/ ND Telnet server http://hem.passagen.se/deschatr/ndtelnet.htm Books The Two Towers,JRR Tolkien (Ballantine Books, reissue edition, 1986) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345339711/o/qid=926551331/sr=2-1/002-1698047-0809656 Windows NT 4.0 Server Resource Kit (Microsoft Press, 1996) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1572313447/qid=923964099/sr=1-1/002-3987177-9416433

Copyright © 1998-2003 LinuxWorld.com, an IDG Communications company.