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Ylianst / MeshCentral

A complete web-based remote monitoring and management web site. Once setup you can install agents and perform remote desktop session to devices on the local network or over the Internet.
https://meshcentral.com
Apache License 2.0
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Short IDs for Agents #2179

Open cristianadrielbraun opened 3 years ago

cristianadrielbraun commented 3 years ago

Yes, I know this has been discussed before, and I don't like to ask too much, since I'm aware you are full-time working on this project.

That being said: Is there a chance that you include a short ID for the agents? I know I'm not the only one asking for this, I've seen this request here before. It should be a short, numeric one. Something like a 8 to 10 digits ID. (like 548-658-1564, or something like that)

This may not have A LOT of sense given how MeshCentral is intended to work, but the relative new existence of the MeshCentralAssistance can give to this a new purpose. You can ask to the client for the short ID to identification, and find that ID on the MeshCentral Dashboard. This can be useful on both temporal mode (showing this ID on the Mesh Agent window itself) and installed mode (using, for example, MeshCentralAssisntace)

Please! I know a lot of people would like this, and (at least in my ignorance) I think it would be so easy to add this feature. Since MeshCentral already assign an ID to the Agents, I think it should be easy to simply add a second one.

krayon007 commented 3 years ago

Since MeshCentral already assign an ID to the Agents, I think it should be easy to simply add a second one.

The server doesn't actually assign an ID to the agent. The agent presents it's ID to the server, where the cryptographic ID is based on a certificate, such that the agent can prove it's identity to the server. Tags maybe useful for what you are describing? I've done shortcuts, like on the meshcore identifier, I run a CRC over the hash, since the hash is so long... But in this case, I'm not trying to uniquely identify it, I just wanted a short hand way to identify if two cores are dissimilar with something more human friendly than a SHA384 hash.

cristianadrielbraun commented 3 years ago

Since MeshCentral already assign an ID to the Agents, I think it should be easy to simply add a second one.

The server doesn't actually assign an ID to the agent. The agent presents it's ID to the server, where the cryptographic ID is based on a certificate, such that the agent can prove it's identity to the server. Tags maybe useful for what you are describing? I've done shortcuts, like on the meshcore identifier, I run a CRC over the hash, since the hash is so long... But in this case, I'm not trying to uniquely identify it, I just wanted a short hand way to identify if two cores are dissimilar with something more human friendly than a SHA384 hash.

When I was testing this, I actually did it using Agent Tags (Not the regular "Tags" but "Agent Tags", that seemed more appropiated). And acually worked well. But I was wondering if this can be inbuilt out of the box, because the thing is I needed to do my own installer or script, and I have no problem with that, but maybe not everyone is have the time/resources for that

Ylianst commented 3 years ago

So, the request, if I understand correctly, is not just about short identifiers. We need a way for a user to be able to read a short number that the administrator can type in MeshCentral to find that computer quickly. So, we need a way for the user to get the number and a way to quickly search for it. Is that correct?

cristianadrielbraun commented 3 years ago

So, the request, if I understand correctly, is not just about short identifiers. We need a way for a user to be able to read a short number that the administrator can type in MeshCentral to find that computer quickly. So, we need a way for the user to get the number and a way to quickly search for it. Is that correct?

Well.. yes.

But I think this this could be easy to archieve. When the agent is in temporary mode, you could just add it to the shown info. Something like: image (Sorry for the bad editing)

And when already installed, using the meshcentral assistant, could be something like this:

image

At least that's how I imagine it

cristianadrielbraun commented 3 years ago

Hey! I know this is super low priority, and I feel sorry for asking but.. Was this added to the roadmap? 😇