Goodbye GoToAssist: if...

[PatrickF]

IMHO with just a couple of changes SC could be a real replacement for tool such as GoToAssist.

Firstly, if when loaded into RAM SC would do a HTTP GET of a preconfigured URL, then it could load a dynamic list of help desk agents, from which the user can choose: or is choosen by the support person. (This is the beauty of the idea : everthing that SC displays could potentially be generated at load time.)

Secondly, a HTTP POST on connection with a selection of variables - such as local ip address, logged in user and domain, etc. (to insert support metrics into a database for example).

Thirdly a HTTP POST on completion, when SC terminates, can update the same database with similar data, thus providing an audit trail.

We could go one extra step and use a win32 call (ShellExecute) to load another URL sent by the server on close - thus advising the user of... well, this too could be defined by the help desk person: Next steps. Suggested sites. Best Buys?

(I am being deliberately vague here only to provoke thought)

Being a delphi programmer I dont know how much size this would add to the completed code - but I doubt that it would be much given that it is simply a matter of sending and receiving some strings over port 80 (which also could be customised in the config file).

How about it?

[Guest]

Yes! These would be great additions. These could be options that you could selectively use or not.

[davechivers]

The biggest drawback with the SC design is that it still gets blocked by proxied connections. I have clients behind corporate firewalls that proxy all traffic - which is not a problem for systems that use HTTP or SSL for communication (e.g. GoToAssist).
The UltraVNC project has most of the technology to compete with (and surpass) GoToAssist, but the technology doesn't quite fit together yet. The server can allow an HTTP connection to it, but it can't initiate an HTTP session to a viewer. The Repeater can listen for WinVNC servers on port 443, but the Repeater is not an SSL server itself. SC is a huge step towards this goal, but it only uses the VNC protocol and is thus rejected by the average corporate proxy server.
The MSRC4 DSM Plugin is excellent, but the DSM framework cannot use SSL, as Sean says in his overview,

...UltraVNC does not have a method for dynamically creating keys, and the DSM architecture was built in such a way that it is not possible for the plugin's to dynamically negotiate the keys.

I'm posting this in the hope that somebody will point out that I've missed something, and proxied connections aren't really a problem.
David (a bigtime UltraVNC advocate despite the tone of this post).

[RobH]

I agree, this would make Ultra tops in it's field!!
Proxies are a road block but still love this software!!

[PatrickF]

Dave...
I think you misunderstood me. MAybe. It doesnt need to get through proxied connections.

The HTTP transactions I was talking about were not between the viewer and the server: rather, SC would be talking to a publicly reachable Web server - such as the one that it was downloaded from.

This mutually reachable server could provide the content that SC displays on startup, and be the place that the SC client logs data to.

So as help desk engineers become available a file on this web server is updated with their names and host details which is then in turn retrieved by the SC client at load. (rather than this list being statically compiled into the program.

Of course there is another way to do this is multiple SC clients each coded with a single help desk engineers host info. The file that is updated on the web server would simple hyperlink to these different files for download. But then I think the ability to log back to the web server connection info, client and server IP etc is lost.

or?

patrick

[Rudi De Vos]

Can be done and would not hard to implement.

By adding some pre-connector app. Some extra exe you can put in your sfx without the need to modify the SC application.

*app:
+read connect.txt (with your website location and file names)
+connect to your site and trigger a cgi script that send back
helpdesk.txt
+ connect to your site and trigger a cgi script that send back
encryption key (security ?)
+ copy the files in the tempdir
+ start the normal SC version and wait until it is end.
+ connect to your site to tell job is done (If we include the customer name in the connect.txt we even can log the used time)

other options can be
+reconnect: the app keep restarting SC after a break
+autostart: the app wait until cgi answer a specified command
after this command, SC is started.

To make something like this, i need help from a cgi programmer.
Some portable (perl or wathever) script need to be made.

1) user/passwd creation
2) upload helpdesk.txt/ encryption key to user depended directory
3) logging for time use
....

The upload part should be able from a modified viewer.

If i start working on something like this, i also want to offer
some https(upload) http(download) web service. So it can also be used by people who don't have a website that can run own cgi scripts.

So first we need a cgi developper....

Rudi

Http tunneling !!!
Don't think that will be simple. As soon as you want to connect from everywhere you need to use a special server
as bridge between server/viewer. High traffic and fast server.
The SC need to connect to the server who act as repeater and
webserver for the java viewer.

[Frommy]

I just finished writing something like this and have it working. I don't know a thing about cgi so I tried it a different way. I created a new sc.exe archive that includes the wget program. When you run sc, it tells wget to go to any webpage you'd like and it stores the results in helpdesk.txt. I work with a lot of active server pages so I wrote a quick page that generates the default helpdesk.txt but adds in 3 connections with some dynamic data(time, ip address, and a random integer). The entire helpdesk file can be dynamic this way, not just the connections. The file size for the whole application is obviously a little bit larger, but it's just a tad under 700K which isn't bad at all. The way this is written can also do the reconnects and send info when the user logs off to keep time logs. This is what it looks like when I open the custom sc.exe puliing the data off my server in the office :[br][br][br][br]Let me know if you have any questions.

Matt

[Frommy]

I just finished another part of what I was working on. Since the helpdesk is generated by the server, I wrote scripts that let the server maintain a database that the SC should use to connect to a repeater. This database can see if a SC is connected, the ip address, and basically any other info you want in there. The SC connects with this ID and will automatically reconnects if something happens. So now I can load a webpage and see what SC's are connected to my repeater, what ip addresses they're at, etc...

[Oliver]

A friend of mine wrote something similar a while ago. He also used (I think) UVNC as his template. I've only seen the binary, though (he just send me something like SC).
This one worked through the FW by just using a proxy.

BTW: If you really urgently need to use this method, I'd advise you to combine either UVNC and SSH (Tunneling) or UVNC and Zeebeedee (Tunneling also). On slow connection the SSH encryption will be additional valuable bandwidth, though.
However, to forward local ports you will perhaps need admin privs anyway

However, I found RDP to run much smoother than UVNC via my 56k modem through an SSH tunnel.

[Rudi De Vos]

The preconnector i'm working on will include ssh. This seems
needed to fool https and sock4/5 proxy's to allow data to pass.

Multiple proxy's do some kind of content check before you are allowed to pass.

[RobH]

This would be great!

Can be done and would not hard to implement.

By adding some pre-connector app. Some extra exe you can put in your sfx without the need to modify the SC application.

*app:
+read connect.txt (with your website location and file names)
+connect to your site and trigger a cgi script that send back
helpdesk.txt
+ connect to your site and trigger a cgi script that send back
encryption key (security ?)
+ copy the files in the tempdir
+ start the normal SC version and wait until it is end.
+ connect to your site to tell job is done (If we include the customer name in the connect.txt we even can log the used time)

other options can be
+reconnect: the app keep restarting SC after a break
+autostart: the app wait until cgi answer a specified command
after this command, SC is started.

To make something like this, i need help from a cgi programmer.
Some portable (perl or wathever) script need to be made.

1) user/passwd creation
2) upload helpdesk.txt/ encryption key to user depended directory
3) logging for time use
....

The upload part should be able from a modified viewer.

If i start working on something like this, i also want to offer
some https(upload) http(download) web service. So it can also be used by people who don't have a website that can run own cgi scripts.

So first we need a cgi developper....

Rudi

Http tunneling !!!
Don't think that will be simple. As soon as you want to connect from everywhere you need to use a special server
as bridge between server/viewer. High traffic and fast server.
The SC need to connect to the server who act as repeater and
webserver for the java viewer.

[rmoller]

Now HTTP-tunneling is technically rather easy.

There is a free SSH/SSHD-like pair of utilities at

http://www.htthost.com

called httport/htthost - I have tried them, rather easy.

But httport has to be configured with the client's http proxy address also;
it would be nice to have configured automatically from registry, though.

[PatrickF]

Rudi,

A pre/post connector app would work too, though I was thinking that SC must have some variables that would be helpful to log, plus I would have thought that adding an extra executable would add a lot more size to the whole package? However...

I can help with CGI, but unfortunately all my CGI stuff is based on CGIExpert which is not open source. I could knock up a win32 CGI executable that would echo whatever parameters are sent to it on a resulting html page. This would be helpful at least for debugging.

My original thinking was that helpdesk.txt was set so it could EITHER get the support information from itself or a file on a webserver. So for people without access to their own webserver they can create the SC as they do now.

Personally I think that the encryption key stuff is not that necessary, (mainly because all of our support happens over VPN anyway) but the ability to log the start time, end time, ipaddress, hostname and other details of the support session would be very handy.

patrick

[quote="Rudi De Vos"]Can be done and would not hard to implement.

By adding some pre-connector app. Some extra exe you can put in your sfx without the need to modify the SC application.

*app:
+read connect.txt (with your website location and file names)
+connect to your site and trigger a cgi script that send back
helpdesk.txt
+ connect to your site and trigger a cgi script that send back
encryption key (security ?)
+ copy the files in the tempdir
+ start the normal SC version and wait until it is end.
+ connect to your site to tell job is done (If we include the customer name in the connect.txt we even can log the used time)

other options can be
+reconnect: the app keep restarting SC after a break
+autostart: the app wait until cgi answer a specified command
after this command, SC is started.

To make something like this, i need help from a cgi programmer.
Some portable (perl or wathever) script need to be made.

1) user/passwd creation
2) upload helpdesk.txt/ encryption key to user depended directory
3) logging for time use
....

The upload part should be able from a modified viewer.

If i start working on something like this, i also want to offer
some https(upload) http(download) web service. So it can also be used by people who don't have a website that can run own cgi scripts.

So first we need a cgi developper....

Rudi

[quote]

[redge]

PatrickF

FlatFeet answer to your need ?
[topic=2790][/topic]

[PatrickF]

PatrickF

FlatFeet answer to your need ?
[topic=2790][/topic]

Sorry have been out of touch for a while - looks good, testing tonight.

patrickf

[Terry]

In the meantime, I'll keep using logmein (it's free anyway).

[hm2k]

I know this is quite an old thread, but has any progress been made with this?

Thanks.