Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect

smartkid808

Hi Again Scott!..lol OK, did that, and it comes back

scottalanmiller

Is there much connected there yet? Honestly, I'd start over with a good install. You really don't want this running out of your home directory or as an end user. You want it installed by root under /opt.

Just do...

sudo -i su
cd /opt
npm install meshcentral

Stay out of end user land and home directories for all things involving MeshCentral.

smartkid808

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:

Honestly, I'd start over with a good install. You really don't want this running out of your home directory or as an end user. You want it installed by root under /opt.

I have a backup from the other week. I think I just put the user account since thats what the setup put me thru. Can't exactly remember.

do the above command after I reload Ubuntu?

Scott

@scottalanmiller I followed the MC install guide for Ubuntu and it read the following: "In all cases, MeshCentral must not be installed as root user. It’s not secure and the instructions below will not work correctly," which is why I installed in userland.

scottalanmiller

@Scott said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:

@scottalanmiller I followed the MC install guide for Ubuntu and it read the following: "In all cases, MeshCentral must not be installed as root user. It’s not secure and the instructions below will not work correctly," which is why I installed in userland.

I see that it says that. That definitely conflicts with all of their other documentation, including further up in the document itself.

scottalanmiller

@Scott the Ubuntu instructions also aren't updated for the last two Ubuntu releases, and forget to have you make the directory. The "quick" instructions at the top of the document for all versions are way more complete and simple.

Also, I just realized, because you followed those Ubuntu directions instead of the generic ones, that's why you have less RAM available. You must have installed MongoDB. That will use a lot more resources because it is running a full database server which you really have no need for until you have many hundreds, possibly thousands, of end points to manage. It's not a problem, you are just set up for a much larger style of install than the basic default one, so it uses more RAM.

scottalanmiller

@Scott I used the NPM instructions on page 3 rather than the Ubuntu instructions.

Scott

Thank for the replies.

Yes, I have MongoDB in use. I intend to have many more clients than I am currently working with.

Do you recommend reinstalling and while I am at it maybe do it on Fedora? May I import existing clients or does that require reinstalling them?

I have also yet to set up Let's Encrypt.

scottalanmiller

This page...

https://www.meshcommander.com/meshcentral2/installation

Leads to this one for install instructions...

https://www.npmjs.com/package/meshcentral

scottalanmiller

@Scott said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:

Do you recommend reinstalling and while I am at it maybe do it on Fedora? May I import existing clients or does that require reinstalling them?

I use Ubuntu, works great. I use 19.04, which is noticeably faster than 18.10.

scottalanmiller

@Scott said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:

Yes, I have MongoDB in use. I intend to have many more clients than I am currently working with.

I've not found a point where MongoDB would be useful. The built in DB is screaming fast.

Ylian

@smartkid808 If you see this error:

Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/home/wscheele/views/layouts/main.handlebars'

This was due to a new version of express-handlebars 3.1.0 that broke MeshCentral. I released a new version of MeshCentral last night v0.3.4-k with a fix for this.

smartkid808

@Ylian said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:

@smartkid808 If you see this error:
Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/home/wscheele/views/layouts/main.handlebars'
This was due to a new version of express-handlebars 3.1.0 that broke MeshCentral. I released a new version of MeshCentral last night v0.3.4-k with a fix for this.

Thanks Ylin, anyway to fix without complete wipe and reload? or would you recommend a wipe reload? I do have a backup from 2 weeks ago, and would only loose 1 client that was attached (if they are lost when restore is done).

smartkid808

@smartkid808 said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:

@Ylian said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:
@smartkid808 If you see this error:
Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/home/wscheele/views/layouts/main.handlebars'
This was due to a new version of express-handlebars 3.1.0 that broke MeshCentral. I released a new version of MeshCentral last night v0.3.4-k with a fix for this.
Thanks Ylin, anyway to fix without complete wipe and reload? or would you recommend a wipe reload? I do have a backup from 2 weeks ago, and would only loose 1 client that was attached (if they are lost when restore is done).

ok, I got it back up some how.. I updated linux by finding this (might not be right command)... Usually I just run apt-get update then upgrade every so often.

I think this is what I did

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

cd /home/wscheele/node_modules/

sudo npm install meshcentral

Still got odd errors, but tried to start it manually, and it started (it wasn't starting after server updates for some reason)

cd /home/wscheele/node_modules/

node meshcentral

Now to redo the auto start thing.. Hope I can figure this out again.. I prob did part of this if not all of this wrong. But I have no clue what I was doing and it's not production, so wasn't too worried.

I do also want to disable the create account thing.. I will look into that to I guess

Ylian

@smartkid808 As long as you have a backup of "meshcentral-data" and "meshcentral-files" you should be fine. You can wipe the "node_modules" folder and just do "npm install meshcentral" again to get it back and you in business again. Or wipe everything, install from fresh and put the "data" and "files" folders back. There is nothing magical in "node-modules" so you can keep a copy of it just in case or wipe it and re-install anytime.

Note that your should run "npm install meshcentral" in the "/home/wscheele" folder in your case. Don't go in the "node_modules" folder that run "npm install", always run that command outside the "node_modules" folder.

Ylian

@scottalanmiller Your right, the built-in DB (called NeDB) is really fast and will probably handle a 1000 devices without any issues and with much less RAM than MongoDB. I run MeshCentral on Raspberry Pi and AWS t3.nano instances and you really don't need MongoDB.

On another note, seems like I will need to take a look at MeshCentral installation on the latest Ubuntu versions

scottalanmiller

@Ylian said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:

On another note, seems like I will need to take a look at MeshCentral installation on the latest Ubuntu versions

19.04 running well.

scottalanmiller

@Ylian said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:

Your right, the built-in DB (called NeDB) is really fast and will probably handle a 1000 devices without any issues and with much less RAM than MongoDB. I run MeshCentral on Raspberry Pi and AWS t3.nano instances and you really don't need MongoDB.

We should make a conversion guide, too

Ylian

@scottalanmiller Agreed, I use...

node node_modules/meshcentral --dbexport bob.json

then setup MongoDB in the "meshcentral-data/config.json" and do

node node_modules/meshcentral --dbimport bob.json

However, I need to write this up more formally. This technique will also not migrate general events and power events, so I got some improvements to make.

Ylian

@Ylian Actually... section 8.4 of the MeshCentral User's Guide does explain how to do the conversion.