execute program on port connect to windows

Question

is there a program that listens to a specific port and executes an arbitrary executeable on incoming connection to that port?

the reason: sometimes itunes is not running, then id like to be able to start it with remote.

Answer 1

xinetd is a Unix daemon that listens on one or more ports and launches programs (generally servers or other daemons) when connections come in to those ports. It is available on Cygwin and can be installed as a Windows service with the cygrunsrv utility:

$ xinetd-config
$ cygrunsrv -I xinetd -p /usr/sbin/xinetd -d 'CYGWIN xinetd' -a '-stayalive -pidfile /var/run/xinetd.pid'
$ cygrunsrv -S xinetd

I don't know that it is ideal for your end goal of remote-controlling iTunes, but it can be used to listen to arbitrary ports and launch arbitrary programs. I think it could suit your needs if you get creative.

Answer 2

OpenSSH is secure and fairly easy to setup on windows. Once you have the ssh service running on your windows machine, you could create a script that ssh's into your windows server, starts itunes, then exits.

Answer 3

If you need a simple way just to launch iTunes remotely, you can use psexec. The command line you would be interested in would be:

psexec \\computername -i -d -u YourUserName -p YourPassword "C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.exe"

-i : Run this program so it can be seen on the desktop.
-d : Exit psexec once the program has been launched.
-p : If you omit this, it will prompt for your password instead
      of typing it in the clear or storing it in a batch file.