how remote monitoring works -- without any agents at remote machine

[B Prakasam]

Using JAVA, Is there any way to execute a system level command on the remote machine and get back the data to the host machine.
It should work something like this, my application resides on Windows, and it should send a system command to the remote machine (Solaris) like vmstat and getback the resultant output to my application. This should be achieved without installing any agents at the remote machines.
I believe if the remote server has 'rstatd' server (rstat Daemon) running, using a client program we can query the system information thru it, without installing any thing on the other side.
Any idea on how to query 'rstatd' server from the client.

[Stefan Wagner]

Runtime.getRuntime().exec ("Your command here");
But you have to redirect System.out/ System.in, to get the feedback, to parse.

[B Prakasam]

yes you are correct, we can use Runtime to execute a system command, but my question is how to make a rpc to rstatd in solaris to get some system resource information.

[Stan James]

I keep handing out pointers to this little project hoping someone will finish it for me It definitely requires an agent - a little socket server - on the other end, tho.
http://www.surfscranton.com/architecture/CmdServer.htm

[B Prakasam]

hi Stan James, Thanks for the site reference, too usefull. but it would be much more helpfull if i do that using rpc.

[Jeroen Wenting]

who do you want to spy on or hack their machines?

[B Prakasam]

no Jeroen Wenting,you mis-understood. i am a genuine software developer. i am trying to write an applycation to monitor solaris server without disturbing the server. if u aware of mercury's loadrunner testing tool, their they use this tech to monitor the machines. but they DONT use java. So I am trying to do that in java.

[Jeroen Wenting]

OK, just that I've seen way too many such requests from people wanting to know techniques to install trojans and spying tools without the knowledge of their victims...
Most loadtesting tools send network requests to known services running on the target machine and determine the load on the machine based on the response time.
Others require installation a small background process on the target machine that unobstrusively collects the data and on being polled transmits it to the requester (after authentication of course).