Reboot windows machines at a certain time of day and automatically login with Python

Question

I know how to reboot machines remotely, so that's the easy part. However, the complexity of the issue is trying to setup the following. I'd like to control machines on a network for after-hours use such that when users logoff and go home, or shutdown their computers, whatever, python or some combination of python + windows could restart their machines (for cleanliness) and automatically login, running a process for the night, then in the morning, stop said process and restart the machine so the user could easily login like normal.

I've looked around, haven't had too terribly much luck, though it looks like one could do it with a changing of the registry. That sounds like a rough idea though, modifying the registry on a per-day basis. Is there an easier way?

Answer 1

I can't think of any way to do strictly what you want off the top of my head other than the registry, at least not without even more drastic measures. But doing this registry modification isn't a big deal; just change the autologon username/password and reboot the computer. To have the computer reboot when the user logs off, give them a "logoff" option that actually reboots rather than logging off; I've seen other places do that.

(edit)FYI: for registry edits, Windows has a REG command that will be useful if you decide to go with that route.(/edit)

Also, what kind of process are you trying to run? If it's not a GUI app that needs your interaction, you don't have to go through any great pains; just run the app remotely. At my work, we use psexec to do it very simply, and I've also created C++ programs that run code remotely. It's not that difficult, the way I do it is to have C++ call the WinAPI function to remotely register a service on the remote PC and start it, the service then does whatever I want (itself, or as a staging point to launch other things), then unregisters itself. I have only used Python for simple webpage stuff, so I'm not sure what kind of support it has for accessing the DLLs required, but if it can do that, you can still use Python here.

Or even better yet, if you don't need to do this remotely but just want it done every night, you can just use the Windows scheduler to run whatever application you want run during the night. You can even do this programmatically as there are a couple Windows commands for that: one is the "at" command, and I don't recall right now what the other is but just a little Googling should find it for you.

Answer 2

You probably want to consider running whatever program you're considering as a Windows service, unless you absolute need a desktop. There are a couple of questions concerning that, e.g. here and here, as well as recipes on Active State. That involves no real need to start up or login to the computer.

There's also always the option of scheduled tasks and what not. That can actually be done programmatically through Python, e.g., as in this blog post.

As for powering on powered off computers, while I've never done anything with it, I know Windows supports Wake-on-LAN functionality, and there seem to be some good resources, including, again, a recipe on ActiveState.

If you need a desktop to run your program, I don't think you have any choice but to mess with the registry to permit autologins, as I don't believe the Window's GINA is scriptable in any way shape or form.

Answer 3

Thanks for the responses. To be more clear on what I'm doing, I have a program that automatically starts on bootup, so getting logged in would be preferred. I'm coding a manager for a render-farm for work which will take all the machines that our guys use during the day and turn them into render servers at night (or whenever they log off for a period of time, for example).

I'm not sure if I necessarily require a GUI app, but the computer would need to boot and login to launch a server application that does the rendering, and I'm not certain if that can be done without logging in. What i'm needing to run is Autodesk's Backburner Server.exe

Maybe that can be run without needing to be logged in specifically, but I'm unfamiliar with doing things of that nature.