Windows Remote Management (WinRM) for Ruby

This is a SOAP library that uses the functionality in Windows Remote Management(WinRM) to call native object in Windows. This includes, but is not limitted to, running batch scripts, powershell scripts and fetching WMI variables. For more information on WinRM, please visit Microsoft's WinRM site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa384426(v=VS.85).aspx

Install

gem install -r winrm then on the server winrm quickconfig as admin

Example

require 'winrm'
endpoint = http://mywinrmhost:5985/wsman
krb5_realm = 'EXAMPLE.COM'
winrm = WinRM::WinRMWebService.new(endpoint, :kerberos, :realm => krb5_realm)
winrm.cmd('ipconfig /all') do |stdout, stderr|
  STDOUT.print stdout
  STDERR.print stderr
end

There are various connection types you can specify upon initialization:

It is recommended that you :disable_sspi => true if you are using the plaintext or ssl transport.

Plaintext

WinRM::WinRMWebService.new(endpoint, :plaintext, :user => myuser, :pass => mypass, :disable_sspi => true)

## Same but force basic authentication:
WinRM::WinRMWebService.new(endpoint, :plaintext, :user => myuser, :pass => mypass, :basic_auth_only => true)

SSL

WinRM::WinRMWebService.new(endpoint, :ssl, :user => myuser, :pass => mypass, :disable_sspi => true)

## Specifying CA path
WinRM::WinRMWebService.new(endpoint, :ssl, :user => myuser, :pass => mypass, :ca_trust_path => '/etc/ssl/certs/cert.pem', :basic_auth_only => true)

## Same but force basic authentication:
WinRM::WinRMWebService.new(endpoint, :ssl, :user => myuser, :pass => mypass, :basic_auth_only => true)

Kerberos

WinRM::WinRMWebService.new(endpoint, :kerberos, :realm => 'MYREALM.COM')

Troubleshooting

You may have some errors like WinRM::WinRMHTTPTransportError: Bad HTTP response returned from server (401).. You can run the following commands on the server to try to solve the problem:

winrm set winrm/config/client/auth @{Basic="true"}
winrm set winrm/config/service/auth @{Basic="true"}
winrm set winrm/config/service @{AllowUnencrypted="true"}

You can read more about that on issue #29

Current features

  1. GSSAPI support: This is the default way that Windows authenticates and secures WinRM messages. In order for this to work the computer you are connecting to must be a part of an Active Directory domain and you must have local credentials via kinit. GSSAPI support is dependent on the gssapi gem which only supports the MIT Kerberos libraries at this time.

If you are using this method there is no longer a need to change the WinRM service authentication settings. You can simply do a 'winrm quickconfig' on your server or enable WinRM via group policy and everything should be working.

  1. Multi-Instance support: The SOAP back-end has been completely gutted and is now using some of the Savon core libraries for parsing and building packets. Moving away from Handsoap allows multiple instances to be created because the SOAP backend is no longer a Singleton type class.

My Info

Contributors

Many thanks to the following for their many patches....

Disclaimer

If you see something that could be done better or would like to help out in the development of this code please feel free to clone the repository and send me patches.

git clone git://github.com/WinRb/WinRM.git or add an issue on GitHub