MeshCentral2 - FreeBSD, Puppy Linux, Invitation Email, Notifications, API Tracing

MeshCentral is an open source web based remote computer management web site that supports Intel® Active Management Technology (Intel AMT). In the past few weeks a lots of new features and bug fixes have been made. Mesh Agent improvements are thanks for Bryan Roe and many of the other features and fixes are thanks to the help of the GitHub community. There are too many changes to list here, however here is a selection of a few of the more interesting ones:
  • Support for FreeBSD and Puppy Linux. Bryan Roe has continued to port the MeshAgent into more Linux variants with support for Puppy Linux, a Linux distribution that is small and easy to use. More impressive still, this week Bryan got the MeshAgent installing, running and self-update on FreeBSD. This is the first time that MeshCentral works on BSD and certainly an interesting addition to the list of supported operating systems.
  • Improved account creation and invitation email. Requested by the GitHub community, this feature allows an administrator to create a new user account and have MeshCentral send an invitation email to the user. The email contains a temporary password that must be changed upon first login. This new feature makes it easy for administrators to invite their friends and family to have account on their MeshCentral server.
  • Account and per-group notification control. You can now configure browser notifications for the entire account or for each device group. For example: You can now opt to get notified when a device connects or disconnects to a device specific group. When MeshCentral is used as a support server when end users running the agent temporarily on an as-needed basis, getting this sort of notification can be useful.
  • New web application API trace feature. MeshCentral uses a modern WebSocket based API allowing the server and browser to communicate more efficiently with out-of-order and asynchronous near real-time messages. No need to refresh the page as the web application is responsive and always up to date. If you want to get a peek as to how this all works, add “?trace=1” at the end of the web application URL and open the browser debug console. You will see all the WebSocket control traffic. It will show exactly how it all works and enables others to make their own user interfaces and debug the existing one.
I want to give special thanks to Bryan Roe this week for this work on the MeshAgent. There is a lot of outstanding issues and feature requests on GitHub and trying to work thru the list as quickly as possible. As usual, feedback is appreciated.

Enjoy,
Ylian
MeshCentral2: http://www.meshcommander.com/meshcentral2
Twitter: https://twitter.com/meshcentral






 


Popular posts from this blog

Starting work at Microsoft

Image
Hi everyone. It’s been a while since the last blog post and I wanted up update everyone on what is going on. As many of you know already from a discussion on GitHub , Bryan and I have been laid-off from Intel in early November 2022. This was quite a surprise as MeshCentral, MeshCommander, MeshCMD and other tools where widely used. This said, Intel has been having poor financials and Bryan and I where part of a very large first wave of downsizing by the company that involved many people that I know and worked with for a long time. I had been working for Intel for over 25 years having started in September 1998. Over the years I worked on IPsec key negotiation, Universal Plug & Play, DLNA and Intel® AMT. I loved working on all these projects and especially loved working with the open-source community on Mesh projects. Obviously, this was not my decision and Bryan and I had look for what comes next. One option was to continue working on MeshCentral as part of another company or with
Read more

MeshCentral - Windows ARM64, NodeJS v11, NPM Packages

Image
Hi all. It's been a while since I last posted and now that I am settling a bit more in my work at Microsoft, I have a bit of time to occasionally look after MeshCentral again. It's about time, there where a bunch of things that needed to get fixed. Before that, I want to say that I am doing great. I am working on Microsoft Forms which is one of the offerings of Microsoft 365. For kicks, I started a YouTube channel on Microsoft Forms here during a Microsoft hacking week. I tried to up my game since the videos I last published for MeshCentral. Also, I wanted to share pictures below. I was at a Tesla Supercharger last weekend and, by luck, got to see a Tesla Cybertruck in person. It's very big. Obviously, this is a release candidate driven by a Tesla employee. I saw it after attempting to see the solar eclipse over Oregon, but sadly, too many clouds and saw nothing. In any case, back to MeshCentral. In the last few months a few things have happened with the new releases. Wind
Read more

MeshCentral - New Windows Agents - Installation Dialog, Customization and Server Lock

Image
Lots is going on with MeshCentral, just yesterday Bryan Roe released a new MeshAgent for Windows with many improvements. An improved installation dialog box, logo customization and, to continue MeshCentral’s leadership in security, a new agent code signing locking feature that will surely be used by many to improve trust and security of their MeshCentral installation. In addition to this, we have many more server improvements to cover. In detail: MeshAgent with improved installation dialog box . The new MeshAgent for Windows is much improved with months of changes and bug fixes. The most noticeable feature is by far the new installation dialog with the new logo and connection details button. The new installer is a lot friendlier and easier on end-users. MeshAgent with improved customizations . In addition to all the existing agent customizations available in prior versions, the MeshAgent has new server settings for the installation text and logo. You can now set your own 200x200 PNG c
Read more