Shutting down Windows from Linux
I had to do some research on how to remotely shut down a Windows computer from a Linux host and decided to share :-)
My test environment:
- Gentoo linux running on my laptop
- Windows XP SP3 running in a VirtualBox guest
The command (you need Samba installed on your Linux machine):
net rpc shutdown -t 10 -f -C "Remote shutdown initiated" -I 192.168.56.2 -U Erik
Broken down, that becomes:
- -t 10 to give users 10 seconds to hit Ctrl-S
- -f to force applications to quit without asking the user to save (so they can't get in the way of the shutdown)
- -C "Remote shutdown initiated" is the message that should be displayed to any logged-in users
- -I 192.168.56.2 the IP address at which the machine to shut down is located. In my case, the host-only network adapter
- -U Erik is my username on the Windows machine. Works also as <hostname>\<username> (don't forget to escape the backslash if your shell requires it!) or as <workgroup>\<username>
- If you like, you can add -r to reboot the machine instead of shutting it down.
If you don't want to be asked for your password, append it to your username with a % sign, like so: -U <username>%<password>
Of course, with Windows being involved, this doesn't work right out of the box ;-) In my case, after being asked for the password the net rpc command reported "Shutdown of remote machine succeeded". The Windows XP machine didn't shut down. It didn't even show me a message. A little Wireshark magic ended up revealing the error code "WERR_ACCESS_DENIED" being sent across the wire. (note to self: maybe a newer version of samba will actually do something with this error?)
Long story short: the solution is to have file sharing enabled, but to disable simple file sharing. To do so, open Explorer, go to Tools -> Folder options -> View (yes, it's the most logical place to put this </sarcasm>) and uncheck "Use simple file sharing" (all the way at the bottom of the list).