By default, the user interface sets up a single network socket listening to all interfaces on a system provided port. The default network socket is advertised via Bonjour.

The default socket's unique identifier is uk.co.dssw.powermanager.systempreference.remote-management. You should avoid altering sockets whose name begins with uk.co.dssw.powermanager. This namespace is reserved for use by Power Manager's graphical and command line tools.

Power Manager can be set up to listen to more than one network socket.

You can add additional sockets for remote management using the command line pmctl tool, or with an AppleScript script.

To create a remote management socket with a fix port number (1234) listening on all network interfaces, see Example 1.13, “Creating a fixed port socket”.

bash% cd '/Library/Application Support/Power Manager/Tools'
bash% ./pmctl listen.applysocket 'unique ID=Fixed' 'port=1234'

Remote management is provided by the Listen API object. The Listen object provides an interface for creating (listen.applysocket), listing (listen.sockets), and removing (listen.removesocket) network sockets.

The listen.applysocket command accepts a range of parameters. The parameters are all optional. Power Manager will choose a suitable default for each missing parameter.

The command above creates a listening socket on port 1234 with the unique identifier 1234.

To check the socket has been created and is listening, issue the commands in Example 1.14, “Listing the fixed port socket details”.

bash% ./pmctl listen.sockets
[{"port"=>1234.000000,"protocol family"=>"IPv4","state"=>"listening","unique ID"=>"Fixed","URLs"=>["pm://Mac-Pro.local:1234"]}]

You can immediately start using your new socket.

To remove a remote management socket, issue the commands in Example 1.15, “Remove the fixed port socket”.

bash% ./pmctl listen.removesocket 'unique ID=Fixed'

The listen.removesocket command removes the socket with the provided unique identifier.

Remote management connections are secure. All connections are encrypted using SSL/TLS industry standard encryption. Authentication and authorisation are provided by Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM), in additional to a secondary group membership check within Power Manager.

# Power Manager remote management configuration for OpenPAM
auth       required       pam_opendirectory.so
account    required       pam_permit.so
account    required       pam_group.so no_warn group=admin,wheel fail_safe
password   required       pam_deny.so
session    required       pam_permit.so

# Restrict remote management to members of group admin and wheel.
# DssW Power Manager / http://www.dssw.co.uk/powermanager/

# Power Manager remote management configuration for Linux-PAM
auth       sufficient     pam_securityserver.so
auth       sufficient     pam_unix.so
auth       required       pam_deny.so
account    required       pam_permit.so
password   required       pam_deny.so
session    required       pam_permit.so

# Restrict remote management to known users (including non-admin users)
# Power Manager implements an additional check for specific group membership.
# DssW Power Manager / http://www.dssw.co.uk/powermanager/

bash% defaults write /Library/Preferences/uk.co.dssw.powermanager remotemanagement.groups -array admin wheel