How to connect to a remote Windows machine to execute commands using python?

Question

I am new to Python and I am trying to make a script that connects to a remote windows machine and execute commands there and test ports connectivity.

Here is the code that I am writing but it is not working. Basically, I want to and it returns with the local machine data, not the remote one.

import wmi
import os
import subprocess
import re
import socket, sys

def main():

     host="remotemachine"
     username="adminaam"
     password="passpass!"
     server =connects(host, username, password)
     s = socket.socket()
     s.settimeout(5)
     print server.run_remote('hostname')

class connects:

    def __init__(self, host, username, password, s = socket.socket()):
        self.host=host
        self.username=username
        self.password=password
        self.s=s

        try:
            self.connection= wmi.WMI(self.host, user=self.username, password=self.password)
            self.s.connect(('10.10.10.3', 25))
            print "Connection established"
        except:
            print "Could not connect to machine"


   def run_remote(self, cmd, async=False, minimized=True):
       call=subprocess.check_output(cmd, shell=True,stderr=subprocess.STDOUT )
       print call

main() 

Solution 1

You can connect one computer to another computer in a network by using these two methods:

• Use WMI library.
• Netuse method.

---

WMI

Here is the example to connect using wmi module:

ip = '192.168.1.13'
username = 'username'
password = 'password'
from socket import *
try:
    print("Establishing connection to %s" %ip)
    connection = wmi.WMI(ip, user=username, password=password)
    print("Connection established")
except wmi.x_wmi:
    print("Your Username and Password of "+getfqdn(ip)+" are wrong.")

---

netuse

The second method is to use netuse module.

By Netuse, you can connect to remote computer. And you can access all data of the remote computer. It is possible in the following two ways:

1. Connect by virtual connection.

   import win32api
   import win32net
   ip = '192.168.1.18'
   username = 'ram'
   password = 'ram@123'
   
   use_dict={}
   use_dict['remote']=unicode('\\\\192.168.1.18\C$')
   use_dict['password']=unicode(password)
   use_dict['username']=unicode(username)
   win32net.NetUseAdd(None, 2, use_dict)
   

   To disconnect:

   import win32api
   import win32net
   win32net.NetUseDel('\\\\192.168.1.18',username,win32net.USE_FORCE)
   

2. Mount remote computer drive in local system.

   import win32api
   import win32net
   import win32netcon,win32wnet
   
   username='user'
   password='psw'
   
   try:
       win32wnet.WNetAddConnection2(win32netcon.RESOURCETYPE_DISK, 'Z:','\\\\192.168.1.18\\D$', None, username, password, 0)
       print('connection established successfully')
   except:
       print('connection not established')
   

   To unmount remote computer drive in local system:

   import win32api
   import win32net
   import win32netcon,win32wnet
   
   win32wnet.WNetCancelConnection2('\\\\192.168.1.4\\D$',1,1)
   

Before using netuse you should have pywin32 install in your system with python also.

---

Source: Connect remote system.

Solution 2

You can use pywinrm library instead which is cross-platform compatible.

Here is a simple code example:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import winrm

# Create winrm connection.
sess = winrm.Session('https://10.0.0.1', auth=('username', 'password'), transport='kerberos')
result = sess.run_cmd('ipconfig', ['/all'])

Install library via: pip install pywinrm requests_kerberos.

---

Here is another example from this page to run Powershell script on a remote host:

import winrm

ps_script = """$strComputer = $Host
Clear
$RAM = WmiObject Win32_ComputerSystem
$MB = 1048576

"Installed Memory: " + [int]($RAM.TotalPhysicalMemory /$MB) + " MB" """

s = winrm.Session('windows-host.example.com', auth=('john.smith', 'secret'))
r = s.run_ps(ps_script)
>>> r.status_code
0
>>> r.std_out
Installed Memory: 3840 MB

>>> r.std_err

Solution 3

Maybe you can use SSH to connect to a remote server.

Install freeSSHd on your windows server.

SSH Client connection Code:

import paramiko

hostname = "your-hostname"
username = "your-username"
password = "your-password"
cmd = 'your-command'

try:
    ssh = paramiko.SSHClient()
    ssh.set_missing_host_key_policy(paramiko.AutoAddPolicy())
    ssh.connect(hostname,username=username,password=password)
    print("Connected to %s" % hostname)
except paramiko.AuthenticationException:
    print("Failed to connect to %s due to wrong username/password" %hostname)
    exit(1)
except Exception as e:
    print(e.message)    
    exit(2)

Execution Command and get feedback:

try:
    stdin, stdout, stderr = ssh.exec_command(cmd)
except Exception as e:
    print(e.message)

err = ''.join(stderr.readlines())
out = ''.join(stdout.readlines())
final_output = str(out)+str(err)
print(final_output)

Solution 4

For connection

c=wmi.WMI('machine name',user='username',password='password')

#this connects to remote system. c is wmi object

for commands

process_id, return_value = c.Win32_Process.Create(CommandLine="cmd.exe /c  <your command>")

#this will execute commands

Solution 5

I have personally found pywinrm library to be very effective. However, it does require some commands to be run on the machine and some other setup before it will work.

View more solutions

Comments

[zewOlF]

any sugestions Guys.. ? ? please help

[MathKid]

It is important to prefix the domain in front of the username. For example username = r"EUR\adminaam"

[zewOlF]

Thank you Kobi for replying me, but this is gonna be so hard to go to every client and run a script there.... what i am trying to do is accessing multiple machines from 1 machine and execute commands there

[Rjain]

Can u suggest some package that can be used for cross platform remote login

[Michael Biniashvili]

wow, very cool, work very good, can be install using pip [#]pip install wmi

[alpha_989]

What is the relative advantages and disadvantages of WMI over Netuse and vice versa?

[Rohit]

This solution helped me a big time. From windows machine I was trying to run a shell script on a remote machine which eventually has python script path to run. If I need to run multiple commands then can I repeat the execution command box ? Please suggest.

[Beatrice Lin]

When you run exec_command multiple times, each command is executed in its own "shell". So the previous commands have no effect on an environment of the following commands.

[Beatrice Lin]

If you need the previous commands to affect the following commands, just use an appropriate syntax of your server shell. Most *nix shells use a semicolon or an double-ampersand (with different semantics) to specify a list of commands. In your case, the ampersand is more appropriate, as it executes following commands, only if previous commands succeed: like this: stdin,stdout,stderr=ssh.exec_command("ORACLE_SID=PROD && cd /01/application/dataload && pwd")

[Rusty Weber]

Funny you should ask. I'm personally working on open sourcing a library for just exactly that.

[Adnan Sheikh]

I was trying this and I am facing an issue when I run a command like 'ipconfig'. It says "HTTPSConnectionPool(host='192.168.1.13', port=5986): Max retries exceeded with url: /wsman (Caused by ConnectTimeoutError(<requests.packages.urllib3.connection.Ve‌​rifiedHTTPSConnectio‌​n object at 0x7fcb12024a90>, 'Connection to 192.168.1.13 timed out. (connect timeout=30)'))""