UAC Server 2008 Scripting issues

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(imported topic written by lpenhallow91)

Hi everyone - hopefully this is something that I am just overlooking…

I need to drop an exe file into the system32 called uptime (it does exactly that - just like on *nix) on all the Windows servers that we have. Most of of these servers are 2008 with UAC enabled, and it needs to stay enabled.

I modified the ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin registry key on one server to test with to see if I could write there with my elevated account and still no joy…

It works fine when going any place where UAC is not in the way. Is there any way to script around this?

What I have done so far is roll up the .exe with RunAsCurrentUser in a folder - to look like this:

download http://lxbigfix.bats.com:52311/Uploads/be7f90aa459961a3da3d1ab1b2a594d884737417/Uptime.tmp

continue if {(size of it = 169055 AND sha1 of it = “be7f90aa459961a3da3d1ab1b2a594d884737417”) of file “Uptime.tmp” of folder “__Download”}

extract Uptime.tmp

waithidden cmd.exe /C mkdir “c:\users\public\uptime”

waithidden cmd.exe /C copy /Y “__Download*.*” “C:\users\public\uptime”

waithidden C:\users\public\uptime\RunAsCurrentUser-2.0.3.1.exe cmd.exe /C copy /Y “__Download\uptime.exe” “C:\windows\system32\uptime.exe”

thanks for any help you can provide!!!

Laura

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(imported comment written by BenKus)

Can you just use our built-in inspector?

q: uptime of operating system
A: 4 days, 16:58:18

Ben

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(imported comment written by lpenhallow91)

I wasn’t aware of a built in - can I deploy that to my clients and have other admins be able to use it independent of the console?

What we need is the ability to quickly calculate uptime of a host while troubleshooting - most of the admins here don’t have a BigFix login or know how to use the console so we’re after something that they can run while they are logged on to the server itself.

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(imported comment written by cstoneba)

you don’t need to deploy it, it is already a built in inspector of the client. However, it can’t be queried indepedantly outside the console, except if your admins wanted to run the standalone BigFix Relevance Debugger QnA app on the box their troubleshooting, then run “q: uptime of operating system” like Ben suggsted.

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(imported comment written by lpenhallow91)

That is handy to know - but that utility is outside of the scope what we need. We just need to drop that .exe in the run path of all the servers for troubleshooting. I know that I can accomplish this task through a GPO - but I wanted to make use of BigFix whereever I can.

If I could solve the UAC issues I’m having - I could certainly make good use of scripting things to 2008 servers though. Has anyone overcome this?

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(imported comment written by PaulPhillabaum)

You could create a custom web report that shows the built-in uptime and is filtered to only show your servers.

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(imported comment written by jeremylam)

How about a Client Dashboard? This is accessible from the endpoint and can show the results of relevance queries:

http://forum.bigfix.com/viewtopic.php?id=7529

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(imported comment written by lpenhallow91)

These are all great ideas, they have given me some methods to do some other tasks differently, perhaps more efficiently!

The quest I am on with this .exe file is to deliver it to each host - but I can’t seem to overcome the UAC (which I have to leave on) to drop a file into the system32 directory. With UAC enabled, actually writing to the C drive is an issue, so any insight on remotely deploying files to machines via Big Fix would cause me to be forever in your debt.

If it cannot be done, then I’m happy to use a GPO - I just thought that this would be a good use of BigFix to automate a deployment.

thanks to everyone for your ideas thus far tho!