I have Windows XP running in virtual machines connected to my local network for testing purposes. The tests are done remotely. When finished, I want to shut them down remotely, from a Linux box.
ETA: Note that the Windows box runs XP Home, so there are no security / group policies.
For the Linux systems in the same setup, I do:
#> ssh root@linux-vm123 'shutdown -h now';
For the Windows systems, I should be able to do:
#> net rpc SHUTDOWN -I xx.xx.xx.xx -f -U user%pwd
But that gives me the following error:
Could not connect to server xx.xx.xx.xx
The username or password was not correct.
Connection failed: NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE
The user is an administrator and the account has a password set. Do I need to set up anything on the Windows system?
ETA: Is there a way I can test just the login, i. e. without sending a shutdown command that might need other privileges or settings?
Best Answer
Windows XP Home does not allow network logon other than via the Guest account. So you have to enable it first of all.
This gave me a new error telling me that the "logon type" wasn't permitted. Logon type was "code 3", which I found out to mean "network logon". Activating file sharing fixed this, but I have no idea why.
Of course, Guest is not allowed to shutdown the computer, so the account has to be added to the Administrators group (which is of course a massive violation of any security guidelines, but remember this is completely local, all under my desk and staying there) by issuing the following command in the shell:
And then, you'll find out that the RPC shutdown command seems to require the winreg named pipe on the target which seems to be provided by the Remote Registry service, which is not available in XP Home. So, for now, no remote shutdown for me.
It should be noted that XP Home just isn't meant to work in a managed, professional network, but I'm choosing the systems to test on for what I'm expecting on the target machines, not what I want to use. However, a note in the net/rpcclient manpages would have been very kind...