Remote execution on Windows

I've been trying to have a poor man's backup: from my scsi-tape-attached linux box, remote execute ntbackup on each of my windows boxes, then dump those backups to tape.

In the past, I've had separate scheduled tasks on each windows server; the problem is, there's not central error reporting mechanism; the idea of the new approach is to have all of the backup reporting (and exit statuses) in one cron log report.

I've been using winexe, which is pretty cool. It lets you run remote windows commands from Linux. It appears to be part of Samba4, although you don't need all of Samba4 to make it work.

...It hasn't worked properly.

This thread appears to say why:

'Any process you can access or create on a remote machine will not be able to "touch" any other machine in the network. Only an "interactive" session can do this by default.

'You would need to tell Active Directory to "Trust" the machine for "Delegation" to make this work. This is usually not a good idea as it can present a considerable security risk if not managed closely.'

If true, then that might have something to do with it.

...the selection lists, the backup scripts, and the backup targets are located on a linux samba server. Then again, it appears to be able to see and execute those files. Hmm... too tired, need to think about this more.