I want to start a program on a friend's machine from over the Internet.

Hey all, I pray that someone here can help. My friend is running a Counter-Strike server on his home machine. The problem is that sometimes the server (program) will crash. Currently he is also running VNC Server on the machine, which allows me to access his machine remotely. But if neither of us is around, it cannot be restarted. So, what I would like to do is create a way to start that program remotely, probably using a Web interface. I have a Web server elsewhere from which I can execute Perl scripts, CGI scripts, etc. My friend doesn't want to just give a bunch of people full access to his machine, so using VNC is no longer a possibility. Anyone know what I would need to do to get going on this? I am pretty resourceful, so general descriptions to point me in the right direction would get me moving along just fine. Moderator: If you think I would do better with this in the Programming and Scripting Forum, please feel free to move the thread. THANKS!!!!!!

You can write a script that can be accessed via browser.
Make sure the script requires a logon or even make it accessible only via a VPN tunnel.

This is more of a scripting question so I'm moving the thread to that forum.

Ok, thanks.. Now need some help with the type of script, etc.. Coders??

You could probably create a VB or VC object that you can call from an ASP. Assuming that the page is secure and that the worst this object can do is start that program then you shouldn't have any security problems.

ASP might be the easiest approach to this, and I know Cold Fusion would be extreemly easy as well. I'm pretty sure PHP can issue system commands as well - but I think that functionality might be a bit quirky in an NT environment. As far as Perl goes - I'm sure there's a way, but my lack of experience with Perl doesn't allow me to say that with 100% confidence.

Poke around on google and I'm sure you'll find out that you're not the first person in the world that's come across this problem. I'm guessing that there's a few scripts out there already.

Honestly, I don't know the first thing about ASP. But I do know some Visual Basic, so I'll start hunting around... Anyone who could point me directly to a decent tutorial, or has a different idea, please let me know!! THANKS GUYS!!

Check out serverdoc. You can run it on NT and it will check your server every 5 seconds, if it crashed it will restart it. You should read the NT note though before setting it up.

how about installing pcAnywhere? I think it'll be a lot easier than writing scripts etc.

Have him run an SSH server and just SSH into him. I do it on my friend's Linux box. I just connect to him and code on his box. You just need to create a user account with him.

I do something like you're taliking about with my Authorize.net processing script in PHP. It must issue a command to Curl.exe to actually send the transaction. The code is very simple:

<?php
exec("c:/somedir/prog.exe");
?>

I'm not sure if you meant you needed to restart the Counterstrike Server or the Webserver. If you need to restart the Counterstrike Server & you have a working webserver on that machine, the above script, or some variation, might just work for you.

I'm gonna go with Serverdoc.. It's even made for exactly what we want to use it for. Thanks a million for all the replies!!!