Remote testing

Find important information about remote testing, some considerations, and workarounds:

• In terms of software requirements, make sure your target system has the required .NET Framework installed.
• On a remote machine running a Ranorex Agent, the firewall must be configured to allow access to TCP port 8081 and UDP ports 10000-10001.
• You can increase the global timeout values in the > Recorder settings, as virtual machines are often slower. The required increase depends mostly on your network.
• You can install only one Agent per Windows installation.

Agent can’t be found/execution not working correctly

• Make sure the machine Ranorex Studio is running on is in the same network (subnet) as the remote machine the Agent is running on.
• Make sure the Agent is running in an active user session. Do not log off the user from the machine the Agent is running on.
• Ensure TCP port 8081 and UDP ports 10000-10001 are open on the remote machine.
• Check the Windows Event Log on the machine the Agent is running on for entries related to the Agent.

NAT issues

If the machine with the Ranorex Studio installation and the Agent machine aren’t in the same network, the Agent may not automatically appear in your Agent list and you may not be able to manually add it using the IP address. This is because, by default, machines do not have the routing information to connect to a machine outside their network.

To overcome this issue, a network route has to be configured either on the gateways between the networks, or on each machine.

Below is an example solution.

In the image, our networks’ addresses start with 192.168.x.x. One has the gateway 192.168.2.1 (right), the other 192.168.3.1 (left). Both gateways share the subnet 192.168.1.x (middle). This subnet has the gateway 192.168.1.1 (top middle), which is connected to the internet.

The network of gateway 192.168.3.1 contains two computers. One of them has three virtual machines (VMs) running on it. All of the VMs have 192.168.3.x IP addresses.

The network of gateway 192.168.2.1 contains a router and two computers.
They all have 192.168.2.x IP addresses.

Enable a route across gateways

If you ping ‘192.168.2.2’ (PC 2) from computer ‘192.168.3.6’ (VM C), then the request will time out unless you enable a proper route across the gateways. Assuming the 192.168.3.6 (VM C) is running Windows 7, type one of the following commands on 192.168.3.6 (VM C):

• route add 192.168.2.0 mask 255.255.255.0 192.168.1.2 metric 2
  (add whole network to the route table)
  or
• route add 192.168.2.2 mask 255.255.255.0 192.168.1.2 metric 2
  (add single computer to the route table)

Once the command has been entered, the ping/communication would successfully go from 192.168.3.6 (VM C) to 192.168.2.2 (PC 2), but 192.168.2.2 (PC 2) would still not be able to ping 192.168.3.6 (VM C). There are two workarounds to enable communication between these two networks:

• Set up a route on the gateways
• Set up the route on the machines that need to communicate across networks

Consider gateway firewalls when setting up the routes, as they may block cross-traffic from the machines. If this is the case, you will need a network admin to either set up the route on the gateway instead or to set up port forwarding to allow traffic through the firewall.

As most gateways behind corporate internet firewalls function as bridges, not much internal traffic is firewalled on the local network. To check if your connection is firewalled, try ‘tracert 192.168.2.2’. If stars ‘*’ appear in the ‘trace route’ instead of IP addresses, then either the connection went through the firewall, or it has been misdirected into the internet.

The route metric (last number in command) is assigned to a route and is used to identify its priority – with 1 being of the highest priority. Usually, network admins base the router metric on the number of hops in a route, as the route with the least hops is usually the best. As the route in our example contains two hops, our router metric is 2.

A route command is only persistent (will stay after reboot) if you add the ‘-p’ argument to it. Thus, you can easily try route commands at no risk beforehand, and simply reboot if you want to undo them. Once you’ve found the right route, you can make the commands persistent after reboot.

Guidelines for testing via remote desktop protocol (RDP)

You can test remotely via RDP connections. There are some limitations, however.

Running tests via RDP

You can run an executable build on a remote machine via RDP in the same way as without RDP. The procedure is the same as explained on the previous pages

Recording tests via RDP

It is not possible to record tests via RDP with Ranorex Studio.

This is because the RDP window doesn’t allow Ranorex Studio, or other test automation tools, to identify UI elements as normal. Instead, only the RDP window is identified.

1. Mouse click action on the Submit button of the Ranorex Studio Demo Application in an RDP window.
   
   
2. The resulting repository item doesn’t represent the button, but the entire image displayed in the RDP window.

Standby

When the remote machine switches to standby mode, it disconnects from the network. This also interrupts the RDP connection and therefore causes a currently running test to fail.

Disable standby mode on remote machines you want to run tests on via RDP, even if they’re connected to a power source.

Other people accessing the remote machine

When you connect to a remote machine via RDP, it’s locked to other users and they cannot connect to it remotely without your agreeing to hand over the session first. However, someone can still log in physically on the actual remote machine. This automatically interrupts the RDP connection and causes a currently running test to fail.

Keep user session alive after closing remote desktop connection

When you connect to a remote machine via RDP, deploy and start your test, and then disconnect the remote session, your test will fail. This is because the current user session will be quit.

To keep the current user session active even if you’ve disconnected the RDP session:

1. On the remote machine, create a batch file and insert the following code:

   `query user %username%`

   ) do (

   %windir%\\System32\\tscon.exe %%s /dest:console

   )

   for /f "skip=1 tokens=3 usebackq" %%s in (

2. Save the batch file on the desktop of your remote machine and name it KeepSessionOpen.bat.
   
   
3. If you need to disconnect the RDP session, run the batch file with administrator privileges and your remote machine will remain unlocked.