MeshCentral - 2023 Update - A powerful, Professional Level, Remote Machine Management Tool!

[@warmsmells]

Been running meshcentral in prod for about a year now as a backup remote access tool, the granularity of permissions i can set for each tech has been pretty great. Running it on debian/docker routed over wireguard to a reverse proxy. Every new machine gets it installed out of the box via autopilot script. 10/10 tool even if its a little ugly.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Absolutely, i love this tool. It is absolutely Awesome!

[@Chadron]

Just found your channel, we are looking at alternatives to our current remote software for work and looking to host our own.... I appreciated all the time you took to clearly go over mesh central... Then I REALLY appreciated that you showed how to install it pretty much from scratch!!! Also just from the random mentions of other software you use throughout the video I now have other tools I can look at learning too! Cheers!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Glad it was helpful.

[@dluca182]

Man, I just re discovered your channel I remember seeing your AgentDVR video a looong time ago and it stuck in my brain, then I finally set that up like 2 weeks ago in 2 different systems and I'm loving it, but was so pissed I couldn't find your video. Found the cannel again today, and was so happy you keep going strong...just scrolling through I have a lot I want to add to my first real server from your videos Awesome!! good job!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

That is aweseom! I'm glad you're back.

[@Mr.Jean-Paul]

Hi Brian, from all the remote tools you once presented, this is by far the most complete one for me. Concerning the sending of commands, it‘s great that you can tick several servers and send the command to all of those servers at once. That makes the update/upgrade process far more easy! Great video, didn‘t know about the SHIFT-Expand function!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

The power is awesome, and I'm super glad I was able to show you something new!

[@northpoint1039]

I have been using it for over a year and its fantastic! I have about 75 clients on it that I manage for my business. The only area that I have a problem with is the clipboard. Some linux guests do not like to play well with it. So, I put large commands in a text file and upload it to the guest and then copy/paste there.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Wow, that's sounds like a great start to a nice business. Interesting on the clipboard. I wonder why that would be.

[@northpoint1039]

@@AwesomeOpenSource Thank U - yes, that clipboard works good in windows but I have not had time to go thru it with linux. I am in a battle to upgrade Nextcloud on a production server :( . Finally figured it out after hours of errors - lol. I really have a lot of business right now. I have always said that anyone that wants to start their own business - Right now is a great time because a lot of people do not want to work. Makes it easy for us that do :)

[@Marquis-w1i]

What kind of business do you run? I'm interested in starting my own mini-MSP.

[@northpoint1039]

@@Marquis-w1i I take care of a group of client businesses and some residential clients. My business clients I setup private servers running linux. I also take care of their workstations running windows. I charge a monthly fee to watch the logs and do updates on the servers. Residential clients I setup networks (wired/wireless) and take care of their computers. I use meshcentral to log in to their computers and take care of about 95 percent of the service calls. :) I think running remote support is a lot of fun for someone that is into I.T stuff. :)

[@ToniCorvera]

I've had MeshCentral and this video in the backlog for a good while and now that I installed it I'm blown away despite your detailed rundown. Incredibly easy to set up despite all the power it gives. The only tricky bit was installing the agent in an arm64 Alpine container, and only barely tricky (the OpenWRT agent did it). Kinda scary it provides full root access to remotes though, plus the server end being the one that decides if the user is notified or even asked... It better not be compromised now I'm putting it in the cloud with agents on my machines 😅

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

You want to turn on 2FA for sure, and make sure you use a very very strong password, That's why I use it as an RMM. It's ok as a remote desktop support tool, but it's power is in RMM IMO.

[@ToniCorvera]

​@@AwesomeOpenSourcedefinitely 2FA and strong password when exposed. But also pray it doesn't have some security hole 😁

[@ezioauditore3768]

Thanks for the MeshCentral update. Need a 2023 edition of guacamole on docker with mariadb or etc using docker-compose

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

On my list my friend.

[@EduardKondratyuk]

Great video, Ill have to try it out

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

It's awesome stuff

[@iowawizkid1]

Glad to hear Tactical RMM review is coming. I have used commercial products like kaseya and I actually prefer TRMM in many ways.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I'm excited to gite it a try.

[@MarcosCastro-v5n]

This is a great video. Do you have a installation instructions to use cloudflare instead of the reversed proxy option

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

No. I've never used Cloudflare or their tunnels. But, I've seen several that use Cloudflare with NginX Proxy Manager.

[@Osh3n]

I would like to see this being set up from an in-home proxmox server behind a cloudflare tunnel.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I ran mine on Proxmox, but not behind a cloudflare tunnel. I don't use cloudflare anymore, and they drive me nuts with the weirdness that they have about different things, however, it can definitely be done.

[@plazmax]

Hi Brian, meshcentral vs remotely which one do you prefer to use?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I still use both, and Rustdesk too. I use Meshcentral because it's a great way to manage my machines quickly. Remotely can also give you anytime access, but for me is a better tool for getting connected to a family member who needs support, and then when they are done, I don't have access to their machine anymore.

[@plazmax]

@@AwesomeOpenSource thank you.

[@raghavendarsridhar4403]

Thank you so much for bringing this tool up as it is the exact solution I want in my homelab, At last I found your video, I'm a long time traefik user so I started digging down the traefik rabbit hole, its been 3 days, all my attempts failed, The mesh central server is up and running after lots of changes in config.json and I cannot connect agents to it, (but if I use env variables as you explained in the video, traefik gives bad gateway error) Please help me on this, Thanks in advance

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I'm not familiar with Traefik, so not sure what may need to be done. But with docker, I don't have to mess with the config.json file at all. I just use the environment variables, then setup my NGinX Proxy Manager reverse proxy like normal. Make sure that MEsh is up and running properly on the local IP. Usually Bad Gateway means either the app isn't running properly, or the location you are sending the url too is not quite right.

[@raghavendarsridhar4403]

@@AwesomeOpenSource Thank you for your reply, Unfortunately I started to give up, since the app is running, the web Ui is working properly as intended, traefik is fetching certificates, but the agent is not able to connect when I download it and install it on my other devices, really thank you for all those videos, helps me very much

[@FerNando-kr3rf]

Good afternoon, I'm trying to install meshcentral to learn how it works in windows 10, but it doesn't install, I've downloaded meshcentral version 2.11. The installation stops at: installing meshcentral service.....

[@pushkaryadav]

Hello man! Thank you for this vid. After watching your video and obviously many more videos from official channel, I have finally hosted my first ever service. My server is up and running, accessible from my static IP along with let's encrypt. If you have 5-10 minutes, could you please tell me if there is a way to improve download speeds of files from clients? At the moment, I am seeing veeey slow downloading speeds, capping at 60-65 kbps.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Hmmm. I've never tried to download or upload really large files over MeshCentral. Not sure why that would happen. You might ask over on their Reddit page, or their Github pages. They are really great about answering.

[@mrhecht76]

Cool Video I have one question, is it possible to send a command to a group in mesh central.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Users of Meshcentral, or the end users of the computers you are supporting with it?

[@mrhecht76]

@@AwesomeOpenSource this are kisko PCs where i need run cmd or powershell. All what i can find are payment for clients to expensive or cloud and both are bot possible.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I believe you can take group actions in MeshCentral. Checkmark the devices you want, then click the "Group Actions" button at the top, and choose "Run Command" from the drop down. Enter the commands you want to run.

[@KennethIsrael_aiikendoit]

is meshcentral like net monitor for employees?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

No, it's a remote machine management application.

[@mead650]

I have a question when I add an agent to a group, the website doesn't get updated, or it doesn't do anything. Any ideas?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Sorry, read that incorrectly. Ok, no, in the case that th e agent isn't added to a group, I don't know. But does the agent show up on the site, just not in a group?

[@imanator1819]

I followed step by step and am able to access meshcentral but when I go to add an agent It never shows up

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

There should be logging from the agent that can help. Which OS are you adding the agent on?

[@nileshkotkar9311]

Mesh central public server is close or down ?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

What site are you asking about?

[@minster586]

how do you add the seting for mesh to pass real ip over to mesh

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

This is something you'd add in NGinX or Apache. If you're using NGinX Proxy manager, you'll add this in the 'Advanced' tab.

[@boedilllard5952]

Is it possible to get notifications when the clients connect in meshcentral if the web browser isn't open?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Not sure about email notifications, or desktop notifications. You'd have to dig around a bit in the UI, but nothing that I've seen for that.

[@boedilllard5952]

@@AwesomeOpenSource Unfortunately I read he may not continue to develop the platform - moved from Intel to Microsoft. I'm not sure if the domain goes away if it will work even if you host your own server.

[@KakvTheWorld]

can I run this if my use case is only made up of a Windows 10 and Mac devices?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Sure. Docker runs on Windows and MacOS. You can also check out the MeshCentral docs to run it with Node (npm) if you prefer. I just find the docker way a bit easier personally.

[@Aditya-nb8zu]

hi....i m at India can i connect with my friend he is in USA right now...with mesh agent

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

If you get everything setup correctly, then it should work.

[@Aditya-nb8zu]

@@AwesomeOpenSource Can u plz help me in doing set up in WAN mode

[@Jaavxi]

@@Aditya-nb8zu have you completed setup?

[@rubensilva6443]

all working on local machines and gui is accessible but cant get agents to connect without the "insecure method" - WARNING: Agent hash checking is being skipped, this is unsafe.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Hmmmmm. I haven't seen that warning. If you'll jump over to discuss.opensourceisawesome.com maybe we can help you troubleshoot a bit. First question, are you using a URL, or just IP?

[@AcidiFy574]

Cover penpot , It's a FOSS alternative to Figma

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Are you asking for that? As, I don't think MeshCentral and Figma are the same.

[@AcidiFy574]

@@AwesomeOpenSource no it isn't but Figma was the only option, now we have A FOSS one for UI design

[@mcol1911]

I think the guy behind Mesh Central is no longer working on it. Got laid off from Intel and moved to Microsoft and may not be doing much with it anymore. If I remember what I was seeing about it.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

He is no longer at Intel, but I believe he does still work on it, just in his free time, as do most open source contributors.

[@xionous]

@@AwesomeOpenSource According to his BlogSpot post this tool is no longer his priority and plans on relying on community pull requests for future updates and is only committing to keep the codebase free of malware. So based on what he said I would have to imagine the updates will be very slow and few from now on.

[@scockman]

@@AwesomeOpenSource that is correct.

[@wizdude]

He’s done two releases in the past 14 days.

[@mrhecht76]

Is this now development ongoing?

[@artedwards717]

HELP HELP i tryed loading docker/mesh central on arcolinux NEED HELP

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

What do you need help with? If it's a long problem, it will be better to ask over at discuss.opensourceisawesome.com in the help-me-please channel.

[@Ne0_Vect0r]

Really the only thing missing is scripting functionality

[@Ne0_Vect0r]

I know there's a plugin but it's not great and doesn't integrate into the permissions scheme But really besides that.. it's just PERFECT already!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

You can run remote scripts and commands. Is that what you mean?

[@warmsmells]

@@AwesomeOpenSource they probably mean something more along the lines of policy based automations across endpoints. Tactical rmm can do that, and is built on meshcentral, but since Trmm is source available and not really "open source" I tend to shy away from it.

[@user-od6gi4lz8t]

Reporting as well

[@tjmarx]

I don't understand the concern with requesting user permission to remote in when you're inside an organisation. One assumes all employees are trusted persons allowed to undertake the actions they've been provide access to. Let me give you two examples Scenario 1: Betty works in accounts receiving. She calls the internal IT support line and gets her fellow employee Dave. She tells Dave that a network drive she needs access to is no longer showing up. Dave knows from the past that Betty is technologically illiterate and somehow regularly disconnects the drive mapping. He determines he needs to remote in to remap the drive to windows. They are both employees with qualified access and all policies and procedures have been followed. What's the benefit here of asking Betty whom isn't reliable to click yes, for permission to access the system vs Dave simply logging in and fixing Betty's problem while she has her break. In the former, Dave either has to drop everything to connect immediately or Betty has to wait around doing nothing until Dave tries to remote in. Scenario 2: A legacy piece of hardware has a new driver that needs to be manually installed in order for the hardware to continue working on windows. IT determines that 23 machines will need to be updated. If they try to run these updates during work hours it will impact productivity so management have asked IT to sort this out at the end of the day once everyone else has left. What is the benefit in this scenario of paying overtime to 23 additional staff members just to grant remote permission when IT finally get up to their machine vs just having IT staff members be able to remote in as they need? It's pretty normal for RMM to include unattended access for reasons just like the 2 scenarios above. I don't understand why you don't like it.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Awesome examples! From an "internal" IT perspective you are right. It's better to have that access I suppose, but as a person who uses a work machine in my home, I don't like the idea of an IT person having access all the time without me knowing...not because I want to be sitting here when they get on, or because I'm doing anything on my work machine that I shouldn't be. My reasoning is the webcam that is on that machine, looking off into my home where my family is at. While none of us are doing anything inappropriate, I am extremely protective of their privacy, and them in general. So the thought that someone could jump on my machine at any time, and look into my home is just kind of creepy. My solutions: 1. Unplug USB cameras. 2. Use sticky notes over attached cameras (i don't even trust the little shutters that some laptops come with). 3. Run laptops in clamshell mode as much as possible. That said, those are my hangups, and not everyone's hangups. I use MeshCentral for a client business now, and it's a wonderful tool. I just like them to know when I'm connecting / connected. I love your thoughts and takes on all of these products, so thank you for sharing!

[@tjmarx]

@@AwesomeOpenSource That's fair, I knew I had to be missing something. I agree that would be creepy. I'm not sure what privacy legislation is like where you are or your employers internal policies. I suppose it's possible there could exist a scenario where accessing an employee's webcam is both legal and within company policy, but I don't think I'd agree to work for such a company. The solution if this is a possibility is one of those 50c plastic stick on webcam covers. You know the kind that slide open and closed? Indeed I'd recommend them for everyone as a basic hardware intrusion mitigation device from malicious actors. In Australia it would be a violation of The Privacy Act (1988) for an IT worker to access the webcam of an employee for any reason. It's legal to have any kind of camera directed at an employee specifically. It's punishable by major fines for the company and the individual IT worker, and opens them both to civil suit from the affected employee. If the device is in the employees home and the act takes place outside of work hours, in Australia that would be considered a "cyber crime" paramount to "hacking" and bring mandatory gaol time for the person accessing the webcam. I would hope the number of companies that do not have a policy making such an act an instantly fireable offence would at very least be very small. Certainly the org I head has these policies in place. I don't consider access to a webcam an IT support act, and certainly in my experience with commercial industry standard RMM solutions such as solarwinds or Itarian don't even have options for accessing the webcam afaik. I am aware tools like teamviewer have this option but those tools require multiple steps from the end users to grant access. It's not something I ever considered because it isn't something I ever considered reasonable let alone legal behaviour

[@MarcosCastro-v5n]

any thoughts how to set this up to run local without using a reverse proxy since it will not be on the cloud. After I installed and created the admin account I am getting the "Invalid origin in HTTP request, click to reconnect." My url is pointing to the host's local/private IP address.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

No, it should run locally fine. Just don't fill out the Proxy settings at all, and leave it false.

[@MarcosCastro-v5n]

@@AwesomeOpenSource Thanks for the fast response. I will give that a shot, I realized the hostname cannot be the IP address because it generates warnings about security. I want to thank you for your channel and the wonderful and super informative videos.

[@TheTimeProphet]

I haven't got a reverse proxy. What do I do?

[@TheGreatestMajesty]

OpenAwesomeSource has videos on Nginx Proxy Manager, which is a free open source reverse proxy. Pull up his vids and follow the install

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Are you running this on a VPS, in your home lab, beind a firewall, just for internal use, or what? Need some specifics in order to help.

[@TheTimeProphet]

@@AwesomeOpenSource Just for internal use. Running it on Hp Proliant server

[@user-od6gi4lz8t]

Unfortunately the software has been abandoned

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

It hasn’t. The developers of it used to work for intel, but have moved to new jobs. They still do work now and then, but do not focus on it full time.

[@user-od6gi4lz8t]

@@AwesomeOpenSource Let’s see, but I don’t think so, they actually work at Microsoft. The fact that Intel basically dismantled their department is not a good signal… Intel must be the company that push vPro features not Microsoft, so I skeptical about further development.

[@scenario6937]

How to get rdp please tell me

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

What do you mean? I show you several ways of connecting via the WebRTC, and WebRDP through the software.

[@scenario6937]

@@AwesomeOpenSource its free or paid

[@prototry]

@@scenario6937 bro this channel is literally named awesome open source. How do you expect something to not be free 💀

[@Glatze603]

@@prototry open source is not to be confused with free, but in this case, it is 🙂

[@FriendOfAndyWithAnA]

With this client/server tool, do I need to have Windows Professional to get RDP access or does the client provide that function? I have several Windows 10 Home systems that I can’t RDP to otherwise. I’m really looking for something that adds that RDP or VNC option to Windows Home where it doesn’t have it otherwise.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

No, RDP isn't required to use the web interface, so Professional isn't a requirement that I'm aware of.

[@hakimjafri900]

why can't my device connect when using a different wifi, is this because my meshcentral is still not secure. I'm stuck I made this for my college project final.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

If your Install has a fully qualified domain name, and that domain can be reached across networks, then it will work. IF however, you haven't the ability to setup firewall rules, that may be an issue. I'd say make sure you have the right ports forwarded in order to get traffic moving into the network from outside of it (e.g. from other networks, and / or across the internet).

[@hakimjafri900]

@@AwesomeOpenSource I already have a domain but I don't know how to make it fully qualified

[@hakimjafri900]

@@AwesomeOpenSource if I follow your way which uses nginx boot proxy. I don't know how to do that. Can you suggest me another way to get a host? My domain is connected to cloudflare but I don't know what else I need. when I enter the domain and I try to run it, then it will say 'does not match name in TLS certificate: un-configured, localhost'

[@cozma73]

Hi , I have server 2016 rebooting when I connect to the desktop.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

That's a very odd issue. Anything in the windows event log? Seems like it shouldn't cause that just to connect to the desktop.

[@cozma73]

@@AwesomeOpenSource Good afternoon, the only mistake is an unexpected shutdown. The problem appears only on one computer, when connecting to any RDP session

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Sorry to hear that. I'm not very familiar with Windows overall, so not sure I could help you.