Introduction to External Applications
External applications can help you get things done that can't be done in
mRemote.
You can for example start a CMD Console or launch your favorite FTP tool from
within mRemote.
This wouldn't make much sense by itself because you can already launch your
applications by using the Windows Start Menu, Quick Launch or whatever you
prefer to use
to start your apps.
But there's more!
In mRemote you can launch applications and tell them what to do with the use of
arguments (parameters) and variables of the currently selected Connection.
You can for example select your home router's SSH Connection entry and do a
traceroute (tracert) on that host.
This is much more comfortable and powerful than opening the console and typing tracert YourHost.
Notes:
Variables
Variables and arguments can be used to tell the ext. app what to do.
Here's a list of variables currently supported by mRemote:
The variables always refer to the currently selected Connection.
Example
First of all start the Ext. Apps management interface. To do this click Tools in the main menu and
select External Applications.
You will see a screen like on the following screenshot.
The fields below the list are greyed out because you haven't created a Ext. App
entry yet.
To create one right click the blank area in the list and select Add like in the
screenshot below.
This is what you'll get:
So the three fields are now available and need to be filled.
The Display Name is simply the name you will see when you want to launch that
application, so give it a descriptive name.
I named mine Traceroute as I will create a Ext. App launcher that will do a
tracert command in the console.
Ok, the next thing we'll need is a filename. This is the application that we
want to be executed.
I simply type in cmd for a windows cmd console.
Now the fun part comes in - the arguments.
The windows cmd has a command line argument that tells the console to launch the
command followed by that argument and stay open.
It's /K. (There's also /C, this is useful when you want the console to close
after the command was executed)
In this case I'll use /K as I want to scan through the result when the command
completes.
After that I just type tracert %HostName%. This tells the console to do a
traceroute on the hostname of the currently selected Connection.
Alright! That's all we'll need.
Now right click one of you connections, click Tools, External Applications
and select Traceroute.
Voilą! A console window will popup and execute your tracert command.