MeshCentral Blog

MeshCentral 2 development keeps moving forward. So much is going on, we have to just make a list of new features and changes. MeshCentral2 is still very much in beta , lots work still to be done before it is ready for day-to-day use. This said, much progress is being made. Here is a main recap of the last few weeks: Location and mapping support . The MeshAgent 2 can now attempt to get its location using its public IP address. MeshCentral 2 then records this information and can display location information on a live map along with colored pins showing the connectivity status of the device. Default mapping information uses OpenStreetMap . Network interface information . The latest MeshAgent 2 and MeshCentral 2 now cooperate to gather device network interface information. This is useful for all sorts of usages including remote device wake-up. Server Wake-on-LAN support . When MeshCentral 2 is not in WAN-only mode, it will not send out wake-on-LAN packets upon request. ...

MeshCentral2 development keeps moving forward and this week, we got two really interesting new features added. As you will see, MeshCentral2 is positioning to be a server that can be used in a wide array of usages. From small networks with a few computers on a local network to larger deployments on a commercial cloud services. MeshCentral2 is being designed to handle both and everything in between. Added support for LAN and WAN modes . This is one of the big innovations that will get MeshCentral2 noticed. Historically, you always needed a fixed IP/Host to setup MeshCentral, making things difficult for small deployments. Now MeshCentral2 has a new “LAN mode” where mesh agents discover the server location using multicast. For small deployments, it’s easier than ever to get a management solution setup. Let’s take a look at the differences between the two modes noting that it’s possible to run MeshCentral2 in both modes simultaneously, offering both feature sets at the same...

Quick blog post to say that both MeshCentral2 and MeshCommander now fully support the RMCP discovery protocol for Intel® AMT . For a long time now, Intel® AMT has had the ability to respond to UDP discovery packets, but this is the first time I made full use of this feature in the two big open source tools. You can now quickly scan the network for Intel® AMT computers, select them and add them to the list of managed computers. In addition, you now get an almost live view of what computers are present on the network. This is really nice, you don’t need to guess anymore what computers are present. MeshCentral2 : When it comes to the internet/intranet management web site, RMCP is used to detect the presence of Intel® AMT computers day and night, accumulating data on when the computers are present on the timeline when they show up and go away. It’s also a wonderful way to get a birds eye view on what computers are present on the network at any time. Because MeshCentral2 us...

A quick post to say that I just uploaded a new YouTube video on how to compile MeshCommander for use as a firmware web application for Intel AMT 11 and above. Starting with Intel AMT 11, you can now upload a web application into the firmware that will replace the built-in index.htm page. This is super useful because you can upload a fairly complete Intel AMT management console into the firmware and access it using a browser. MeshCommander was built to do this, you can also read my previous blog on this topic . In this new video, I show how to download the MeshCommander source code and use the Web Site Compiler to build a compress .gz file that can be uploaded into the Intel AMT 11 storage area. Because MeshCommander is open source, your welcome to change and re-brand it anyway you like, in fact, I encourage it. Hope it's helpful, Ylian meshcommander.com

MeshCentral2 development is moving forward at a swift pace and this week, there was plenty more going on. In my view, MeshCentral2 is probably the easiest way to setup your own open source remote device management web site. it is still in beta, and easily available on the NPM site . I am updating MeshCentral2 many times a week and this time around, wanted to highlight a few notable new features: Added support for Linux x86, for both 32bit and 64bit . A few days back I released the first version of MeshCentral2 with Linux support. Improving upon the previous version of MeshCentral, the Linux installation will be a bit different this time around. A script will be downloaded on the Linux computer, that script will attempt to automatically identify the computer and download and install the correct MeshAgent. Makes installing the Linux mesh agent easier since you don’t need to select what port of the agent you need anymore. However, there are only two ports of the Linux agent...

This is a big day as MeshCentral2 is going into BETA . Yesterday I released on MeshCentral2 v0.0.4 on NPM , this is the version I now consider BETA 1. It’s the first version of MeshCentral2 that includes a minimal usable set of feature and the all new MeshAgent2 for Windows . For people not familiar with MeshCentral2, it’s a web site you can install on a server in about a minute that allows you to remotely manage and control other computers on a local network or over the internet using a web portal. It’s super easy to get started. To prove it, I have a new installation YouTube video showing the entire process . Once installed, you can also check out the  next video which goes over some of the typical usages . The new MeshAgent2 is built and maintained by Bryan Roe , who have been working on this agent for many months and 1000’s of hours, including many late nights. Many more bug fixes are still to be done and this server should NOT be used for production usages , but i...

Coming back from spring break in Oregon, I have been at work on the release of MeshCentral 2 Alpha 4 . This is a big release, not only because there are many new features, some never before seen in MeshCentral, but especially because of how MeshCentral2 will get distributed from now on. Being able to quickly setup a new server and keeping it up to date has always been a problem, especially if you want to be able to do this across many platforms like both Windows and Linux. Starting this week, MeshCentral 2 is now distributed on NPM , the NodeJS package manager . People who know what NPM is will immediately understand why this is big news. On many platforms, you now just have to type “npm install meshcentral” and you got the latest MeshCentral2 on your system ready to launch. This change alone will make MeshCentral2 more accessible to more people a lot faster. You can now keep your server up to date easily, just type “npm update meshcentral”. Works on Windows and Linux if N...