open windows application from linux server

jomonantony has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: open windows application from linux server by moritz (Cardinal) on Apr 21, 2011 at 08:14 UTC
How would you do it without Perl? Perl 6 - second systems done right	[reply]
Re^2: open windows application from linux server by jomonantony (Novice) on Apr 21, 2011 at 08:19 UTC
I have a web page created using perl,, and I want to open a windows application (say notepad.exe) by clicking a link.	[reply]
Re^3: open windows application from linux server by moritz (Cardinal) on Apr 21, 2011 at 08:24 UTC
You can't easily. That's a a security feature of the web browser. If you offer a .exe file for download, it's the user's choice what she does with it, running it is one option. But starting an installed application is not supported, to the best of knowledge. (There might be some very hairy workarounds with ActiveX in Internet Explorer in trusted contexts, but that's hardly a viable solution in most cases). Perl 6 - second systems done right	[reply]
Re^3: open windows application from linux server by Anonymous Monk on Apr 21, 2011 at 08:32 UTC
I have a web page created using perl,, and I want to open a windows application (say notepad.exe) by clicking a link. Most browsers consider that a security risk and for good reason. You could probably launch .exe's from html with HTAs (microsoft) and/or XULRunner (mozilla); they're used for creating desktop applications with html/js.	[reply]
Re^3: open windows application from linux server by John M. Dlugosz (Monsignor) on Apr 21, 2011 at 08:36 UTC
Many years ago I wrote an installer kind of thing as a dynamic HTML file that would give the customized instructions and populate the text with results. Having it "click here to run" a supplied EXE was something it resisted. I may have ended up using ActivePerl as a local scripting language. VBscript does it with various library objects. The OP mentioned Notepad. Maybe what is really wanted is to offer the document and have the Windows machine's browser configured to open the correct program to show that document.	[reply]
Re: open windows application from linux server by Anonymous Monk on Apr 21, 2011 at 08:20 UTC
Windows application? You mean an .exe? You might use system or Win32::OLE if you're running under WINE/winelib (How to install Win32::OLE under Linux?), but you probably already knew that.	[reply]
Re: open windows application from linux server by John M. Dlugosz (Monsignor) on Apr 21, 2011 at 08:18 UTC
Start by looking at the `psexec` program from Sysinternals. Figure out what the client end is doing, and mimic that network activity under Linux.	[reply]
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