MeshCentral is an open source web based remote computer management web site and in the past few weeks it’s been improving a lot. The enthusiasm within the GitHub community for MeshCentral has been growing and I would like to thank everyone who participates and thanks for the bug reports and suggestions, MeshCentral getting a lot better because of it. Since my last blog a lot has been going on. I am going to select some of the highlights and present them here.
- Public agent installation invitation link. In the latest version of MeshCentral, the administrator can now create a time limited invitation link. Administrators then send the link to users who get instructions on how to install the MeshCentral agent . This makes is a lot easier to provide remote support which is the main usage that this new feature is intended for. If someone asks for help, you can just send the link and once the user installs the agent, you can remote into the computer and fix issues. To get started with this feature, click on the “Invite” link next to the device group you wish the agent to be installed on.
- Automatic backups. As MeshCentral is being increasingly used, it’s important to add recovery features in case something goes wrong. MeshCentral now has an auto-backup feature that will, at periodic intervals, automatically compress into a zip file the database (MongoDB or NeDB) and all certificates and associated configuration files. One can configure how many past backups to keep and a AES256 zip password can optionally be specified to password protect the backups. Auto-backup is now the default for MeshCentral installations that don’t configure this option, with a backup each 24 hours and 10 days of backups kept. This feature makes MeshCentral a lot more professional.
- User session idle timeout. Requested by the GitHub community, this feature is implemented by the web application and when configured will disconnect is a user has not interacted with the web application in a set time. This is not enabled by default, but when it is, it allows administrators to provide an extra level of security by disconnecting user sessions that have been forgotten.
- Improved terminal. Especially for Linux and IoT users, having a great remote terminal is really important. The MeshCentral terminal started out built for Intel AMT Serial-over-LAN but in recent weeks has been improved to support many of the features expected of a complete terminal implementation. More support for escape codes has been implemented including multi-line escape codes, a large back-buffer is now supported to a scroll back and most importantly, the MeshAgent now launches the correct remote shell providing auto-complete using the “TAB” key and command history using the up and down arrows. All this makes the terminal a lot more usable on Linux systems.
- Improved MeshCentral Router. The MeshCentral Router is a popular feature allowing users to port map a TCP or UDP port on their local computer to a port on a remote machine over the Internet thru MeshCentral. This is a bit like a VPN where you can access remote services thru a VPN server, however the implemented and use are very different. In the latest version of MeshCentral Router you can how set local ports to be bound to any interface (not just localhost) and you can have MeshCentral Router go on the Windows system tray.
Along where these improvements, there are many more new features and bug fixes have been made, too many to list here. Again, I want to give a big thank you to get GitHub community, everyone has been helping a lot and makes the project a lot of fun.
As usual, feedback is appreciated.
Enjoy,
Ylian
MeshCentral2: http://www.meshcommander.com/meshcentral2
Twitter: https://twitter.com/meshcentral
