WSL(1)

πŸ‘‘ WSL β€” the whistle girlies' guide πŸ’…

okay bestie, so this is wsl β€” aka "whistle" πŸŽ€ β€” and she's a shell based command line client for WSMAN servers. Let's get into it.


✨ NAME ✨

wsl β€” a shell based command line client for WSMAN servers. that's the whole vibe. πŸ¦‹


🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so wsl (aka "whistle", so cute) is a whole lil collection of scripts that work as a client interface to WSMAN, which is short for Web Services for Management protocol, built on the DMTF standard specification. and WSMAN itself? it provides standards based messaging for systems management CIM-style objects. standards based messaging, we love to see it. πŸ’–

okay so the first thing you're gonna do, to talk to a remote WSMAN service, is start with:

wsl id check

that command is gonna ask for the IP address, user name and password for the remote server, and then it populates a file called .wslrun in the current directory. 🌈 after that first run, you can just use all the commands listed below without having to hand over your IP address, user name and password over and over again β€” that's the default behavior, periodt. ✨

but (and this is the fun part) you can configure wsl so it always asks for the IP address, or the IP address and user credential, for each and every command β€” in case you wanna work with more than one target. multitasking queen behavior. πŸ‘‘

the environmental variables that could affect the behavior of wsl are listed in the README file. go look, iykyk. πŸ“–

help info comes at different levels, which is honestly so considerate of her:

  • typing wsl gives you help information about the available commands.
  • typing wsl enum gives you help information about the enum command and its parameters.
  • typing wsl enum help gives you the same information as wsl enum. same info, different doorway, we love options. 🫢

πŸ”₯ OPTIONS πŸ”₯

every single one, bestie. no skips. πŸ’œ

  • e | enum | enumerate β€” sends a SOAP message with the WS-MAN ENUMERATE command. equivalent to calling wslenum directly.
  • id | identify β€” sends a SOAP message with the WS-MAN IDENTIFY command. equivalent to calling wslid directly.
  • i | invoke β€” sends a SOAP message with the WS-MAN INVOKE command. equivalent to calling wslinvoke directly.
  • g | get β€” sends a SOAP message with the WS-MAN GET command. equivalent to calling wslget directly.
  • p | put β€” sends a SOAP message with the WS-MAN PUT command. equivalent to calling wslput directly.
  • s | set β€” see put. πŸ‘€
  • xcert β€” command to extract the SSL certificate of the server hosting WSMAN. πŸ”
  • xclean β€” command to remove/delete the files generated by this tool. spring cleaning energy 🧹
  • xcred β€” command to encrypt username and password to a file. the same command can be used for decrypting that same file for verification. equivalent to calling wslcred directly. πŸ”‘

πŸ’– AUTHENTICATION πŸ’–

wsl supports basic and digest authentication mechanisms. you'll get prompted for user name and password at run time β€” or you can just hand those values straight to the environment variables WSUSER and WSPASS. dealer's choice. ✨

now, a more secure method is to use the light encryption method that wsl provides. see the xcred command option. it creates a credential file containing the encrypted form of the user name and password. πŸŽ€ to use it, simply provide that filename to WSUSER prefixed with FILE:. and in that case? you do not have to provide WSPASS at all. slay. πŸ’…


πŸ¦‹ FILES πŸ¦‹

  • ~/.wsl-config β€” this file contains custom user-configurable information that could affect the behavior of wsl. if it's not there, this file gets created the first time wsl is used. refer to the README file for more information. πŸ“
  • $PWD/.wslrun β€” this file contains environment variables that get populated the first time wsl is run, and then used on subsequent runs. it includes the user password, so if security is a concern, try to use the encrypted version (see the xcred command) β€” or you may turn off creation of this file using the custom user configuration (see .wsl-config).
⚠️ bestie real talk: $PWD/.wslrun literally has your password in it. if that's a vibe check you're worried about, go encrypted or switch that file's creation off. πŸ™ˆ

wsl is Copyright (c) 2011, Dell Inc. License: BSD3C or similar.


🌟 AUTHORS 🌟

Created by Chris A. Poblete <www.linkedin.com/in/chrispoblete>. πŸ’«


and that's the whole page, angel 🫢 β€” it lives in your User Commands section as WSL(1), and the manual itself signs off as WSL(1) down at the bottom too, so if you ever see that lonely little WSL(1) footer, that's just her waving bye. bye bestie, go enumerate something πŸ‘‘πŸ’–βœ¨

πŸ“¦ where this page comes from