rpcclient

Name

rpcclient -- developer's tool to testing client side MS-RPC functions

Synopsis

nmblookup [-d debuglevel] [-S server] [-U username] [-W workgroup] [-n <netbios name>] [-A authfile] [-N] [-l logfile] [-I destinationIP] [-E <terminal code>] [-c <command string>] [-i scope] [-O <socket options>] [-s <smb config file>]

DESCRIPTION

This tool is part of the Samba suite.

rpcclient is a utility for developers for executing various MS-RPC functions. It's primary use is for testing Samba's own MS-RPC server implementation, however many administrators have written scripts around it to manage Windows NT clients from their UNIX workstation.

OPTIONS

-d debuglevel

set the debuglevel. Debug level 0 is the lowest and 100 being the highest. This should be set to 100 if you are planning on submitting a bug report to the Samba team (see BUGS.txt).

-S server

NetBIOS name of Server to which you wish to connect. The server can be any SMB/CIFS server. The name is resolved using either the name resolve order line or by using the -R option.

-l logbasename

File name for log/debug files. .client will be appended. The log file is never removed by the client.

-n netbios name

NetBIOS name of the local machine. This option is only needed if your Samba client cannot find it automatically. Samba should use the uppercase of the machine's hostname.

-N

tells rpcclient not to ask for a password. rpcclient will prompt the user by default.

-I destinationIP

The IP address of the server specified with the -S option. Only needed when the server's NetBIOS name cannot be resolved using WINS or broadcast and isn't found in the LMHOSTS file.

-E

causes rpcclient to write messages to stderr instead of stdout.

-U username[%pass]

Sets the SMB username or username and password. If %pass is not specified, The user will be prompted. The client will first check the USER environment variable, then the $LOGNAME variable and if either exist, the string is uppercased. Anything in these variables following a '%' sign will be treated as the password. If these environmental variables are not found, the username GUEST is used.

If the password is not included in these environment variables (using the %pass syntax), rpcclient will look for a $PASSWD environment variable from which to read the password.

A third option is to use a credentials file which contains the plaintext of the username and password. This option is mainly provided for scripts where the admin doesn't desire to pass the credentials on the command line or via environment variables. If this method is used, make certain that the permissions on the file restrict access from unwanted users. See the -A for more details.

Be cautious about including passwords in scripts or in the $PASSWD environment variable. Also, on many systems the command line of a running process may be seen via the ps command to be safe always allow rpcclient to prompt for a password and type it in directly.

-A filename

This option allows you to specify a file from which to read the username and password used in the connection. The format of the file is

username = <value> 
password = <value>
		

Make certain that the permissions on the file restrict access from unwanted users.

-W domain

Set the SMB domain of the username. This overrides the default domain which is the domain of the server specified with the -S option. If the domain specified is the same as the server's NetBIOS name, it causes the client to log on using the server's local SAM (as opposed to the Domain SAM).

-P

operate in promptless mode. Without this mode (the default) rpcclient displays a prompt of the form '[domain\username@host]$'

-c 'command string'

execute semicolon separated commands (listed below))

-t terminalcode

This tells the Samba client how to interpret the incoming filenames, in regards to character sets. The list here is not complete. For a complete list see your local Samba source. Some valid options are sjis, euc, jis7, jis8, junet and hex.

-O socket options

These socket options are the same as in smb.conf (under the socket options section).

-s smb.conf

Specifies the location of the all important smb.conf file.

-i scope

Defines the NetBIOS scope. For more information on NetBIOS scopes, see rfc1001 and rfc1002. NetBIOS scopes are rarely used.

COMMANDS

SPOOLSS Commands

SPOOLSS Commands

BUGS

rpcclient is designed as a developer testing tool and may not be robust in certain areas (such as command line parsing). It has been known to generate a core dump upon failures when invalid parameters where passed to the interpreter.

From Luke Leighton's original rpcclient man page:

"WARNING! The MSRPC over SMB code has been developed from examining Network traces. No documentation is available from the original creators (Microsoft) on how MSRPC over SMB works, or how the individual MSRPC services work. Microsoft's implementation of these services has been demonstrated (and reported) to be... a bit flakey in places.

The development of Samba's implementation is also a bit rough, and as more of the services are understood, it can even result in versions of smbd(8) and rpcclient that are incompatible for some commands or services. Additionally, the developers are sending reports to Microsoft, and problems found or reported to Microsoft are fixed in Service Packs, which may result in incompatibilities."

VERSION

This man page is correct for version 2.2 of the Samba suite.

AUTHOR

The original Samba software and related utilities were created by Andrew Tridgell. Samba is now developed by the Samba Team as an Open Source project similar to the way the Linux kernel is developed.

The original rpcclient man page was written by Matthew Geddes, Luke Kenneth Casson, and Gerald Carter. The conversion to DocBook for Samba 2.2 was done by Gerald Carter