How can I simulate these calls inside a program?
Like say I want to find all the active connections. So I want to use netstat -a
How could I use that without having to literally having a window open?
Use CreateProcess, redirecting the output.
If the calling application is not a windows application there is no issue with a console window (because a console programming will, by default, inheirt its parent console).
If the calling application is a windows application, set the right options passed to CreateProcess to default the console window that will be created to hidden.
There is system() library function you can use - I guess Windows has it as well because it is standard C function since C89.
You will have to use the "/B" option of 'start' command.
cmd /C start "Title" /B netstat -i
I'm assuming popping console is your main problem,
and you a strategy of collecting the data.
Never use system() (not professional, crappy)
Use Win32 net apis .
See the source code of netstat.
Related
I'm trying to write a C program to control the windows cmd prompt. For example, opening the cmd prompt, go to a specific directory (ex: C:/Program Files/...), and then run an exe in that folder.
Can this be done with C programming? If so, how? So far, I am only aware of system("cmd.exe") to open up the cmd prompt. How would I further interact with cmd prompt?
Thanks.
This wouldn't be very portable. system calls are often frowned upon, but just to answer your question, the system function does work with the commands you're aiming to use.
For example:
system("notepad.exe my_file.txt");
system("del my_file.txt");
system("pause");
This will open up a file called my_file.txt in notepad, delete it and pause the program.
Again, this is not portable. It's specific to Windows Operating systems.
In fact, I don't even think it's guaranteed to work on all releases of Windows.
(Don't quote me on that.)
On topic: You could start cmd via "CreateProcess" and send key input via window messages ("SendMessage").
I think you should rethink how you want things to be done. The command prompt is not a kind of API base to do things on windows. It's a tool to do things and get information without writing your own program. If you wirte an own program, you should directly use the WinAPI.
To get started you can google "winapi [whatever you want to do]". In your example "winapi start executable" and you will find functions like "CreateProcess" and "ShellExecute".
Perhaps there is a misunderstanding here (if so, I apologize), but the standard way to "further interact with cmd prompt" is via command-line commands, and the standard way "to write a program to control the windows cmd prompt" is via a Batch file. For example, the following Batch file open the cmd prompt (when it is executed via a double click in the Explorer), go to a specific directory (C:/Program Files/) and run an exe in that folder:
#echo off
cd "C:/Program Files/"
nameOfTheProgram.exe
I have a play application on a Windows 7 machine which I want to start via double click on a batch file.
This batch file starts a service. Calls the play application to run in production mode, waits for 5 seconds and open a browser with a specified url.
Therefore I used the following script:
call net start service1
CALL "D:\play-1.2.5\play.bat" start --%%%%prod -Dprecompiled=true
TIMEOUT /T 4
call "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" localhost:9000
exit
Now when I start the batch file the window opens and all commands are executed. Sadly Play is still writing his output to cmd and the window is not disappearing. If I close the window manually play is stop executing.
If I run play with "play start" from cmd, play is starting in the background and everything is fine. Play still runs even if I close the window.
I want to have exactly this behaviour when I start the application with my batch file.
Thanks
If you were using a linux-like environment, I' d recommend you to use 'nohup' command and a '&' sign in the end. However, as far as I know there is no direct equivalent of beautiful 'nohup' command on Windows, unfortunately. So, what I can think of is, you can create a tiny win api application that utilizes CreateProcess command and give it the required parameter to hide command line window as soon as the process is created. There are also other process creation functions such as WinExec that you can use to hide command line.
I don't know what Play is so I can only take a guess :) but try using the batch without the call's as I don't think they are necessary, and you never know, might fix the issue.
1) You see Play's output because ot redirect only system.out but write system.err to the same console.
2) I also have this problem and looking for a solution. As a workaround you could try to use some Java Wrapper and install your Play! application as a Windows Service.
3) Play! app could be started via Ant task. I haven't tried this yet.
I am creating one installer for my project. Deployment of project needs some changes that are too complex with NSIS.
So for making it easy I have written one console app in C#. This app will do all the complex changes required with use of some parameters.
I just want to ask what is the way to call this console app with some parameters from my installer?
Is it possible by creating some batch file or what?
ExecWait '"$instdir\myapp.exe" /foo "hello world" /bar' is the basic method.
Use nsExec if you want to hide the console window and ExecDos or ExecCmd if you need more control...
You have several options to execute programs from NSIS, as documented here: http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Docs/Chapter4.html#4.9.1.2
Exec : Execute the specified program and continue immediately
ExecShell: Execute the specified program using ShellExecute
ExecWait: Execute the specified program and wait for the executed process to quit
the last solution is probably what you need.
I am using C and GTK+ for a gui project. For my project I have to make a lot systems calls. e.g system("copy myfile urfile"); or system("mp3player -embed filename") etc. and whenever my program calls the system an annoying console window appears and stays visible until the command is completely carried out. How do I hide that console window? Thanks.
NOTE: For my project I can use GTK+ , the C Standard Library , GLib, WinApi (not recommended) and system calls.
SCREENSHOT:
Using system() to create a new process does this by first starting a new command interpreter, which then in turn executes the command passed to system().
The command interpreter opens the console window.
Thus to avoid opening such a console windows you need to avoid starting the command interpreter. To do the latter try a function out of the spawn family (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/20y988d2.aspx) or use the win32 api function CreateProcess() (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms682425) to directly start your application.
A side effect on doing so might be, that your application starts faster and also uses less system resourses.
In fact the above mentioned solutions will not work for system calls which explicitly need a command interpreter as in one of your examples (copy src dst).
Use the GLib processes spawning functions instead of platform-specific functions. For file copy you can use g_file_copy from GIO (shipped with GTK) instead of calling the cp or copy command. This makes your code more portable too.
I installed a PostScript printer driver and have setup REDMON (redmonnt.dll) for redirecting postscript output to my program. In my rather simple c program I capture the data from STDIN and I am able to successfully save it into a .ps file. The file looks OK.
However, I want to start gsview.exe for viewing the file. If I call ShellExecute it fails in Windows 7 because of permission issues. It seems that my program is called under a different user account (LOCAL SERVICE). So I am looking for a way to run gsview.exe under a specific username (the user who initiated the print job) which is available to the program in a variable called REDMON_USER along with the SESSIONID as well.
Q: What are the minimum WinAPI calls required to start a program given a username and a sessionid?
Any code examples in C/C++, .NET would be very helpful.
EDIT: What I am trying accomplish is something very similar to redrunee (from redmonee). I don't want to use redrunee because it opens about a console window for a brief moment.
Note:
1) The program is called by the printer service as [LOCAL SERVICE] account.
2) The first parameter Username (REDMON_USER), in effect, points to the user currently looking at the screen
Look at CreateProcessAsUser.
Also look at CreateProcessWithLogonW and CreateProcess.
They are linked from the CreateProcessAsUser
EDIT In reply to comments by OP.
Follow advice from this thread.
I am copying this here verbatim, in case the original link stops working:
The same code works for us on Vista as
on XP, etc. The service is running as
the Local System.
use WTSGetActiveConsoleSessionId to get the ID of the current active
Windows session at the console (i.e.
the machine keyboard and display, as
opposed to WTS sessions).
use WTSQueryUserToken to get the token for that session.
use DuplicateTokenEx(hToken,MAXIMUM_ALLOWED,NULL,SecurityIdentification,TokenPrimary,
&hTokenDup) to duplicate that token.
use CreateEnvironmentBlock to create an environment that you will be
passing to the process.
use CreateProcessAsUser with the duplicated token and the created
environment. Actually, we use
CreateProcessAsUserW, since the A
version had some sort of bug on some
older systems.
Don't forget to CloseHandle on the various tokens, etc, and to
DestroyEnvironmentBlock the
environment.
Thank you efratian.
PS. Oh joy of Windows programming, did not do it for quite a while. Now I remember why. The only thing that is close or even worse documented is OpenSSH programming.
The documentation describes the "Run as User" feature, which seems to be exactly what you want:
Run as User is intended for launching a GUI program such as GSview locally via RedRun.