How to get details of drives of system over LAN via IP address

[sanjeevtarar]

Hello All,

I need to get all drives details of a system over the LAN, i have an program that gives the localhost's system details like all drives and files and folders within localhost system.

Thanks,
Sanjeev

[sabre150]

I hope you can't "get all drives details of a system over the LAN" without the cooperation of the owners since to my mind this would represent a security hole. Why do you think you need this information?

[sanjeevtarar]

Hello,

Thanks for your reply, the owners will allow to see the information.

[DarrylBurke]

I think you missed sabre150's point. Also, you didn't answer his question.

db

[sanjeevtarar]

I think you missed sabre150's point. Also, you didn't answer his question.

db

I need to generate a report that shows all the files on all the machines that are connected to LAN.

[sabre150]

Hello,

Thanks for your reply, the owners will allow to see the information.

I am always worried when I see a requirement such as you are asking for; I can't see what the powers that be can hope to do with the information. Of course the information will depend on what OS the machines are running and what mountable drives are currently mounted.

Looks to me like you are going to either
a) setup a server on each machine which responds to a request with the desired information. Something like Tomcat could be used for that with a simple Servlet that extracts the information from the system.
or
b) create a process on each machine which broadcasts the desired information. Almost any programming language could be used for this.

[sabre150]

I need to generate a report that shows all the files on all the machines that are connected to LAN.

So each day/week/month someone is going to have to go though the report looking for err... what? I'm glad I don't work for your company.

[sanjeevtarar]

So each day/week/month someone is going to have to go though the report looking for err... what? I'm glad I don't work for your company.

Instead of discussing nontechnical things can i have any idea if you have, please.

[sabre150]

Instead of discussing nontechnical things can i have any idea if you have, please.

Err ... I have given you two technical solutions! 'Discussion' is a two way process and you have not commented on my technical solutions so from my point of view there is nothing technical to discuss.

[sanjeevtarar]

Err ... I have given you two technical solutions!

I think you have not provided the solutions instead you provided the points/alternative ways to do this.....i want to know how to do this. Some API guide to do this.

[Tolls]

I think sabre150 is pointing out to you that you are going to have to write this.
It's not something that a normal setup actually uses, so is unlikely to be found in an existing API.
Not everything in our industry is downloadable from the internet. Especially things with odd requirements.

[sabre150]

I think you have not provided the solutions instead you provided the points/alternative ways to do this.....i want to know how to do this. Some API guide to do this.

Until now that was not obvious from anything you have posted in this thread. You could of course have communicated this in response to the technical solutions I gave earlier rather than just ignoring it.

You need to use a whole load of different features - not just one API. Since you didn't say otherwise I assumed that your problem area was in communicating the information from each system to the computer doing the analysis. It now seems that you have not got that far and your problem is the more basic one of getting the information in the first place.

You need to first of all find all the drives on a system. The easiest approach here is to use FileSystemView.getFileSystemView().getRoots() but you need to understand the limitations.

Second you need to recursively traverse each root and build a list of all the files (File.listFiles()). This is likely to be a very slow process since it has to visit and list the content of every directory. Of course here you will run into security problems since on Windows this may need to run as Administrator and on *nix this will have to run a 'root' . Since one should never run as Administrator or 'root' unless it is absolutely necessary this is the start of the security nightmare.

Finally you need to sent the information back for the report generation. I dealt with possible approaches to that earlier but this is likely to be a very very big security issue.

You may think me perverse but I really do find it difficult to understand the rationale for what you are doing and if you are a professional you should be communicating any reservations back to the people who have given you the requirement and not just implementing whatever they throw at you.

[JosAH]

It's not something that a normal setup actually uses, so is unlikely to be found in an existing API.

Darn, so you're saying there is no giveMeAllInfoINeedFromAllDrivesFromAllSystemsYouCa nReach() method anywhere? What a disappointment Java is ...

kind regards,

Jos

[sanjeevtarar]

Darn, so you're saying there is no giveMeAllInfoINeedFromAllDrivesFromAllSystemsYouCa nReach() method anywhere? What a disappointment Java is ...

kind regards,

Jos

Josah,

I didn't mean to have an such program that returns everything in one go. I just wanted to discuss the things with different minds that how best i can write the program for the same. And i have an program/API that gives the information about the local system.

File[] roots = File.listRoots();
for(int i=0;i<roots.length;i++)
   System.out.println("Root["+i+"]:" + roots[i]);

And

File file = new File("C:\\");
if (!file.exists() || !file.isDirectory()) {
   System.out.println("Parameter is not a directory");
   System.exit(1);
}

File[] fileArray = file.listFiles();
   for (int i = 0; i < fileArray.length; i++) {
      if (fileArray[i].isDirectory()) {
         System.out.println("- " + fileArray[i].getName());
      }
      else {
      System.out.println(fileArray[i].getName());
      }
}

I think you can better understand now.

[sanjeevtarar]

Until now that was not obvious from anything you have posted in this thread. You could of course have communicated this in response to the technical solutions I gave earlier rather than just ignoring it.

You need to use a whole load of different features - not just one API. Since you didn't say otherwise I assumed that your problem area was in communicating the information from each system to the computer doing the analysis. It now seems that you have not got that far and your problem is the more basic one of getting the information in the first place.

You need to first of all find all the drives on a system. The easiest approach here is to use FileSystemView.getFileSystemView().getRoots() but you need to understand the limitations.

Second you need to recursively traverse each root and build a list of all the files (File.listFiles()). This is likely to be a very slow process since it has to visit and list the content of every directory. Of course here you will run into security problems since on Windows this may need to run as Administrator and on *nix this will have to run a 'root' . Since one should never run as Administrator or 'root' unless it is absolutely necessary this is the start of the security nightmare.

Finally you need to sent the information back for the report generation. I dealt with possible approaches to that earlier but this is likely to be a very very big security issue.

You may think me perverse but I really do find it difficult to understand the rationale for what you are doing and if you are a professional you should be communicating any reservations back to the people who have given you the requirement and not just implementing whatever they throw at you.

Thanks for your details on API,

"There can be any type of requirements in this industry and it is now necessary that everything that is developed like this goes in wrong directions".