[python-win32] Executing a remote process via WMI in Win32.

[Tim Golden]

> Sean

[... needs to control processes via WMI ...]

Initial brief answer is: get hold of this module: 

http://tgolden.sc.sabren.com/python/wmi.html

which eases the (not inconsiderable) pain of using WMI 
 within Python. I haven't played around with the kind
 of authentication you need (ie Admin on remote machine)
 since I have Domain Admin rights on all the machines
 I'm interested in. It should work, however; I just haven't
 tried it.

I've certainly terminated processes successfully. I tried
 doing a quick CreateProcess and it didn't like it too much,
 but I don't have lots of time to look into why at the moment.
 Promise I'll try to later.

Here the first bit of your code more-or-less translated:

<code>
import wmi

computer = wmi.WMI () 
# computer = wmi.WMI ("<MACHINE NAME>")

for process in computer.Win32_Process ():
  size = int (process.WorkingSetSize) / 1024
  print process.Caption, size, "kb"
</code>

Just to show how you could terminate processes:

<code>
#
# Close down any notepad processes
#  two seconds after they've been
#  started.
# (Good party trick, eh?)
#
watcher = computer.watch_for (
  notification_type="Creation", 
  wmi_class="Win32_Process", 
  delay_secs=2, 
  Name="notepad.exe"
)
while 1:
  notepad_process = watcher ()
  print "Found notepad"
  notepad_process.Terminate ()
</code>

Note that the WMI module doesn't do much; it's
 forte is in keeping the kind of plumbing code
 hidden that you had to expose, and then doing
 a bit of __getattr__ magic so that you can call
 class instances directly, and do things like:
 
 c = wmi.WMI ()
 process = c.Win32_Process ("notepad.exe")[0]
 print process.Terminate

 to get a list of the parameters to the process
 method, which must be passed by keyword. Play 
 around with the module it and look at the code; 
 you'll see what it can and can't do quite easily.

Apart from simply Googling on "create process WMI"
 or some similar search term, I've found this site
 to be a good starting point:

http://www.activxperts.com/activmonitor/windowsmanagement/wmi/samples/

Good luck, and I'll try to get hold of process creation when I can.

TJG

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