MeshCentral Blog

This week is a big one for the standalone version of MeshCommander as version 0.7.1 was released with an improved user interface and more significantly, the ability to connect to a MeshCentral2 account and manage computers over the Internet. Up until now, the standalone MeshCommander has been a break-fix Intel® AMT management console limited to your local network, but this limitation is removed with this new release as MeshCentral2 can act as a Management Presence Server (MPS) for MeshCommander. This new feature allows MeshCommander to perform WSMAN and KVM, SOL, IDER sessions over Intel® AMT remote connections (CIRA) greatly enhancing the capability of an already feature rich tool. There is a new YouTube demonstration video that shows off all the latest improvements. In detail: MeshCommander now has an improved user interface, especially the computer selection screen . The basic idea was to make MeshCommander look a lot like the new user interface of MeshCentral2 which...

One of the amazing features of MeshCentral2 is that it can be installed quickly on pretty much any computer that is Windows or Linux. For Windows users, it’s super easy since the installer that does all the work. You can get a fully working server up and running in a few minutes. Any version of Windows 7 or better will work. This week, the MeshCentral2 installer for Windows was improved significantly . It’s not just an installer anymore, you can scan your local network to find MeshCentral2 servers, edit advanced settings, update the server and more. The new version 1.2 of the installer is available for download here . In details: The installer will only work when connected on the Internet as it will download and install the latest version of MeshCentral2. The new network scanner will find MeshCentral2 servers that are in “LAN mode” or “Hybrid mode” on the local network, this is going to be important for upcoming MeshCentral2 appliance support. The new advanced configuration scre...

In the last two months MeshCentral got a lot better. Many new features, bug fixes and ease of use improvements so that a server can be installed and fully usable in a few minutes in many situations, and this on Windows and Linux. For many system administrators, all you need to know is “ npm install meshcentral ” to get started. Certainly the most noticeable change in the last few weeks is the new user interface marking a significant departure from the older MeshCentralv1. MeshCentralv2 run a fully real-time user interface so that you never have to hit a “refresh” button. The interface always displays the latest state of all devices and makes much better use of the complete surface area of the browser, making it great for both large screens and users who want to have a small browser window on the desktop. Check out the pictures below. Here are some more details on the latest update: New user interface will auto-scale to fill the browser window and has a new left side navigation ba...

In the last few weeks we got the code a lot more stable and started working on testing installation of MeshCentral in many more environments. The current version is MeshCentral is v0.1.9-f . One of the interesting design decision was to build the entire server in NodeJS, this allows MeshCentral to quickly be installed and run on many different platforms including Windows and Linux. Last week, in addition to the existing MeshCentral User’s Guide , we published an all new MeshCentral Installer’s Guide that allows administrators to install MeshCentral on many different operating systems, on your own computers or major cloud providers . In other news, we added support for the MeshAgent on Windows7 which is probably one of the leading requests. Here is a look at everything in detail: Published MeshCentral Installer’s Guide . In this new guide , we walk thru how to install MeshCentral on Ubuntu Linux, the Raspberry Pi and on Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Many Linux admin...

It’s been a while since the last announcement but I have been hard at work on MeshCentral , the web-based open source remote management software. This week we got a big new feature with release of MeshCentral v0.1.8-c on NPM , we now have a new web application for mobile devices . When you install your own MeshCentral server and access it using a mobile device (like a phone or tablet), you will see a new web page tailored for small devices. This is the first version of it, but already it offers many of the main usages that are offered on the main web site in a more compact form. Some of the features offered in the mobile application: New card stack UI . Unlike the main web site, the mobile site uses a card stack UI model, where you can select screens and hit “back” at any time to return. This is quite a different model from the tabs on the main site, but allows the UI to be significantly more compact. Real time user interface . Like the main web site, the mobile site is fully real t...

As people following the Mesh work would know, there are currently three open source tools for remote management of computers being worked on: MeshCentral , MeshCommander and MeshCmd . MeshCentral is a remote management web site, MeshCommander is a web based Intel® AMT management console and MeshCmd is a Linux & Windows command line tool that performs many Intel® AMT tasks. This week, I released new versions of all three tools. Let’s take a look at the improvements made to each of them: MeshCentral2 . We keep fixing bugs in the web site and improving performance, most changes will not be noticed by users except for the new toast button that is now available on the “Desktop” tab when remoting a Windows computer. The toast button allows the administrator to send a short text message that will be displayed on the remote computer. It’s a nice and quick way to make a message show up on remote computers. MeshCommander . In addition to many bug fixed and improved input validation on dia...

This week is the last feature release for a little while because of traveling and vacations coming up and a bit more focus on bug fixes. This said, we have a bunch of really good features released this week that improve MeshCentral2. The focus was on making administration of a MeshCentral2 server and users a lot better. New this week: Improved user management . For server administrators, the “My Users” tab is much better. Administrators will immediately see the difference. Users are now listed with online users on the top, improved indications of validated emails and for each user, there is now a full sub-section with user information and configuration and events for each user. You can how edit the email address, validation status, server rights and update the password in a single screen. The user management look and feel as also been improved. The user login timeline is not yet implemented, a placeholder is currently displayed. Account locking . Administrators can now lock out use...