Custom Script Problem With Rexec And Netcat

by Jul 15, 2009

I thought I should share a problem we ran into recently that while simple to fix may not be obvious. We heavily use custom scripts that call REXEC commands from the registry and echos them back using NETCAT. When we recently set up a new SQL server running on Server 2008 x64 we spent ages trying to get the uptime agent to call an REXEC command but all we got back was “ERR”. It was more an operating system issue than an uptime agent problem. In the x64 version of Server 2008 the uptime agent does not keep its configuration in the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREUptime Software but instead at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREWow6432NodeUptime Software. So if you are like me and use a xxx.REG file to import your REXEC commands into the registry then make sure you account for the different registry branch than you will find on your x86 Windows servers if using the x64 Windows.