webCommander 4.0 Installation Using Proxy

Introduction

Finally, I found some spare time to upgrade webCommander from 2.0 to 4.0. To make this work, I first had to replace my Windows 2008 R2 to Windows 2012 R2 to upgrade PowerShell to 4.0. PowerShell could be upgraded without OS replacement but it was a good opportunity to try 2012 R2 out.

With webCommander 4.0 release, Jerry (@9whirls) has written an excellent automatic installation script (can be found here) that downloads all pre-requisites from the internet, installs IIS…etc. Since my VM was in private network that didn’t have access to outside network, I first tried it by configuring proxy connection within IE setting.

However, got an error message when I ran the script that is attached below.

Exception calling "DownloadFile" with "2" argument(s): "The remote server returned an error: (407) Proxy
Authentication Required."
At C:\Users\administrator\Desktop\setup.ps1:66 char:2
    + $webClient.downloadfile($packageUrl, "C:\WebCommander\$packageName")
    + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [], ParentContainsErrorRecordException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : WebException

Throughout this blog post, I will aid people who’s trying to install webCommander 4.0 but the VM is in a private network that doesn’t have access to internet.

Script Modification

As the script was already using WebClient object, all I had to create was a new WebProxy object to parse the proxy IP address and credentials. In the parameter field, I added in:

1. IP Address or hostname of the proxy server. Bear in mind, it requires the appropriate port to be specified in the end. Example is attached below.
2. Username/password that has the access to the proxy server.

The change needs to be made are in bold and italic below.

Parameter

Param (
    $packageUrl = 'https://github.com/vmware/webcommander/archive/master.zip',
    $authentication = 'Windows',
    $adminPassword = '', # administrator password of the windows machine where webcommander is located
    $defaultPassword = '', # default password used to communicate with vSphere, VM and remote machine
    $proxyAddress = '', # IP or hostname of the proxy server. Include the port number in the end. For example, 'proxytest.test.com:3128'
    $proxyUserName = '',
    $proxyUserPassword = ''
)

Once 3 parameters were added in, used one if/else statement to ensure parameters for proxy configuration were entered in. After that, all I had to do was:

• Define one WebProxy object with proxy server address in the parameter field.
• Define a PSCredential object also from the parameter above.
• Use above defined two objects information for the WebClient object.

Again, modification required are in bold and italic below.

WebClient + WebProxy

if ($proxyAddress -and $proxyUserName -and $proxyUserPassword) {
    $webClient = New-Object System.Net.WebClient
    $webProxy = New-Object System.Net.WebProxy($proxyAddress, $true)
    $proxyCredential = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential($proxyUserName, (ConvertTo-SecureString $proxyUserPassword -AsPlainText -Force))
    $webProxy.Credentials = $proxyCredential
    $webClient.Proxy = $webProxy
} else {
    $webClient = new-object system.net.webclient
}

Once the modification was made, ran the script and wallah, it worked!

Navigated to webCommand URL and was successful.

Wrap-Up

In near future, I will commit the change above so that whoever requires proxy to install webCommander wouldn’t need to make a change above.

Hope this blogs helped and always welcome to ping me for any issues or suggestions.