Landesk Remote Control
through Mozilla or Firefox
I use Landesk at work both for
desktop inventory, software distribution, and for remote controlling
lusers ;-) destops when
they break something. (Disclaimer: I do not maintain the Landesk
servers - including the Web Console server - so not much expertise in
that
area.) Of course IE is the standard at work but I use Mozilla and Firefox for everything.
(Rant: I realize it sometimes takes a little more work to get a site to
work with Mozilla/Firefox but I am the only SysAdmin here that doesn't have spyware on his
machine!!! And I'd prefer to spend my time getting
Mozilla/Firefox to work than cleaning spyware off of my machine.)
While Landesk does provide an install to launch the remote console
through Netscape it does not install for Mozilla or Firefox (note: this
may have changed in v.8 but that is not what I have.) Not that I
am mad about Landesk not installing for those browsers it just requires
a little extra work to get it going and I'm glad that they provided a
Netscape install so I could get the plugin to Mozilla/Firefox.
What I did was load Netscape and then run through the Landesk Remote
Console install and then copy the plugin (npiexec.dll) to the plugins
folder. Following are directions so you don't have to do that:
(This was done on both Windows 2000 & Windows XP machines. I
have only tried this with Firefox v.0.9.2 but I think I have been using
this with Mozilla since v.1.5 but definitely works with v.1.7.1.)
- Install Landesk Remote
v.4.0.100.1190 (MD5SUM: c26c00909c9694d9d38909b7d5c629f4 GPG/PGP
Sig: Landesk_REMOTE.sig) though you
should have a copy of this through your web console but I know some
companies do remove it to force
the use of IE.
- Put npiexec.dll v.7.0.0.88 (MD5SUM:
db03bd91054c95bf515a33be8280cd8d GPG/PGP Sig: npiexec.dll.sig) in the plugins directory
for your browser. I just put it in the common plugins directory
for the browser (though it should work equally well going in the
profile/plugins). For example:
Mozilla: C:\Program Files\mozilla.org\Mozilla\plugins\npiexec.dll
Firefox: C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\plugins\npiexec.dll
- Restart your browser (assuming it was open) and you should be
ready to go.
If you have any questions/suggestions feel free to drop me a note at
eriksmithtx at yahoo dot com.
You can get a copy of my public key to verify the signature off of a
keyserver (Key ID: 0x1C9ED62D) or here.
© Erik Smith 2005
Licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License