MeshCentral - Crash Dumps, Router Mappings, Messenger, Installer

In the last few weeks, we made many more improvements to the quality and security of MeshCentral. One area that is important when managing 100’s or 1000’s of computers with remote software agents that encounter many different situations is to get actionable data back when something happens. This week, MeshCentral got a new optional automated feature that turns on the MeshAgent crash dump feature and fetches crash dump files when needed. This along with many other improvements will keep improving software quality and reliability moving forward. In detail:
  • Automated Agent Crash Dump. Thanks to Bryan Roe, the MeshCentral agent has had the ability to generate a crash dump file on all platforms (Windows, Linux, BSD, macOS) when this feature was activated. With the most recent release of MeshCentral, this agent feature can now be activated from the server. In addition to this, if an agent crash dump file is present on a remote machine, MeshCentral can now automatically retrieve it. This will make any future agent crashes (which are quite rare) easier to debug and fix. This is an important part of having MeshCentral be a reliable remote management solution.
  • MeshCentral Router Mappings. One of the most interesting features of MeshCentral is its ability to port map TCP and UDP ports from a management computer to any managed computers. MeshCentral Router is the premiere Windows tool to do this and this week, it’s been improved a lot. You can now save existing port mappings, open them back up or drag & drop mappings into MeshCentral Router making is a lot easier to get work done.
  • MeshMessenger Export. MeshCentral has a built-in web-based messaging application that can be used to setup a chat session between an administrator and a remote computer. MeshMessenger was updated last week to include security fixes and a new chat export feature to save the conversation as a text file.
  • MeshCentral Installer. Last week a new version of the MeshCentral Installer was published with a bunch of smaller fixes and improvements. Notably, the installed MeshCentral server is now setup with more limited folder access rights for improved security.
  • GitHub Code Scanning. GitHub recently announced that it was offering some developers early beta access to free security code scanning using CodeQL. We requested and got granted early access to this new automated scanning tool and are now using it to scan the MeshCentral and MeshAgent projects.
Many thanks to Bryan Roe and the GitHub community for their continued work. As usual, feedback appreciated. If you see any problems and need support on something, please create a new issue on GitHub or help other users

Enjoy,
Ylian
Twitter: https://twitter.com/meshcentral
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MeshCentral/
GitHub: https://github.com/Ylianst/MeshCentral/issues
MeshCentral2: http://www.meshcommander.com/meshcentral2


Popular posts from this blog

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

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 - 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