rpcclient - Man Page

• Connect to a remote host: rpcclient --user domain\username%password ip
• Connect to a remote host on a domain without a password: rpcclient --user username --workgroup domain --no-pass ip
• Connect to a remote host, passing the password hash: rpcclient --user domain\username --pw-nt-hash ip
• Execute shell commands on a remote host: rpcclient --user domain\username%password --command semicolon_separated_commands ip
• Display domain users: rpcclient $> enumdomusers
• Display privileges: rpcclient $> enumprivs
• Display information about a specific user: rpcclient $> queryuser username|rid
• Create a new user in the domain: rpcclient $> createdomuser username

tldr.sh

rpcclient [-c|--command=Commands] [-I|--dest-ip=IP] [-p|--port=PORT] [-?|--help] [--usage] [-d|--debuglevel=DEBUGLEVEL] [--debug-stdout] [--configfile=CONFIGFILE] [--option=name=value] [-l|--log-basename=LOGFILEBASE] [--leak-report] [--leak-report-full] [-R|--name-resolve=NAME-RESOLVE-ORDER] [-O|--socket-options=SOCKETOPTIONS] [-m|--max-protocol=MAXPROTOCOL] [-n|--netbiosname=NETBIOSNAME] [--netbios-scope=SCOPE] [-W|--workgroup=WORKGROUP] [--realm=REALM] [-U|--user=[DOMAIN/]USERNAME[%PASSWORD]] [-N|--no-pass] [--password=STRING] [--pw-nt-hash] [-A|--authentication-file=FILE] [-P|--machine-pass] [--simple-bind-dn=DN] [--use-kerberos=desired|required|off] [--use-krb5-ccache=CCACHE] [--use-winbind-ccache] [--client-protection=sign|encrypt|off] [-V|--version] {BINDING-STRING|HOST}

This tool is part of the samba(7) suite.

rpcclient is a utility initially developed to test MS-RPC functionality in Samba itself. It has undergone several stages of development and stability. Many system administrators have now written scripts around it to manage Windows NT clients from their UNIX workstation.

BINDING-STRING|HOST

When connecting to a dcerpc service you need to specify a binding string.

The format is:

TRANSPORT:host[options]

where TRANSPORT is either ncacn_np (named pipes) for SMB or ncacn_ip_tcp for DCERPC over TCP/IP.

"host" is an IP or hostname or netbios name. If the binding string identifies the server side of an endpoint, "host" may be an empty string. See below for more details.

"options" can include a SMB pipe name if using the ncacn_np transport or a TCP port number if using the ncacn_ip_tcp transport, otherwise they will be auto-determined.

Examples:

• ncacn_ip_tcp:samba.example.com[1024]
• ncacn_ip_tcp:samba.example.com[sign,seal,krb5]
• ncacn_ip_tcp:samba.example.com[sign,spnego]
• ncacn_np:samba.example.com
• ncacn_np:samba.example.com[samr]
• ncacn_np:samba.example.com[samr,sign,print]
• ncalrpc:/path/to/unix/socket
• //SAMBA

The supported transports are:

• ncacn_np - Connect using named pipes
• ncacn_ip_tcp - Connect over TCP/IP
• ncalrpc - Connect over local RPC (unix sockets)

The supported options are:

• sign - Use RPC integrity authentication level
• seal - Enable RPC privacy (encryption) authentication level
• connect - Use RPC connect level authentication (auth, but no sign or seal)
• packet - Use RPC packet authentication level
• spnego - Use SPNEGO instead of NTLMSSP authentication
• ntlm - Use plain NTLM instead of SPNEGO or NTLMSSP
• krb5 - Use Kerberos instead of NTLMSSP authentication
• schannel - Create a schannel connection
• smb1 - Use SMB1 for named pipes
• smb2 - Use SMB2/3 for named pipes
• validate - Enable the NDR validator
• print - Enable debug output of packets
• padcheck - Check reply data for non-zero pad bytes
• bigendian - Use big endian for RPC
• ndr64 - Use NDR64 for RPC

-c|--command=<command string>

Execute semicolon separated commands (listed below)

-I|--dest-ip IP-address

IP address is the address of the server to connect to. It should be specified in standard "a.b.c.d" notation.

Normally the client would attempt to locate a named SMB/CIFS server by looking it up via the NetBIOS name resolution mechanism described above in the name resolve order parameter above. Using this parameter will force the client to assume that the server is on the machine with the specified IP address and the NetBIOS name component of the resource being connected to will be ignored.

There is no default for this parameter. If not supplied, it will be determined automatically by the client as described above.

-p|--port port

This number is the TCP port number that will be used when making connections to the server. The standard (well-known) TCP port number for an SMB/CIFS server is 139, which is the default.

-?|--help

Print a summary of command line options.

--usage

Display brief usage message.

-d|--debuglevel=DEBUGLEVEL

level is an integer from 0 to 10. The default value if this parameter is not specified is 1 for client applications.

The higher this value, the more detail will be logged to the log files about the activities of the server. At level 0, only critical errors and serious warnings will be logged. Level 1 is a reasonable level for day-to-day running - it generates a small amount of information about operations carried out.

Levels above 1 will generate considerable amounts of log data, and should only be used when investigating a problem. Levels above 3 are designed for use only by developers and generate HUGE amounts of log data, most of which is extremely cryptic.

Note that specifying this parameter here will override the log level parameter in the /etc/samba/smb.conf file.

--debug-stdout

This will redirect debug output to STDOUT. By default all clients are logging to STDERR.

--configfile=<configuration file>

The file specified contains the configuration details required by the client. The information in this file can be general for client and server or only provide client specific like options such as client smb encrypt. See /etc/samba/smb.conf for more information. The default configuration file name is determined at compile time.

--option=<name>=<value>

Set the smb.conf(5) option "<name>" to value "<value>" from the command line. This overrides compiled-in defaults and options read from the configuration file. If a name or a value includes a space, wrap whole --option=name=value into quotes.

-l|--log-basename=logdirectory

Base directory name for log/debug files. The extension ".progname" will be appended (e.g. log.smbclient, log.smbd, etc...). The log file is never removed by the client.

--leak-report

Enable talloc leak reporting on exit.

--leak-report-full

Enable full talloc leak reporting on exit.

-V|--version

Prints the program version number.

-R|--name-resolve=NAME-RESOLVE-ORDER

This option is used to determine what naming services and in what order to resolve host names to IP addresses. The option takes a space-separated string of different name resolution options. The best is to wrap the whole --name-resolve=NAME-RESOLVE-ORDER into quotes.

The options are: "lmhosts", "host", "wins" and "bcast". They cause names to be resolved as follows:

• lmhosts: Lookup an IP address in the Samba lmhosts file. If the line in lmhosts has no name type attached to the NetBIOS name (see the lmhosts(5) for details) then any name type matches for lookup.
• host: Do a standard host name to IP address resolution, using the system /etc/hosts, NIS, or DNS lookups. This method of name resolution is operating system dependent, for instance on IRIX or Solaris this may be controlled by the /etc/nsswitch.conf file). Note that this method is only used if the NetBIOS name type being queried is the 0x20 (server) name type, otherwise it is ignored.
• wins: Query a name with the IP address listed in the wins server parameter. If no WINS server has been specified this method will be ignored.
• bcast: Do a broadcast on each of the known local interfaces listed in the interfaces parameter. This is the least reliable of the name resolution methods as it depends on the target host being on a locally connected subnet.

If this parameter is not set then the name resolve order defined in the /etc/samba/smb.conf file parameter (name resolve order) will be used.

The default order is lmhosts, host, wins, bcast. Without this parameter or any entry in the name resolve order parameter of the /etc/samba/smb.conf file, the name resolution methods will be attempted in this order.

-O|--socket-options=SOCKETOPTIONS

TCP socket options to set on the client socket. See the socket options parameter in the /etc/samba/smb.conf manual page for the list of valid options.

-m|--max-protocol=MAXPROTOCOL

The value of the parameter (a string) is the highest protocol level that will be supported by the client.

Note that specifying this parameter here will override the client max protocol parameter in the /etc/samba/smb.conf file.

-n|--netbiosname=NETBIOSNAME

This option allows you to override the NetBIOS name that Samba uses for itself. This is identical to setting the netbios name parameter in the /etc/samba/smb.conf file. However, a command line setting will take precedence over settings in /etc/samba/smb.conf.

--netbios-scope=SCOPE

This specifies a NetBIOS scope that nmblookup will use to communicate with when generating NetBIOS names. For details on the use of NetBIOS scopes, see rfc1001.txt and rfc1002.txt. NetBIOS scopes are very rarely used, only set this parameter if you are the system administrator in charge of all the NetBIOS systems you communicate with.

-W|--workgroup=WORKGROUP

Set the SMB domain of the username. This overrides the default domain which is the domain defined in smb.conf. If the domain specified is the same as the servers NetBIOS name, it causes the client to log on using the servers local SAM (as opposed to the Domain SAM).

Note that specifying this parameter here will override the workgroup parameter in the /etc/samba/smb.conf file.

-r|--realm=REALM

Set the realm for the domain.

Note that specifying this parameter here will override the realm parameter in the /etc/samba/smb.conf file.

-U|--user=[DOMAIN\]USERNAME[%PASSWORD]

Sets the SMB username or username and password.

If %PASSWORD is not specified, the user will be prompted. The client will first check the USER environment variable (which is also permitted to also contain the password separated by a %), then the LOGNAME variable (which is not permitted to contain a password) and if either exists, the value is used. If these environmental variables are not found, the username found in a Kerberos Credentials cache may be used.

A third option is to use a credentials file which contains the plaintext of the username and password. This option is mainly provided for scripts where the admin does not wish to pass the credentials on the command line or via environment variables. If this method is used, make certain that the permissions on the file restrict access from unwanted users. See the -A for more details.

Be cautious about including passwords in scripts or passing user-supplied values onto the command line. For security it is better to let the Samba client tool ask for the password if needed, or obtain the password once with kinit.

While Samba will attempt to scrub the password from the process title (as seen in ps), this is after startup and so is subject to a race.

-N|--no-pass

If specified, this parameter suppresses the normal password prompt from the client to the user. This is useful when accessing a service that does not require a password.

Unless a password is specified on the command line or this parameter is specified, the client will request a password.

If a password is specified on the command line and this option is also defined the password on the command line will be silently ignored and no password will be used.

--password

Specify the password on the commandline.

Be cautious about including passwords in scripts or passing user-supplied values onto the command line. For security it is better to let the Samba client tool ask for the password if needed, or obtain the password once with kinit.

If --password is not specified, the tool will check the PASSWD environment variable, followed by PASSWD_FD which is expected to contain an open file descriptor (FD) number.

Finally it will check PASSWD_FILE (containing a file path to be opened). The file should only contain the password. Make certain that the permissions on the file restrict access from unwanted users!

While Samba will attempt to scrub the password from the process title (as seen in ps), this is after startup and so is subject to a race.

--pw-nt-hash

The supplied password is the NT hash.

-A|--authentication-file=filename

This option allows you to specify a file from which to read the username and password used in the connection. The format of the file is:

				username = <value>
				password = <value>
				domain   = <value>

Make certain that the permissions on the file restrict access from unwanted users!

-P|--machine-pass

Use stored machine account password.

--simple-bind-dn=DN

DN to use for a simple bind.

--use-kerberos=desired|required|off

This parameter determines whether Samba client tools will try to authenticate using Kerberos. For Kerberos authentication you need to use dns names instead of IP addresses when connecting to a service.

Note that specifying this parameter here will override the client use kerberos parameter in the /etc/samba/smb.conf file.

--use-krb5-ccache=CCACHE

Specifies the credential cache location for Kerberos authentication.

This will set --use-kerberos=required too.

--use-winbind-ccache

Try to use the credential cache by winbind.

--client-protection=sign|encrypt|off

Sets the connection protection the client tool should use.

Note that specifying this parameter here will override the client protection parameter in the /etc/samba/smb.conf file.

In case you need more fine grained control you can use: --option=clientsmbencrypt=OPTION, --option=clientipcsigning=OPTION, --option=clientsigning=OPTION.

rpcclient is designed as a developer testing tool and may not be robust in certain areas (such as command line parsing). It has been known to generate a core dump upon failures when invalid parameters were passed to the interpreter.

From Luke Leighton's original rpcclient man page:

WARNING! The MSRPC over SMB code has been developed from examining Network traces. No documentation is available from the original creators (Microsoft) on how MSRPC over SMB works, or how the individual MSRPC services work. Microsoft's implementation of these services has been demonstrated (and reported) to be... a bit flaky in places.

The development of Samba's implementation is also a bit rough, and as more of the services are understood, it can even result in versions of smbd(8) and rpcclient(1) that are incompatible for some commands or services. Additionally, the developers are sending reports to Microsoft, and problems found or reported to Microsoft are fixed in Service Packs, which may result in incompatibilities.

This man page is part of version 4.21.1 of the Samba suite.

The original Samba software and related utilities were created by Andrew Tridgell. Samba is now developed by the Samba Team as an Open Source project similar to the way the Linux kernel is developed.

The original rpcclient man page was written by Matthew Geddes, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton, and rewritten by Gerald Carter. The conversion to DocBook for Samba 2.2 was done by Gerald Carter. The conversion to DocBook XML 4.2 for Samba 3.0 was done by Alexander Bokovoy.

samba(7).