This program is distributed without warranties or gaurantees.
Description:
Away Commander allows you to leave downloads unattended and to turn off your computer remotely when they are finished. You leave your computer on (with your away message off) and you sign into www.aim.com with a secondary or friend's screen name to communicate and control your computer!
It uses the AOL instant messaging service to relay commands to the computer and information from the computer. The user is allowed to specify windows and text to be watched while the he/she is away. A command can be sent to the computer asking for the status of the download. When the download completes, it is possible to shutdown the computer remotely after logging in and providing a password.
It is also possible to execute Windows Scripts on the computer remotely to extend the abilities of the program.
The Program was developed to work with AOL 9.0 and AIM 5.2 It may work with other versions, probably AOL 7, 8 and previous versions of AIM.
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Operation:
- First run the program and press the 'properties' button in the client window.
- The first tab allows you to add/remove users from the list. When you add the user, you also provide a password that they must know in order to login. Once a user has been created, you grant permissions to the user for which set of commands they are allowed to execute. The permission decreases from left to right.
- The second tab lets you specify the permission levels for the commands. Each permission level correpsponds to the levels on the user tab. For instance, a user with an accesslevel of 'user' will be allowd to execute commands with that priveledge level or lower (user, guest, doghouse).
- The last tab is unused.
- To operate, Instant Mesage (IM) the screen name being monitored. If no commands are recognized, Awaycommander returns the away message. Otherwise it processes the command and sends a return message.
- The IM session is turn based. It only recognizes the first keyword it is sent and closes the window. The session is preserved through the name of the person sending the IM.
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The Monitor button bring up this window which allows you to select any window on the screen (and some off) to read them in 10 second intervals. |
Commands:
/help : This keyword lists all of the current actions availiabe to the user. If the user is logged out, the default commands availiable are ' /login ' /status ' /help ' and ' /password '
/status : if the user has the permission level, it oupts the text contents of the currently monitored windows. If there are no windows open being monitored (they closed) it displays the phrase ' Hunkey Dorey '. By default, this command is availiable without logging in.
/login : this keyword allows the user to specify the login name they wish to attempt to sign in under.
/password : the user then sends the password after the confirmation, if it is accepted, the user is logged in and the session is recorded.
/logout : ends the user's session and returns them to the default guest level. also caches the session
/listscripts : lists the scripts located in the user's script directory. The script directory is created and filled before hand. program Dir/username/scripts
/executescript : executes a script located in the user's directory.
/exitwindows : Immediately shuts down the computer without prompting the user.
Technical:
The program uses the name of the person sending the IM to identify the session. Generic sessions are logged as well as login sessions to the logfile.txt in the program directory.
When a user logs out that entire session is logged to the file. The file is written over everytime you run the program (to keep it from growing out of control).
Bugs:
- When a user executes a script that produces a message box, the program will not reply with confirmation the script has run.
- The Change password button doesn't work, simply delete the user and recreate them.