Using WCF to start a remote process by WMI

Question

I wanted to start a process (not interactive, small console application) on a remote machine by making a call to WMI from WCF service. This is meant to be a WCF operation that user will run from web application.

I implemented the code from codeproject, and my operation fails on InvokeMethod function. The error is 'Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED)'.

I tested the WMI connection by using WBEMTEST tool and it works great with the same set of parameters (path to remote server, user name/password, path to application meant to run) both from PC in the same and in the other domain. The account used for impersonation was set up like in this tutorial. Since it works with WBEMTEST, are there any specific things to check when using WCF to make this call? I read that setting wmiProviderEnabled to 'true' in the diagnostics section of web.config might help, but it didn't.

Answer 1

Finally I was able to fix this issue.

First, I applied to my configuration everything what is described in this article under paragraphs 'Enabling WMI' and 'Security'. It was not enough, and in my investigation I found a possible bug in the aforementioned codeproject source code. In the StartProcess function located in the ProcessMethod class, the connectionScope was not being added to the ManagementClass. Hence, I added a ManagementScope connectionScope parameter to the constructor and then filled the processTask.Scope. Please take a look at my updated StartPtocess function:

public static int StartProcess(string machineName, string processPath, ManagementScope connnectionScope, int timeout)
{
    ManagementClass processTask = new ManagementClass(@"\\" + machineName + @"\root\CIMV2",
                                                                    "Win32_Process", null);
    processTask.Scope = connnectionScope;
    ManagementBaseObject methodParams = processTask.GetMethodParameters("Create");
    methodParams["CommandLine"] = processPath;
    InvokeMethodOptions options = new InvokeMethodOptions();
    options.Timeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(timeout);
    ManagementBaseObject exitCode = processTask.InvokeMethod("Create", methodParams, null);

    return Convert.ToInt32(exitCode["ReturnValue"].ToString());
}

ManagementScope is created in ProcessLocal/ProcessRemote constructors.

This fixed my problem. Hope it helps someone.