FatBeard's Adventures in PowerShell

PowerShell - Let SQL sort it out

2012-01-24T08:26:00.003-05:00

I came across a piece of code yesterday that provided a learning opportunity. The code was a simple SQL query that returned a list of computers from a database. The code I saw, had PowerShell handling the sort after the computers were retrieved from the SQL database. While this works, it is not a best practise. In fact, it something that Don Jones has often mentioned - Filter Left, Format Right. Look below to see the performance difference of letting SQL Server handle the sort.

"Filter Left: {0} seconds" -f (Measure-Command -Expression {           
   $qry = "select name from vcomputer where [IsManaged] ='1' order by name"           
   $Altiris = Invoke-Sqlcmd -ServerInstance SQL01 -Database Altiris -Query $qry           
}).TotalSeconds           
          
"Filter Right: {0} seconds" -f (Measure-Command -Expression {           
   $qry = "select name from vcomputer where [IsManaged] ='1'"           
   $Altiris = Invoke-Sqlcmd -ServerInstance SQL01 -Database Altiris -Query $qry | sort           
}).TotalSeconds

As you can see, this is a significant difference!
Like Active Directory, let the server that is good at filtering or sorting handle the work for you.

Enjoy!

Creating an LDIF file with PowerShell

2012-01-23T14:06:00.004-05:00

Occasionally, I am asked to create a large batch of users for our eDirectory environment. Following is an example on how to create 500 test users (gotta love Here-Strings).

$path = "c:\temp\LDIF$(get-date -Format yyyyMMdd).txt"          
New-Item -Path $path -ItemType File -Force          
Add-Content -Value "version: 1" -Path $path          
        
100..600 | Foreach {          
  $value = @"

dn: cn=PSFTTest$_,ou=users,o=OSUMC
changetype: add
userPassword: P@ssw0rd
uid: PSFTTest$_
givenName: First$_
fullName: First$_ Last$_
sn: Last$_
objectClass: inetOrgPerson
objectClass: organizationalPerson
objectClass: Person
objectClass: Top
cn: PSFTTest$_
"@          
Add-Content -Value $value -Path $path          
}

Enjoy!

PowerShell - Project Euler Problem 102

2012-01-23T09:09:00.007-05:00

I am always pleased when I can use PowerShell to solve a Project Euler problem. This one was straightforward. You are supplied with a text file containing 1000 random triangular coordinates and you need to determine how many of the triangles contain the origin (0,0). There are multiple ways to attack this, I went for he easier approach: if the area of the supplied triangle is equal to the 3 triangles created using the origin, then we know that the triangle contains the origin. I used Heron's Formula to calculate the area.

Following is the code used to find the answer.

<# Get side lengths 
$LengthAB = Length of AB = SquareRoot of (Ax - Bx)^2 + (Ay - By)^2
$LengthAC = Length of AC = SquareRoot of (Ax - Cx)^2 + (Ay - Cy)^2
$LengthBC = Length of BC = SquareRoot of (Bx - Cx)^2 + (By - Cy)^2

$s = .5($LengthAB +$LengthAC +$LengthAC)
$Area = SQRT($s($s-$LengthAB)($s-$LengthAC)($s-$LengthBC) #>

function Get-LengthOfSide {     
param([Array]$X,[Array]$Y)     
  
return [Math]::sqrt( [Math]::pow(($X[0]-$Y[0]),2) + [Math]::pow(($X[1]-$Y[1]),2))     
}     

function Get-AreaOfTriangle {     
param([Array]$X,[Array]$Y, [Array]$Z)     
  
$LengthAB = Get-LengthOfSide -X $X -Y $Y     
$LengthAC = Get-LengthOfSide -X $X -Y $Z     
$LengthBC = Get-LengthOfSide -X $Y -Y $Z     
$s = .5*($LengthAB+$LengthAC+$LengthBC)     
$Area = [Math]::sqrt( $s*($s-$LengthAB)*($s-$LengthAC)*($s-$LengthBC) )     
return $Area     
}     

$path = 'C:\Users\stah06\Documents\triangles.txt'     
$uri = 'http://projecteuler.net/project/triangles.txt'     

# Using Invoke-WebRequest (PowerShell V3)     
#Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $uri -OutFile $path     

# Using System.Net.WebClient (PowerShell V2)     
$web = New-Object System.Net.WebClient     
$web.DownloadFile($uri, $path)     

$match = 0     
Get-Content $path |      
foreach {     
$A = $_.split(",")[0],$_.split(",")[1]     
$B = $_.split(",")[2],$_.split(",")[3]     
$C = $_.split(",")[4],$_.split(",")[5]     
$D = 0,0     

$TriangleABC = Get-AreaOfTriangle -X $A -Y $B -Z $C     
$TriangleABD = Get-AreaOfTriangle -X $A -Y $B -Z $D     
$TriangleACD = Get-AreaOfTriangle -X $A -Y $C -Z $D     
$TriangleBCD = Get-AreaOfTriangle -X $B -Y $C -Z $D     
  
$SumofTriangles = $TriangleABD +$TriangleACD + $TriangleBCD     
      
if ( [math]::abs($TriangleABC -$SumofTriangles) -lt .5) {      
 #"{0} {1}" -f $TriangleABC, $SumofTriangles     
 $match++     
}     
}     

$match

Enjoy!

Will Rogers Phenomenon

2012-01-19T15:35:00.021-05:00

Following is a example of the Will Rogers phenomenon. This discussion was a tangent from a water-cooler discussion of the Monty Hall problem (much more interesting).

‹#
The Will Rogers phenomenon occurs when the averages
of 2 groups are raised by moving one item from one
to the other.Note: Data may not be truly
representative of actual figures. #›

# Sample IQs
$Ohio = 110,105,115,120
$StateUpNorth = 90,95,85,90

# Initial State (pun intended...)
"Average Ohio IQ before move is: {0}" -f ($Ohio  | 
 Measure-Object -Average).Average

"Average StateUpNorth IQ before move is: {0}`n" -f ($StateUpNorth | 
 Measure-Object -Average).Average

# Rumoured to be in the Toledo area...
$LowestOhioIQ = ($Ohio  sort)[0]

# Remove from Ohio
$Ohio = @($ohio where {$_ -ne $LowestOhioIQ})

# Add to State up North (Ann Arbor area)
$StateUpNorth+= $LowestOhioIQ

# Final State
"Average Ohio IQ after move is: {0}" -f ($Ohio | 
 Measure-Object -Average).Average

"Average StateUpNorth IQ after move is: {0}" -f ($StateUpNorth |  
 Measure-Object -Average).Average

Enjoy!

Training Questions: Date and Numeric Formatting with PowerShell

2012-01-18T13:02:00.016-05:00

At a recent internal training session, I was asked how to format dates in PowerShell. A little later I was asked how to format numbers, and later still I was asked if it was possible to right justify strings. Following is the example I used to demonstrate the formating capabilities:

Get-ADUser SamAccountName -Properties WhenCreated | 
Select SamAccountName,WhenCreated,
 @{Name="ShortDate"; Expression={ "{0:d}" -f $_.WhenCreated} },
 @{N="LongDate";E={ "{0:D}" -f $_.WhenCreated} },
 @{L="FullDateShortTime";E={ "{0:f}" -f $_.WhenCreated} },
 @{N="FullDateLongTime"; E={ "{0:F}" -f $_.WhenCreated} },
 @{N="GeneralDateShortTime";E={ "{0:g}" -f $_.WhenCreated} },
 @{N="GeneralDateLongTime"; E={ "{0:G}" -f $_.WhenCreated} },
 @{N="Month";E={ "{0:M MM MMM MMMM}" -f $_.WhenCreated} },
 @{N="Day";  E={ "{0:d dd ddd dddd}" -f $_.WhenCreated} },
 @{N="Year"; E={ "{0:y yy yyy yyyy}" -f $_.WhenCreated} },
 @{N="Hour"; E={ "{0:h hh H HH}" -f $_.WhenCreated} },
 @{N="Minute"; E={ "{0:m mm}" -f $_.WhenCreated} },
 @{N="Second"; E={ "{0:s ss}" -f $_.WhenCreated} },
 @{N="AM/PM"; E={ "{0:t tt}" -f $_.WhenCreated} },
 @{N="CustomDateTime1"; E={ "{0:M/d/yy h:m:s tt}" -f $_.WhenCreated} },
 @{N="CustomDateTime2"; E={ "{0:dddd, MMMM yyyy - HH:mm:ss}" -f $_.WhenCreated} }
     
Get-WmiObject -Class win32_logicalDisk -Filter "DeviceID='C:'"  | 
Select DeviceID, FreeSpace,
 @{N="FreeSpaceDecimal"; E={ "{0:d}" -f $_.FreeSpace} },
 @{N="FreeSpaceScientific1"; E={ "{0:E}" -f $_.FreeSpace} },
 @{N="FreeSpaceScientific2"; E={ "{0:E1}" -f $_.FreeSpace} },
 @{N="FreeSpaceFixed1"; E={ "{0:F1}" -f $_.FreeSpace} },
 @{N="FreeSpaceFixed2"; E={ "{0:F5}" -f $_.FreeSpace} },
 @{N="FreeSpaceGeneral"; E={ "{0:G3}" -f $_.FreeSpace} },
 @{N="FreeSpaceNumber"; E={ "{0:N3}" -f $_.FreeSpace} },
 @{N="FreeSpacePercent"; E={ "{0:P}" -f ($_.FreeSpace/$_.Size)} },
 @{N="FreeSpaceGB"; E={ "{0:N0} GB" -f ($_.FreeSpace/1GB)} }

$myString = "Yuengling"
"{0,10}" -f $myString
"{0,15}" -f $myString
"{0,20}" -f $myString

Results:

Enjoy!

PowerShell ActiveDirectory Module vs Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement Snapin

2011-09-27T15:23:00.009-04:00

I have used the Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement snapin for a few years and have enjoyed their ease of use. Now that we have migrated our domain controllers to 2008 R2, I often use the ActiveDirectory Module. In fact, I end up using both and see no reason to pick one over the other.

Being of curious nature, I wanted to compare the time it took for a standard query to run using both approaches. Following is a comparison of:

Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement snapin with Where-Object
Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement snapin with LDAP Filter
ActiveDirectory Module with Filter parameter
ActiveDirectory Module with LDAP Filter

The query is looking for "stale" servers and runs 10 times for each one and averages the result.

# Add required snapin and module    
Add-PSSnapin Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue    
Import-Module ActiveDirectory -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue    

$d = ((Get-Date).AddDays(-90)).ToFileTime()    
$LDAP = "(&(OperatingSystem=*Server*)(pwdLastSet<=$d)(!(userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2)))"    
$server = "DC-P01"    

# Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement with Where-Object    
$QAD_Where = (1..10 | foreach {    
(Measure-Command -Expression {     
Get-QADComputer -Service DC-P01 -OSName '*Server*' -PasswordNotChangedFor 90 `
        | Where-Object {-not $_.AccountIsDisabled}}).TotalSeconds     
} | Measure-Object -Average    
).Average    

# Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement with LDAP filter    
$QAD_LDAP = (1..10 | foreach {    
(Measure-Command -Expression {     
Get-QADComputer -Service $server -LDAPFilter $LDAP }).TotalSeconds    
} | Measure-Object -Average    
).Average    

# Active Directory Module with Filter parameter    
$AD_Filter = (1..10 | foreach {    
(Measure-Command -Expression {    
Get-ADComputer -Server $server -Filter { (OperatingSystem -like "*Server*") -AND     
(PasswordLastSet -le $d) -AND (Enabled -eq $True)}}).TotalSeconds    
} | Measure-Object -Average    
).Average    

# Active Directory Module with LDAP Filter    
$AD_LDAP = (1..10 | foreach {    
(Measure-Command -Expression {    
Get-ADComputer -Server $server -LDAPFilter $LDAP}).TotalSeconds    
} | Measure-Object -Average    
).Average            

"Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement with Where-Object took {0:N2} seconds." -f $QAD_Where    
"Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement with LDAPFilter took {0:N2} seconds."   -f $QAD_LDAP    
"Active Directory Module with filter took {0:N2} seconds."              -f $AD_Filter    
"Active Directory Module with LDAPFilter took {0:N2} seconds."          -f $AD_LDAP

The results (for the most part) are not surprising.
Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement with Where-Object took 4.97 seconds.
Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement with LDAPFilter took 4.19 seconds.
Active Directory Module with filter took 3.20 seconds.
Active Directory Module with LDAPFilter took 3.21 seconds.

At some point, I need to run this again with a long running query.

Is this consistent with your results?

Enjoy!

PowerShell and Benford's Law

2011-08-29T13:07:00.012-04:00

Was reading through a statistics blog (R) the other day when I read a posting on Benford's law. The definition according to the blog is:

"Benford's law, also called the first-digit law, states that in lists of numbers from many (but not all) real-life sources of data, the leading digit is distributed in a specific, non-uniform way. According to this law, the first digit is 1 about 30% of the time, and larger digits occur as the leading digit with lower and lower frequency, to the point where 9 as a first digit occurs less than 5% of the time."

The probabilities are distributed as demonstration here.

This seemed counter-intuitive and I wanted to validate it myself. Let's look at the leading digit of all the txt files in one of my directories. Enter PowerShell.....

# Explore Benford's Law 

$array=@() 

foreach ($item in (Get-ChildItem -Path p:\ -Filter *.txt -Recurse)) 

{  

$array+= $item.length.toString()[0] 

} 



$array `

| Group-Object -NoElement `

| Sort-Object count -Descending `

| Format-Table @{label=”#”;expression={$_.Name}},  

@{label=”Count”;expression={"{0:%##}" -f $($_.Count/$array.Count)}},  

@{label=”Histogram”;expression={“▄” * $_.Count}} -autosize

I consider this a validation, but lets try one another example, this time looking at leading digits on the workingset of the processes on my desktop:

$array=@()       

foreach($a in (Get-Process))       

{        

$array+= $a.WorkingSet.toString()[0]       

}       

  

$array `

| Group-Object -NoElement `

| Sort-Object count -Descending `

| Format-Table @{label=”#”;expression={$_.Name}},        

@{label=”Count”;expression={"{0:%##}" -f $($_.Count/$array.Count)}},        

@{label=”Histogram”;expression={“▄” * $_.Count}} -autosize

Again, this seems to hold true. Now that I have examples of Benford's law, I feel compelled to try and understand it. Wish me luck!

Setting user LogonWorkstations and LogonHours in Active Directory

2011-08-25T16:06:00.009-04:00

If you find the need to add restrictions to a user in Active Directory, specifically LogonWorkstations and logonHours then the following script will serve as a template.

A few notes:
- We are using the ActiveDirectory module
- We are using a set list of workstations
- We are using a template approach for the logon hours

Import-Module ActiveDirectory -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue  



# Define the list of workstations we want to allow access   

$WorkStations = "Workstation1,Workstation2,Workstation3"  

$WorkStations+= "Workstation4,Workstation5,Workstation6"  

$WorkStations+= "Workstation7,Workstation8,Workstation9"  



# Create the logonHours array  

[array]$logonHours = (Get-ADUser test010 -Properties logonHours).logonHours  



# Iterate over users and assign accordingly  

foreach ($user in Get-Content C:\temp\users.txt) {  

Get-ADUser -Identity $user | `

    Set-ADUser -LogonWorkstations $Workstations -Add @{logonhours=$logonHours}   

}

Checking our results shows that the logonHours were set exactly to what our template was.

Enjoy!

Printer exploration with PowerShell

2011-06-23T14:50:00.002-04:00

Following are a few printing related PowerShell one-liners that I demonstrated for a few colleagues at work. -Enjoy!

# List all printer drivers on a specific server           
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_PrinterDriver -ComputerName PrintServer `
 | Sort-Object Name `
 | Select-Object Name, DriverPath            
          
# List all properties of a specifc printer driver on a server           
Get-WmiObject Win32_PrinterDriver -ComputerName PrintServer -Filter "Name='Lexmark Universal XL,3,Windows x64'"           
          
# List Printers for a specific server           
Get-WmiObject Win32_Printer -ComputerName PrintServer `
 | Sort-Object Name `
 | Select-Object Name, DriverName, PortName, ShareName           
          
# List a specific printer on a server           
Get-WmiObject Win32_Printer -ComputerName PrintServer -Filter "Name='P-UHC6000M-IRC2550'"            
          
# List info on print jobs           
Get-WmiObject Win32_PrintJob -ComputerName PrintServer `
 | Select-Object Document, Owner,           
  @{Label="Status";Expression={$_.JobStatus}},            
  @{Label="PageCount";Expression={$_.TotalPages}},            
  @{Label="DateSubmitted";Expression={[System.Management.ManagementDateTimeconverter]::ToDateTime($_.TimeSubmitted)}}            
             
# List current number of jobs in each print queue           
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_PerfFormattedData_Spooler_PrintQueue -Computer PrintServer -Filter "Name <> '_Total' and Jobs > 0" `
 | Sort Jobs -Descending `
 | Select name, jobs `
 | Format-Table -AutoSize

PowerShell doesn't cure insomnia

2011-02-05T14:58:00.005-05:00

Had a bit of trouble sleeping last night, when I noticed that there was a perceptible difference in the amount of light the digital clock emanates.

It got me wondering what time displays the most light. Sure I could have manually figured it out, but isn't more exciting to write a script?

Here it is:

<#   Define a lookup table for the amount of light "bars" each number displays. #>

$hash = @{"1"=2;"2"=5;"3"=5;"4"=4;     
   "5"=5;"6"=6;"7"=3;"8"=7;     
   "9"=5;"0"=6;":"=0}     
$max=0     
for ($hour = 1; $hour -le 12; $hour++) {     
for ($minute = 0;$minute -lt 60; $minute++) {     
 $time = "{0}:{1:0#}" -f $hour, $minute     
 $timeArray = $time.ToCharArray()     
 $sum=0     
 foreach ($char in $timeArray) {     
     $sum+= $hash[[string]$char]     
 }     
 if ($sum -gt $max) {     
     $max, $maxTime =$sum, $time     
 }     
}     
}     
"{0}`t{1}"-f $max, $maxTime

Enjoy!

Project Euler 112

2011-02-05T08:45:00.002-05:00

A brute force attack on Project Euler #112. I suspect there is a more efficient algorithm for this (not using string conversions), but this works.

function Test-Bouncy {          
  param([int]$num)          
  $up=$down=$false          
  $numArray = $num.ToString().ToCharArray()          
  $length = $numArray.Length          
  for($i=1; $i -lt $length; $i++) {          
      if ($numArray[$i-1] -lt $numArray[$i]) {          
          $up = $true          
      }          
      elseif ($numArray[$i-1] -gt $numArray[$i]) {          
          $down = $true          
      }          
      if ($up -and $down) {          
          return $true          
      }          
  }          
  return $false            
}          
        
$isBouncy = $ratio = 0          
$x = 1          
while ($ratio -lt .99) {          
  if(Test-Bouncy $x) {          
      $isBouncy++          
      $ratio = $isBouncy/$x                  
  }          
  $x++          
}          
        
"{0}`t{1}" -f ($x-1),$ratio

Enjoy!

Getting Database counts per Exchange Server via PowerShell

2010-10-20T14:47:00.004-04:00

Was recently asked to generate a report of the total count of items per Exchange database per server. This one-liner (broken up for readability), takes care of it.

Get-MailboxServer | Get-MailboxStatistics | `
Sort-Object DatabaseName | `
Select DatabaseName, ItemCount | `
Group-Object -Property DatabaseName | `
Foreach {            
    $items = ($_.Group | Measure-Object -Property ItemCount -sum).Sum            
    "{0}`t{1:N0}" -f $_.Name,$items             
}

This will generate something like the following:

Exchange01-DB01	1,372,127
Exchange01-DB02	1,522,356
Exchange01-DB03	1,406,486
Exchange01-DB04	1,345,962
Exchange01-DB05	1,330,690
Exchange01-DB06	1,392,853
Exchange01-DB07	1,318,130
.....	.....

Enjoy!

Managing Proxy Settings with PowerShell

2010-10-07T14:49:00.012-04:00

I find myself changing proxy settings often on my laptop between various environments (Home, Production and Test). Generally this is no big deal. But today, I found myself switching multiple times as I was testing ISA and realized that PowerShell can easily take care of this.

At some point, I will wrap this into a GUI but for now, here is the script.

Note: I am using Jeff Hick's Test-RegistryItem.Enjoy!

function Set-Proxy {          
  [cmdletbinding()]          
  Param (          
      [Parameter(Position=0,Mandatory=$True,          
       HelpMessage="Enter either `"Home`", `"Production`" or `"Test`".")]          
      [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]          
      [ValidateSet("Home", "Production", "Test")]          
      [String]$Location          
  )           
            
  $path = "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings"          
  $url  = "http://autoconf.FatBeard.com/proxy.pac"          
            
  switch ($location)          
  {          
      "Home" {           
          Set-ItemProperty -Path $path -Name ProxyEnable -Value 0          
          if (Test-RegistryItem -Path $path -Property ProxyServer) {          
              Remove-ItemProperty -Path $path -Name ProxyServer          
          }          
          if (Test-RegistryItem -Path $path -Property AutoConfigURL) {          
              Remove-ItemProperty -Path $path -Name AutoConfigURL          
          }          
      }          
      "Production" {          
          Set-ItemProperty -Path $path -Name ProxyEnable -Value 0          
          Set-ItemProperty -Path $path -Name AutoConfigURL -Value $url          
      }          
      "Test" {          
          Set-ItemProperty -Path $path -Name ProxyEnable -Value 1          
          Set-ItemProperty -Path $path -Name ProxyServer -Value "TestProxy-vt01:8080"          
          if (Test-RegistryItem -Path $path -Property AutoConfigURL) {          
              Remove-ItemProperty -Path $path -Name AutoConfigURL          
          }          
      }           
  }          
}

Enjoy!

PowerShell & User Certificates

2010-09-15T10:41:00.010-04:00

I was recently asked if I could generate a report of user certificates. I recalled doing this with a .NET class a while back, here is that function:

function Get-Certificate {      
[cmdletBinding()]      
param([Parameter(Position=0,      
Mandatory=$True,      
ValueFromPipeLine=$True)]      
[String]$user)      
    
Begin {       
  Add-PSSnapin `
         -Name Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement `
         -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue }      
    
Process {      
  Get-QADUser -Identity $user | `
        Foreach { $_.DirectoryEntry.userCertificate } | `
        Foreach {[System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Certificate2]$_} | `
        Select Issuer, Subject, NotBefore,NotAfter      
}      
}

However, assuming you have the most recent version of the Quest Active Directory cmdlets (1.4.0), this becomes a trivial task.

Get-QADUser -Identity FatBeard | Get-QADCertificate

IssuedBy                 IssuedTo   ValidFrom  ValidTo
--------                 --------   ---------  -------
OSUMC EnterpriseRoot CA  Fat Beard  6/3/2010   6/3/2011
OSUMC EnterpriseRoot CA  Fat Beard  11/9/2009  11/9/2010

Enjoy!

Where's my attribute?

2010-09-01T09:04:00.010-04:00

I am often asked why certain Active Directory attributes do not show up when using Get-QADUser (ActiveRoles Management Shell for Active Directory). An example:

(Get-QADUser -Identity FatBeard).employeeID

One might expect this to return the employeeID for Mr. FatBeard.  It doesn't and this is a desired behavior.  In order to maximize performance, the Quest cmdlets return a default list of attributes.  To see non-default attributes you have a few options:

- Use the -IncludeAllProperties parameter.  This will store ALL the attributes in the memory cache.

- Use the -IncludedProperties parameter.  For ad-hoc reporting, when all that is needed are a few attributes, this is the recommended way.
Get-QADUser -Identity FatBeard -IncludedProperties employeeID,logonCount | Select employeeID, logoncount

- Lastly, you can modify the default attributes that are returned.
$attributes = Get-QADPSSnapinSettings -DefaultOutputPropertiesForUserObject

$attributes += 'employeeID'

Set-QADPSSnapinSettings -DefaultOutputPropertiesForUserObject $attributes

(Get-QADUser -Identity FatBeard).employeeID #Success!

Modifying the Snapin settings is only good for the current session. If you want the settings to persist, you will need to add the modification to your profile.

Enjoy!

Project Euler and PowerShell - Problem 42

2010-08-16T14:34:00.005-04:00

Here is a PowerShell solution to Project Euler - Problem 42.

# Download the text file and create the array            
$web = New-Object System.Net.WebClient           
$url = "http://projecteuler.net/project/words.txt"           
$words = $web.DownloadString($url).replace("""","").split(",")           
          
# Generate a list of Triangular numbers           
[int[]]$triNums = @()           
for($r=1;$r -lt 500; $r++) {           
   $triNums += $r*($r+1)/2           
}           
          
# Create a hashtable for numeric lookup           
$lookup = @{}           
$i=1           
65..90 | Foreach {$lookup.add([Char]$_,$i++)}           
          
# Get the numeric value of a word           
function Get-WordValue($word) {           
$letters = $word.ToCharArray()           
$sum = 0           
foreach ($letter in $letters) {           
 $sum += $lookup[[char]$letter]           
}           
return $sum           
}           
          
# Count the Triangular words           
$Count = 0           
foreach ($word in $words) {           
if($triNums -contains (Get-WordValue $word)) {           
 #"{0}`t{1}" -f (Get-WordValue $word), $word           
       $Count++           
}            
}           
$count

Finding instances of BitLocker

2010-07-26T16:10:00.004-04:00

Was responding to a forum question today about finding what workstations are running BitLocker. Following is a script that does just that:

Found this posting very helpful for the PacketPrivacy.

In this example I am specifically looking for computers running Windows 7.

$w = [wmi]''          
$w.PSBase.Scope.Options.Authentication = 'PacketPrivacy'          
$w.PSBase.Scope.Options.Authentication          
        
Get-QADComputer -OSName 'Windows 7*' | Select-Object Name | `
Foreach {          
  Get-WmiObject -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue `
      -Namespace 'root\cimv2\Security\MicrosoftVolumeEncryption' `
      -Impersonation 'impersonate' `
      -Authentication $w.PSBase.Scope.Options.Authentication `
      -Class win32_EncryptableVolume `
      -ComputerName $_.Name | Select __Server, DriveLetter          
}

Enjoy!

Get-LatticePoints

2010-07-23T13:34:00.006-04:00

I am so close to reaching the second level in Project Euler (need 50, I am at 48). Most of the problems that I have solved have been via Python, however, I am occasionally able to use PowerShell. A few of the problems ask to find lattice points within a circle.

What is a lattice point? - Think of a lattice point as an intersection on a grid. So if you had a circle with radius 1, there would be 5 lattice points: (-1,0), (0,1), (0,-1), (1,0) and (0,0).
Following is a PowerShell function that will get the number of lattice points for a given radius:

function Get-LatticePoints ([int]$radius)       
{       
    $count = 0       
    $x = -$radius       
    while ($x -le $radius)       
    {       
        $y = -$radius       
        While ($y -le $radius)        
        {       
            if($x*$x + $y*$y -le $radius*$radius)       
            {       
                $count++       
            }       
            $y++       
        }       
        $x++       
    }       
    return $count       
}       
       
for($i=1;$i -le 100;$i+=1) {       
   "Index: {0}`tLatticePoints: {1}" -f $i, (Get-LatticePoints $i)       
}

I forsee using this function in a couple of the Euler problems.

Enjoy!

Query AD & ND concurrently (Yep, you heard me right)

2010-06-03T12:36:00.006-04:00

In our environment, we have Active Directory and Novell Directory Services. While I spend 95% of my time in AD, I do occasionally get asked to grab information from NDS. Instead of falling back on older tools, I thought I would look at querying NDS via PowerShell. After looking at a few .NET classes, I recalled that one of my handouts at a Central Ohio PowerShell Users Group meeting was NetCmdlets. These cmdlets greatly extend the features of Microsoft Windows PowerShell with a broad range of network management and messaging capabilities. They also happen to include Get-LDAP. Using this cmdlet, it is fairly straightforward to query NDS. Following is and example that queries AD and NDS in one line of script (broken up for readability.

Get-QADUser -Enabled -Department *92278*  Sort-Object samaccountname   `
ForEach-Object {  
    Get-LDAP -Server 'Novell-Server' -Search "cn=$($_.samaccountname)"  
}  Select-Object -Unique @{N="FullName";E={$_.FullName[0]}}, resultDN  `
Export-Csv -Path c:\temp\NDS.csv -NoTypeInformation

So here is what happens:

We query for enabled users in AD that are in Department 92278.
We sort these users by SAMAccountName
We iterate over each user calling Get-LDAP with an NDS server and the SAMAccountName as a parameter
We then select FullName and the resultDN (there is a bit of magic going on here as we need to assist PowerShell with the formatting: -Unique gets rid of blank lines (don't ask me why they are there). FullName actually returns an array (once again, not sure why), we can easily grab what we want by using by forcing the format @{N="FullName";E={$_.FullName[0]}}
Lastly, we kickout the results to a CSV ready for use in Excel

The results look like this...

FullName	resultDN
Alda, Alan	cn=Alda01,ou=IS,ou=OSU,ou=HOSP,ou=CAMPUS,o=OSU_MC
Burghoff, Gary	cn=Burg02,ou=IS,ou=OSU,ou=HOSP,ou=CAMPUS,o=OSU_MC
Farr, Jamie	cn=Farr01,ou=IS,ou=OSU,ou=HOSP,ou=CAMPUS,o=OSU_MC

At some point, I will look at using the System.DirectoryServices Namespace to accomplish this instead of relying on a 3rd party, but for now I can check a few immediate NDS related tasks off my list.

Enjoy!

WPK Snippets

2010-05-18T13:52:00.009-04:00

Here is another WPK snippet for you. This one will demonstrate how to use New-Slider and New-Ellipse. Assuming that you the PowerPack Modules installed, you should be able to cut and paste the following:

Import-Module WPK           
New-Window -Name "WPK" -Title "WPK Snippets" -Width 250 -Height 175 -Show {           
   New-Grid -Rows 28,100 -Columns 200* {           
       New-TextBox -Name txtSliderValue -Column 0 -Row 1           
       $fill = [System.Windows.Media.Brushes]::Blue           
 $stroke = [System.Windows.Media.Brushes]::Black           
 New-Ellipse -Name oEllipse -Column 0 -Row 2 -Height 100 -Width 100 `
         -Fill $fill -Stroke $stroke           
       New-Slider  -Name Slider -Column 0 -Row 0 -Minimum 0 -Maximum 200 `
         -IsSnapToTickEnabled -On_ValueChanged {           
           $txtSliderValue = $window | Get-ChildControl txtSliderValue           
           $slider         = $window | Get-ChildControl Slider           
           $oEllipse       = $window | Get-ChildControl oEllipse           
           $oEllipse.width = $slider.value           
       }           
   }           
}

You should see something like the following:

Moving the slider triggers the -On_ValueChanged event.
Moving it around you should see the width of the ellipse change accordingly.

Download the script.

Enjoy!

WPK Snippets

2010-05-10T10:42:00.007-04:00

I have been experimenting with the WPK module from the PowerShell PowerPack. This module enables you to easily write user interfaces within PowerShell. Think PrimalForms but with less code and staying within one IDE. The hard part of writing the UI in WPK is knowing all the methods and properties associated with a particular object. I find searching MSDN for the members very helpful. As I use the different objects (controls), I will share my findings. Up first is the New-FolderBrowserDialog. These examples are ready to be cut and pasted into PowerShell ISE.

Import-Module WPK
New-Window -Name "WPK" -Title "WPK Snippets" -Width 400 -Height 100 -Show {
 New-Grid -Rows 28,28 -Columns 75,300* {
     New-TextBlock -Text "Folder Path:" -Row 1 -Column 0 -Margin 3
     New-TextBox -Name txtUserName -Width 300 -Row 1 -Column 1 -Margin 3
     New-Button -Content "Folder" -Name btnFolder -Row 0 -Column 1 -Margin 3 -Width 300 -On_Click {
       $obj = New-FolderBrowserDialog -RootFolder "MyComputer"
       $obj.ShowDialog()       
       $txtUserName = $Window | Get-ChildControl txtUserName
       $txtUserName.Text = $obj.SelectedPath }
 } 
}

You should see something similar to the following:

Clicking on the button brings up the familiar "Browse For Folder" Dialog box.

Select a folder and the path is placed in the appropriate textbox.

Enjoy!

Dynamic Variable Values

2010-03-29T16:40:00.010-04:00

Once again, my good friend from Texas asked me for a little PowerShell assistance. Being an old Cold Fusion junkie, he sent me his cryptic CF code:

Disclaimer (Blogger hates Angle Brackets)
cfset variable1="blah"
cfset var2="yada"

This statement would've then returned the value of "#blahyada#"
cfoutput #Evaluate("#variable1#")var2# cfoutput

It is basically a self-renaming variable based on the value of another variable - no idea if PowerShell can do that.

After my brief Cold Fusion viewing induced nausea subsided, I decided to help him. This is the sample I sent him:
$DallasAddress = "123 Cowboy Ave."
$ColumbusAddress = "456 Hayes St."
$ClevelandAddress = "910 Kosar Blvd."

$loc = "Dallas"
# Returns "123 Cowboy Ave."
(Get-Variable ($loc+"Address")).value

He is now happy and has learned a little bit more PowerShell. As for me, he has added yet another 6 bottles of my favorite beverage to the till.
Enjoy!

Query DNS with PowerShell

2010-03-11T16:24:00.004-05:00

Following is a script that will enable you to query DNS for duplicate records. Be sure to change the location of the output file!


# Using WMI, retrieve all the duplicate DNS records
$DNS = Get-WmiObject -ComputerName 'DNS-Server' `
   -Namespace 'root\MicrosoftDNS' `
   -Class MicrosoftDNS_AType `
   -Filter "ContainerName='Your Container'" | `
Group-Object OwnerName | Where-Object {$_.Count -gt 1}

# Create our CSV file to hold the data
$file = 'c:\temp\DNS.csv'
New-Item -ItemType file -Path $file -Force 
Add-Content -Path $file -Value "Name,IPAddress"

# Iterate of the DNS items grabbing the name and IPAddress
foreach ($item in $DNS) {
    foreach ($IPAddresses in $item.Group) {
        $value = "{0},{1}" -f $item.name,$IPAddresses.IPAddress
        Add-Content -Path $file -Value $value
    }
}

Results should look something like:

Name	IPAddress
Server1	10.194.111.22
Server2	10.140.111.22
ServerA	10.333.19.121
ServerB	10.333.131.24

Enjoy!

Calling a Web Service with PowerShell

2010-03-01T12:08:00.010-05:00

I often need to be notified of a certain condition when a scheduled script executes.
With PowerShell V2, I can take advantage of our internal paging web service by using the New-WebServiceProxy cmdlet to take care of this notification.

Check out the help on this cmdlet to see a full list of capabilities. Help New-WebServiceProxy -Full

Before we dive into the actual call, lets interrogate the web service to see what it can do.
# Create a proxy for the Paging web service
$page = New-WebServiceProxy -Uri 'http://InternalPagingService/pageservice.asmx'

#List the methods
$page Get-Member -MemberType Method

You should see something like this:

The method we are going to use is RequestSinglePage.

Enter the following to see the expected parameters:
($page Get-Member -Name RequestSinglePage).definition

Looking at the end of the definition we see 2 parameters:
- string PagerId
- string NumericOrAlphaMessage

We now have all we need to page from script!
$page.RequestSinglePage('3141','Testing Page Web Service from PowerShell')

If you need confirmation of the Web Service call, you can look at the FunctionStatus property of the executed Web Service.
($page.RequestSinglePage('3141','Test Page from PowerShell')).FunctionStatus

This returns - SUCCESS

Wrapping this web service call around some return code if fairly straight forward and is left as an exercise for the reader.

If you don't have an internal Web Service handy, try out http://www.webservicex.net/WeatherForecast.asmx

Enjoy!

Using F# BigInt in PowerShell

2009-10-29T13:43:00.010-04:00

Occasionally I have the need to utilize large precise numbers within PowerShell. Unfortunately, the native data types that we can use are limited in their precision.

Float: 7 digits
Double: 16 digits
Decimal: 29 digits

I have been researching F# and came across a data type called BigInt. I now knew that I could go back to PowerShell and take advantage of this type.

The process to do so is straight forward:
First add a reference to the FSharp.Core assembly

Add-Type -Path 'C:\Program Files (x86)\FSharp-1.9.6.16\bin\fSharp.Core.dll'

Now you do things like:
PS C:> [Microsoft.FSharp.Math.BigInt]::Pow(17,71).toString()
PS C:>2300771122759378216336589429524308
0278517973481542540644504860767306
72752491528319986033

So if you are a fan of http://projecteuler.net/ you now have another tool you can utilize.

Enjoy!

Defining Object Formatting or "How to always show Military time"

2009-10-02T07:26:00.007-04:00

A former colleague of mine at the OSU Medical Center recently asked a PowerShell related question.

Wait - Stop - Let's start over. I must digress a moment, please be patient as I give this former colleague of mine an appropriate introduction.

This Buckeye transplant to the state of Texas is much more then a former workmate, his legacy persists in innumerable ways. I won't take your time listing many of them, but I do have to share at least one. Notice the name of my blog? It isn't named after a South Park character, nor is it named after some pirate fetish. No this transplanted Buckeye is the source of FatBeard. He has a peculiar ability to derive nicknames that persist way beyond any code or script he has ever written. I fell prey to his moniker making over 3 years ago.

OK - now that you know how FatBeard came to be, lets move on with the PowerShell related post.

Texas asked me the following:

When I type Get-ChildItem (dir, ls) and get a file listing I want to see the LastWriteTime in Military format. Easy enough! I sent him this:

Get-ChildItem | select @{Name="LWT";Expression={"{0:d} {0:HH}:{0:mm}" -f ($_.LastWriteTime)}}

His response went something like this (paraphrased for the children in the audience) . "You obtuse gluteus maximus, why would I want to type that each and every time I need a directory listing." Admittedly, he had a point.

Thus begins my first foray into extending types. Using this as my guide (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms714665(VS.85).aspx), I was able to quickly accomplish the task.

My steps were as follows:

Navigate to C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0 and make a copy of FileSystem.format.ps1xml
Rename the copied file (CustomFileSystem.format.ps1xml)
Open the renamed file and look for the tag.
You should find something like this -
[String]::Format("{0,10} {1,8}", $_.LastWriteTime.ToString("d"), $_.LastWriteTime.ToString("t"))
As you can see, this handles the LastWriteTime formating for FileSystem related information. All we need to do is change it to meet our need. This should do -
[String]::Format("{0,10} {1,2}:{2,2}:{3,2}", $_.LastWriteTime.ToString("d"),
$_.LastWriteTime.ToString("HH"), $_.LastWriteTime.ToString("mm"),
$_.LastWriteTime.ToString("ss"))
Save the file.
We now need to load the new formatting. Easy enough!
Update-FormatData -prependPath 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\windowspowershell\v1.0\ CustomFileSystem.format.ps1xml'
Verify your custom formatting by typing a few Get-ChildItem commands.

Now that wasn't to hard was it! Well Texas is happy now and you know how to modify object formatting (and how FatBeard came to be).

Enjoy!

PowerShell and ZedGraph – Example 3

2009-08-25T14:12:00.007-04:00

Welcome to part three in our PowerShell/ZedGraph series. Make sure you take a look at Part 1 & Part 2 before you continue on. Before we jump into more advanced features, I thought I would demonstrate how to populate the chart with real data. Apparently some were not impressed by the Yuengling consumption example (a fictitious one at that!).

We will use the ever diligent Get-Process cmdlet for our "real" data. The end result will look something like this:

Pretty no?

The code:

#Load the zedgraph dll
$ZedGraphDll = "C:\zedgraph_dll_v5.1.5\ZedGraph.dll"
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFrom($ZedGraphDll) | out-null

# Create a WinForm to serve as a container
$global:form = new-object Windows.Forms.form
$form.Size = new-object System.Drawing.Size @(500,400)

# Create a ZedGraphControl
$zgc = new-object -typename ZedGraph.ZedGraphControl
$zgc.GraphPane.Title.Text = "Processes"
$zgc.GraphPane.XAxis.Title.Text = "Process"
$zgc.GraphPane.YAxis.Title.Text = "WS(MB)"

# Go fetch me some processes data
$WS = @{Name='WS';Expression={"{0:#}" -f ($_.WorkingSet/1KB)}}
$processes = Get-Process | where {$_.WorkingSet -gt 30MB} | Sort Name | select $WS, Name

$a = $b = @()
foreach($Process in $Processes)
{
 $a+= $Process.WS
 $b+= $Process.Name
}

$curve = $zgc.GraphPane.AddBar("Test",$null,$a,[System.Drawing.Color]::Red)
$zgc.GraphPane.XAxis.Type = 'Text'
$zgc.GraphPane.XAxis.Scale.FontSpec.Angle = 65
$zgc.GraphPane.XAxis.Scale.MajorStep = 1
$zgc.GraphPane.X2Axis.Scale.FontSpec.Size = 8
$zgc.GraphPane.XAxis.Scale.TextLabels = $b

# Hide the legend
$zgc.GraphPane.Legend.IsVisible = $False

# Make me pretty...
$zgc.GraphPane.Fill = New-Object ZedGraph.Fill([System.Drawing.Color]::WhiteSmoke,[System.Drawing.Color]::Lavender,0)
$zgc.GraphPane.Chart.Fill =  New-Object ZedGraph.Fill([System.Drawing.Color]::FromArgb(255,255,245), [System.Drawing.Color]::FromArgb(255,255,190),90)

# Calculate the Axis Scale Ranges
$zgc.AxisChange()

# Add our graph to the form
$Form.Controls.Add($zgc)
$zgc.dock = [System.Windows.Forms.DockStyle]::Fill

# Show the form
$Form.Add_Shown({$form.Activate()})
[void]$form.showdialog()

The only difference in this example is we create and populate a couple arrays (forgive my naming conventions) and use them as our data points.

I hope I have answered some of the questions about "real" data utilization with ZedGraph.

Enjoy!

PowerShell and ZedGraph – Example 2

2009-08-24T09:20:00.005-04:00

If you haven't already, take a look at Example 1 before you move forward!

Let's continuing with our charting example. At this point we have created a simple bar chart. Let's make a couple of modifications.

The first thing we will do is to remove the legend.

All we need to do is set the Legend.IsVisible property:

$zgc.GraphPane.Legend.IsVisible = $False

Next, let's apply some color. We will set the pane background and the Axis background with a gradient:

$zgc.GraphPane.Fill = New-Object ZedGraph.Fill([System.Drawing.Color]::WhiteSmoke,[System.Drawing.Color]::Lavender,0)

$zgc.GraphPane.Chart.Fill = New-Object ZedGraph.Fill([System.Drawing.Color]::FromArgb(255,255,245), [System.Drawing.Color]::FromArgb(255,255,190),90)

Lastly, lets add some text to the graph:

$text = New-Object ZedGraph.TextObj("Supply`nDepleted",5,30)

$zgc.GraphPane.GraphObjList.Add($text)

$arrow = New-Object ZedGraph.ArrowObj([System.Drawing.Color]::Black,10,5,26,5,15)

$zgc.GraphPane.GraphObjList.Add($arrow)

So our end result should look something like this:

The code...

#Load the zedgraph dll
$ZedGraphDll = "C:\zedgraph_dll_v5.1.5\ZedGraph.dll"
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFrom($ZedGraphDll) | out-null

# Create a WinForm to serve as a container
$global:form = new-object Windows.Forms.form
$form.Size = new-object System.Drawing.Size @(500,400)

# Create a ZedGraphControl
$zgc = new-object -typename ZedGraph.ZedGraphControl
$zgc.GraphPane.Title.Text = "Yuengling Consumption"
$zgc.GraphPane.XAxis.Title.Text = "Month"
$zgc.GraphPane.YAxis.Title.Text = "Bottles"

$xLabels = "April", "May", "June","July", "August"
$yLabels = 60, 60, 75, 70, 15

$zgc.GraphPane.AddBar("Ying",$null,$yLabels,[System.Drawing.Color]::Red)
$zgc.GraphPane.XAxis.Type = 'Text'
$zgc.GraphPane.XAxis.Scale.TextLabels = $xLabels

# Hide the legend
$zgc.GraphPane.Legend.IsVisible = $False

# Fill the pane background with a gradient
$zgc.GraphPane.Fill = New-Object ZedGraph.Fill([System.Drawing.Color]::WhiteSmoke,[System.Drawing.Color]::Lavender,0)

# Fill the Axis Background with a gradient
$zgc.GraphPane.Chart.Fill =  New-Object ZedGraph.Fill([System.Drawing.Color]::FromArgb(255,255,245), [System.Drawing.Color]::FromArgb(255,255,190),90)

# Add text item to decorate the graph
$text = New-Object ZedGraph.TextObj("Supply`nDepleted",5,30)
$zgc.GraphPane.GraphObjList.Add($text)

# Add an arrow pointer for the above text line
$arrow = New-Object ZedGraph.ArrowObj([System.Drawing.Color]::Black,10,5,26,5,15)
$zgc.GraphPane.GraphObjList.Add($arrow)

# Calculate the Axis Scale Ranges
$zgc.AxisChange()

# Add our graph to the form
$Form.Controls.Add($zgc)
$zgc.dock = [System.Windows.Forms.DockStyle]::Fill

# Show the form
$Form.Add_Shown({$form.Activate()}) 
[void]$form.showdialog()

Till next time - Enjoy!

PowerShell and ZedGraph – Example 1

2009-08-23T21:05:00.006-04:00

Was searching for a PowerShell Mathematics library when I stumbled upon a cool .NET drawing library that can be easily consumed in PowerShell –ZedGraph. This is a fairly robust library that will enable you to graph multiple types of charts, including overlays. I plan on writing a series of posts that will demonstrate these capabilities.

Lets get started!

For the first chart, we are going to keep it simple. We will create a standard Bar chart with some fictitious data. The end result will look something like this.

Now to the code:

# Load the ZedGraph dll   
$ZedGraphDll = "C:\zedgraph_dll_v515\zedgraph_dll_v5.1.5\ZedGraph.dll"
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFrom($ZedGraphDll) | out-null

# Create a WinForm to serve as a container
$global:form = new-object Windows.Forms.form 
$form.Size = new-object System.Drawing.Size @(500,400)

# Create a ZedGraphControl
$zgc = new-object -typename ZedGraph.ZedGraphControl
$zgc.GraphPane.Title.Text = "Yuengling Consumption"
$zgc.GraphPane.XAxis.Title.Text = "Month"
$zgc.GraphPane.YAxis.Title.Text = "Bottles"

$xLabels = "April", "May", "June","July", "August"
$yLabels = 60, 60, 75, 70, 15

$zgc.GraphPane.AddBar("Ying",$null,$yLabels,[System.Drawing.Color]::Red)
$zgc.GraphPane.XAxis.Type = 'Text'
$zgc.GraphPane.XAxis.Scale.TextLabels = $xLabels

# Calculate the Axis Scale Ranges
$zgc.AxisChange()

# Add our graph to the form
$Form.Controls.Add($zgc)
$zgc.dock = [System.Windows.Forms.DockStyle]::Fill

# Show the form
$Form.Add_Shown({$form.Activate()})  
[void]$form.showdialog()

As you can see, it is fairly simple to get a standard graph output. The class documentation on the ZedGraph site was very helpfull. Make sure you spend some time looking over it as you start to explore this dll. I will continue to build on this example over the next few days.

Enjoy!

2009 Summer Scripting Games – Beginner Event 3

2009-08-12T10:43:00.003-04:00

What a pleasant surprise! Came into work this morning and saw that @makovec sent me a note indicating that this mornings Scripting Guys Blog referenced one of my submissions posted during the 2009 Summer Scripting Games!

The posting sited the use of the “undocumented” parameter –delimiter.

Their post is here.

It isn’t very often that Stahler and elegant are used in the same sentence…

Removing Header/Footer lines from CSV files

2009-08-05T12:40:00.004-04:00

I was recently tasked with scheduling a script to read in a TSM.out file and create a usable CSV file from it. The TSM *.out file has at least 9 header lines that are not relevant to the end file as well as some extra footer lines. I also noticed that the column headers are not descriptive either. So, to automate the file transformation, we look to PowerShell!

function Create-CSV {
  param(  [int]$HeaderLines,
          [int]$FooterLines,
          [string]$SourceFilePath,
          [string]$DestinationFilePath,
          [string]$NewColumnNames    )  

  if(Test-Path -literalPath $SourceFilePath) {
      $a = Get-Content -path $SourceFilePath
      if ($NewColumnNames -ne $null) {
          Add-Content -path $DestinationFilePath `
                      -value $NewColumnNames
      }
      # Grab only the lines we need 
      $a[$HeaderLines..($a.count - $FooterLines)] | `
      foreach{Add-Content -path $DestinationFilePath -value $_}
  }
  else {
      Write-Error "$SourceFilePath does not exist."
  }
} # End of function

Create-CSV -HeaderLines 9 `
          -FooterLines 4 `
          -SourceFilePath 'c:\temp\test.out' `
          -DestinationFilePath 'c:\temp\test.csv' `
          -NewColumnNames "Nodename,hostname,tcpipaddress"

Enjoy!

Central Ohio PowerShell Users Group

2009-07-27T10:42:00.003-04:00

Please join us for our first Central Ohio PowerShell Users Group on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at the Ohio State University Medical Center. Jeffery Hicks, Microsoft MVP will be joining us! For more information, visit the Central Ohio PowerShell Users Group site.

Searching for files remotely

2009-06-04T12:48:00.019-04:00

We are looking to possibly centralize the management of our OPT files. Thought maybe a quick script in PowerShell would do the trick. Ran the following line:

Get-childitem \\server1-vp01\c$ -Include *.opt -Recurse

and waited, waited, waited...... 6 minutes later the console displayed my results.

Knowing a little bit about WMI, I decided to approach this from a different angle:

Get-WmiObject `
-class CIM_DATAFile `
-computername 'server-vp01' `
-filter "extension='opt' and drive='c:'"

This gave me back the results in 2.73 seconds!

Comparing the times generated the following:

measure-command {`
get-childitem \\server-vp01\c$ `
-Include *.opt `
-Recurse}

Days              : 0
Hours             : 0
Minutes           : 6
Seconds           : 3
Milliseconds      : 476
Ticks             : 3634762131
TotalDays         : 0.00420690061458333
TotalHours        : 0.10096561475
TotalMinutes      : 6.057936885
TotalSeconds      : 363.4762131
TotalMilliseconds : 363476.2131

measure-command {`
Get-WmiObject `
-class CIM_DATAFile `
-computername 'server-vp01' `
-filter "extension='opt' and drive='c:'"}

Days              : 0
Hours             : 0
Minutes           : 0
Seconds           : 2
Milliseconds      : 739
Ticks             : 27390035
TotalDays         : 3.17014293981481E-05
TotalHours        : 0.000760834305555556
TotalMinutes      : 0.0456500583333333
TotalSeconds      : 2.7390035
TotalMilliseconds : 2739.0035

Pretty obvious which method to use.
Once again, PowerShell and WMI save the day.

PowerShell Formatting Error

2009-06-03T09:01:00.003-04:00

I was looking throught the PowerGUI forum yesterday when I saw a post similar to this:

$processes = Get-Process -name m*
$drives = Get-Wmiobject `
-class win32_logicaldisk `
-Filter "DriveType=3"

$processes
$driveinfo | Format-Table -autosize

When you run this code in an editor, you are likely to get the following error:

out-lineoutput : Object of type "Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Internal.Format.FormatStartData" is not legal or not in the correct sequence. This is likely caused by a user-specified "format-tabl e" command which is conflicting with the default formatting.

After a few minutes of research, I see that this has been registered on Microsoft Connect as a bug. A quick, easy fix is to pass the $processes object down the pipline to Out-Default. ( $processes | Out-Default )

Hope this helps!

TechED 2009 (Pics)

2009-05-31T18:39:00.013-04:00

Had a great time at TechED. I met a lot of great folks including quite a few from the PowerScript community. Following are a few pics from TechED - specifically the Birds of a Feather Session that Hal and Steven hosted (Practical PowerShell: Best practices from the field - Check out the recorded podcast of the session!).

Hal Rottenberg, PowerShell MVP & Steven Murawski hosting the BOF.

Hal fielding some questions.

Kirk Munro, PowerShell MVP (http://poshoholic.com/)

From left to right, Steven Murawski, the back of Ed Wilson (1/2 of the Scripting Guys) and John Merrill (IT content evangelist and publishing manager in the Windows Server and Solutions Division User Assistance group).

Steven Murawski getting ready to work the PowerShell booth.

Ed Wilson evangelizing the merits of PowerShell.

Had a great time at the TechED, especially at the BOF and at the PowerShell Dinner.

File Migration with PowerShell

2009-05-28T22:58:00.003-04:00

Was recently tasked with assisting our file migration project. Until the following script (assumes you are using Quest AD Commandlets), this was a manual process.

$Users = get-content -path c:\users.txt
foreach ($User in $Users) {
    $SourceFolder = "\\HumanResources\vol10\Users\$User"
    $NewFolderName = "$SourceFolder-Migrated"

    $homeDir = "\\personal-p01\users$\" + $User.substring(0,1) + "\$User"
    Copy-Item $SourceFolder -Destination $homeDir -Recurse

    Set-QADUser $User -ObjectAttributes @{'HomeDirectory'=$homeDir; 'HomeDrive'= 'P:'}
    $rule=new-object System.Security.AccessControl.FileSystemAccessRule("OSUMC\$User","FullControl","Allow")

    foreach ($file in $(Get-ChildItem $homeDir -recurse)) {
        $acl=get-acl $file.FullName
        $acl.SetAccessRule($rule)
        set-acl $File.Fullname $acl
    }
    # set the acl on the root folder
    set-acl $homeDir $acl
   
    # Rename-item doesn't work, so copy and delete
    Copy-item $SourceFolder -Destination "$SourceFolder-migrated" -Recurse
    Remove-Item $SourceFolder -Recurse -Force
}

Enjoy!

Using PowerShell, LogParser and PowerGadgets to get Exchange 2003 storage information – Part 1

2009-04-17T02:01:00.000-04:00

Was asked this week to write up a script that would graphically show how much free space was available in our Exchange Databases. My twitter colleague Alan Renouf made me aware of Jonathan Medds's post about Exchange free space. This gave me a good starting point. I now knew to look for EventID 1221 in the Exchange server(s) application event log. Being a big fan of LogParser, I decided to query the event logs using it instead of Get-WMIObject Win32_NTLogEvent. My reasoning for this is two-fold, I have a lot of LogParser scripts that I am able to reuse in PowerShell. Additionally, for many log parsing tasks, LogParser still is faster then using Select-String or other parsing methods.

I highly suggest that if you are entertaining the idea of using call LogParser within PowerShell, you should copy David Muegge’s LogParser library into your code base. Check out his posting for an explanation on how his library works (it is slick).

    function Get-ExchangeEventLogRecords {

# Include our LogParser library
# Check out David Muegge's Blog
# http://muegge.com/blog/?p=65
# for more info on his library
    .\LogParser_Lib.ps1
# This is the query we will be passing
# to LogParser
# Let's hear it for Here-Strings!
    $query = @"
    SELECT ComputerName, timewritten, Message
    FROM \\Exchange01\application
    WHERE eventID = 1221 and
      SourceName = 'MSExchangeIS Mailbox Store' and 
      to_date(timewritten) = System_Date()
"@
    $inputformat = Get-LPInputFormat "evt"
    $records = Get-LPRecordSet $query $inputformat
    return $records
}
  

The function Get-ExchangeEventLogRecords returns all the records that I care about (in this example I have included only one Exchange Server). In order to get the exact fields I want, I need to parse the Message field from the event log. The field looks something like this:

The database "MSXC01SG4\MSXC01SG4DB4" has 4626 megabytes of free space after online defragmentation has terminated…

The next function takes care of the parsing and creates a custom object for me.

    function Format-ExchangeEventLogObject {
    Begin {
        $regex = [regex] '(?:MSXC\w+\\MSXC\w+)'
        $regex1 = [regex] '(?:\s\d+)' }
 
    Process {
        $Store = $regex.Match($_.message) | select Value
        $Mem = $regex1.Match($_.message) | select Value
        $Mem = $Mem.value.ToString().Trim()
        $obj = New-Object psObject
        $obj | Add-Member NoteProperty TimeWritten $_.TimeWritten
        $obj | Add-Member NoteProperty ExchangeServer $_.ComputerName
        $obj | Add-Member NoteProperty Store $Store.Value
        $obj | Add-Member NoteProperty AvailableMem $Mem
        Write-Output $obj }
}

  

One thing to note, so far, we have only looked at the available space within the *.EDB file. In the next post, I will take this information and gather a few more relevant fields (total size of the EDB file, size of STM file, estimated availability in the STM file) and show a graphical representation of the data.

Enjoy!

Quest Management Shell 1.2 – Updated AD cmdlets!

2009-04-09T10:46:00.002-04:00

I just installed Quest’s latest version of their free AD cmdlets. After installing, I wanted to see what new cmdlets have been provided. The first thing I noticed in looking for the updated cmdlets was that you can no longer use Get-QADCommand to see the Quest Commands, that has been replaced with Get-QCommand. Looks like there are 9 new cmdlets:

Add-QADMemberOf – I see this one getting some use! Allows you to add a single object to one or many groups.
Approve-QARSApprovalTask – An ActiveRoles Server cmdlet. Looks like a workflow approval cmdlet
Get-QADMemberOf – This will be handy for auditing purposes! This cmdlet allows you to retrieve the groups that an object belongs to.
Get-QADPasswordSettingsObjectAppliesTo – This new cmdlet is specific to Windows Server 2008 Active Directory. Allows you to retrieve groups affected by a particular password settings object.
Get-QARSApprovalTask – Another ActiveRoles Server cmdlet. You can use this one to grab approval task records.
Get-QARSOperation - Another ActiveRoles Server cmdlet. Used to retrieve the operations records.
Reject-QARSApprovalTask – Like the Approve-QARSApprovalTask accept this one is used to reject the workflow task.
Remove-QADMemberOf – The opposite of Add-QADMemberOf. Use the cmdlet to remove an object from one or more groups. This one will get some use in our environment!
Restore-QADDeletedObject – Wish we had this one a few months ago! This cmdlet will allow you to undelete objects in AD by restoring tombstones into normal objects. An example from the help file demonstrates the power of this cmdlet:
Get-QADUser -Tombstone -LastKnownParent '<DN of container>' -Name 'John Smith*' Restore-QADDeletedObject

Nice collection of new functionality!

When looking at the example in the help on Restore-QADDeletedObject, I saw the parameter –Tombstone used with Get-QADUser. Further investigation yields that Quest has added quite a few parameters to various QAD cmdlets.

This is a list of new parameters from the documentation supplied with the new version:

Parameters	Cmdlet added to
Tombstone LastKnownParent	Get-QADComputer Get-QADGroup Get-QADObject Get-QADPasswordSettingsObject Get-QADUser
CreatedOn CreatedAfter CreatedBefore LastChangedOn LastChangedAfter LastChangedBefore	Get-QADComputer Get-QADGroup Get-QADObject Get-QADPasswordSettingsObject Get-QADUser Get-QARSAccessTemplate Get-QARSAccessTemplateLink
Type ObjectAttributes Name DisplayName Description Anr	Get-QADGroupMember
MemberOf IndirectMemberOf NotMemberOf NotIndirectMemberOf	Get-QADComputer Get-QADGroup Get-QADObject Get-QADUser
ContainsMember ContainsIndirectMember NotContainsMember NotContainsIndirectMember	Get-QADGroup

Can’t wait to dive in a bit more and use the newest version.

Enjoy!

HIMSS - MSHUG Presentation

2009-04-09T08:56:00.006-04:00

I had the opportunity to evangelize about PowerShell at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) - Microsoft Health Users Group (MSHUG) last Saturday (4/4/2009). Other then my laptop freezing in the first ten minutes of the presentation, all went well. Given that I only had about 50 minutes, I decided to focus on "what" PowerShell can do versus "how". So I demonstrated the following:

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) report aggregation
Process Tracking with WMI and PowerGadgets (read/write text files)
Citrix License usage (WMI, SQL Server and PowerGadgets)
Print Queue analysis (WMI, PowerGadgets)
Exchange 2003 reporting (WMI)
Active Directory Maintenance (using Quest’s ActiveRoles Management Shell for Active Directory
- Bulk User Creation
- Group Creation
- Discussed other AD related cmdlets
VM Infrastructure (VI) Toolkit
- Iterate over all virtual machines
- Perusing the System Center events log with a custom GUI. A brief explanation of PrimalForms
- Conditional Formatting in Excel with VM data

There were not nearly as many questions as I had anticipate (perhaps following lunch had a little to do with that). Of the questions asked, a couple stood out.

Why not continue to use VBScript and/or Perl
Can scripts be compiled

Was able to reiterate the point that if you are moving forward with Microsoft, you really have no choice. Throughout the session I tried to emphasize the power of objects and how utilizing them makes a systems admin job so much easier. As far as compiling is concerned, my response was “if compiling them is a requirement, then you should look at writing it in C# instead”. Would be interested in seeing how others would have responded.

I want to thank the following people for sending PowerShell related materials for distribution at the session:

Susan Roper (Quest Software)
SoftwareFX sales staff
Jeffery Hicks (Sapien Technologies)

Enjoy!

Additional cmdlets for PowerShell

2009-03-05T10:11:00.010-05:00

I was putting together some documentation for my upcoming HIMSS - MSHUG PowerShell discussion and thought it would be a good idea to list the additional cmdlets that are currently available (many are free). Following is a dynamic list of the ones I am aware. Let me know if there are more to be added!

Enjoy!

PowerShell and WSUS

2009-02-27T11:35:00.003-05:00

Was recently tasked with writing an audit script of what servers we control that were not currently in WSUS. Following is a script that generates 2 text files. The first one will be a list of servers in the specific OU that we are concerned with are in WSUS and the second will be a listing of those that are not.

Shout out to Jonathan Medd for showing the way with his WSUS PowerPack.

function Get-WSUSComputers(){    [void][reflection.assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.UpdateServices.Administration")    $wsus = [Microsoft.UpdateServices.Administration.AdminProxy]::getUpdateServer('WSUS_Server',$false)    $wsus.GetComputerTargets()} $ServerList = 'c:\ProductionScripts\Servers.txt'$WSUSList = 'c:\ProductionScripts\WSUS.txt'$InWSUS = 'c:\ProductionScripts\FirstInSecond.txt'$NotInWSUS = 'c:\ProductionScripts\FirstNotInSecond.txt' # Export out a list of all serversGet-QADComputer -OSName *Server* `    -SearchRoot 'OU=Your OU,OU=Your Company,DC=Company,DC=com' |`    Sort-Object DNSName | `    Select-Object DNSName | `    Out-File -FilePath $ServerList -Force # Export out a list of all servers# listed in WSUSGet-WSUSComputers | Sort FullDomainName |`    Select FullDomainName | `    Out-File -FilePath $WSUSList -Force $Servers = get-content $ServerList$WSUS = get-content $WSUSList  New-Item $InWSUS -Type file -ForceNew-Item $NotInWSUS -Type file -Force Foreach ($Server in $Servers){    If ($WSUS -contains $Server)    {        Add-content $InWSUS $Server    }    Else    {        Add-content $NotInWSUS $Server    }}

Enjoy!

PowerShell, VM & Excel (Conditional Formatting)

2009-02-19T08:59:00.008-05:00

Some of our support staff recently asked if they could get access to the VM Virtual Center in order to see the status of VM servers. We recognized the importance of giving them this information, but did not like the idea of giving them access to Virtual Center. So I was asked for suggestions: Yep you guessed it PowerShell to the rescue!

I wrote a script that gets all the Virtual machines and then populates an Excel spreadsheet. But wait there's more! A colleague asked if it was possible to create a dashboard (you know Green for good, Red for bad). Being quite familiar with Excel, I knew conditional formatting was the answer.

This is a simplified version of the output from the script (only 2 properties):

How did we make this work? Well, the first thing I do when automating Excel from PowerShell is to open up Excel and record a macro. I find it helpful to do this in very meticulous fashion. I record individual tasks then hit Alt-F11 to look at the generated code. If you have no experience with VBA and Excel, you should take a few minutes to get acquainted. Once I see the VBA code, I have a good idea how to convert it into PowerShell.

Here is the script:

   1: # Create $cred variable (only if you need to pass different creds)   2: $cred = Get-Credential 'osu\fatbeard'   3: Connect-VIServer -Server 'VM-Server' -Credential $cred   4:     5: # Get all VM Boxes, we are interested in this   6: # point only in the name and PowerState   7: $VirtualServers = Get-VM | sort Name | select Name, PowerState    8:     9: # Create an instance of Excel  10: $Excel = New-Object -comobject Excel.Application  11: $Excel.visible = $True   12: $Workbook = $Excel.Workbooks.Add()  13: $Info = $Workbook.Worksheets.Item(1)  14:    15: # Create our column headers  16: $Info.Cells.Item(1,1) = "VM Name"  17: $Info.Cells.Item(1,2) = "PowerState"  18:    19: # Add a little formatting to the column header  20: $Style = $Info.UsedRange  21: $Style.Interior.ColorIndex = 19  22: $Style.Font.ColorIndex = 11  23: $Style.Font.Bold = $True  24:    25: # Data starts at row 2  26: $intRow = 2  27:    28: # iterate over each VM  29: foreach ($VirtualServer in $VirtualServers)  30: {  31:     if ($VirtualServer.PowerState -eq "PoweredOn")  32:     {  33:         $PoweredState = 1  34:     }  35:     else  36:     {  37:         $PoweredState = 0  38:     }      39:       40:     $Style.Cells.Item($intRow, 1) = $VirtualServer.Name  41:     $Style.Cells.Item($intRow, 2) = $PoweredState   42:     $intRow++  43: }  44:    45: ## Now for some formatting   46: #  For more data on the enumeration values look at the following:  47: #  XlFormatConditionType Enumeration:       http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb241301.aspx   48: #  XlFormatConditionOperator Enumeration: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb241299.aspx  49: #  XlIconSet Enumeration                  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb241324.aspx  50: #  XlConditionValueTypes Enumeration      http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb241028.aspx  51: ## The constants that we will use  52:    53: $xlCenter = -4108  54: $xlCellValue = 1  55: $xlEqual = 3  56: $xl3TrafficLights2 = 5  57: $xl3Symbols = 7  58: $xlConditionValueNumber = 0  59: $xlIconSet = 6  60:    61: # Make Column "A" wide enough for content  62: $info.Range("A:A").entireColumn.Autofit()  63:    64: # Make Column "B" wide enough for content and Center the contents  65: $info.Range("B:B").entireColumn.Autofit()  66: $info.Range("B:B").HorizontalAlignment = $xlCenter   67:    68: # This will fill the cell  69: #$Info.Range("B:B").FormatConditions.Add($xlCellValue,$xlEqual,'="Y"')  70: #$Info.Range("B:B").FormatConditions.Item(1).Interior.Color = 5296274  71:    72: $Info.Range("B:B").FormatConditions.Add($xlIconSet)  73: $Info.Range("B:B").FormatConditions.AddIconSetCondition  74: $Info.Range("B:B").FormatConditions.Item(1).ShowIconOnly = $true  75: $Info.Range("B:B").FormatConditions.Item(1).IconSet = $Excel.ActiveWorkbook.IconSets.Item($xl3Symbols)  76: $Info.Range("B:B").FormatConditions.Item(1).IconCriteria.Item(2).Value = 0  77: $Info.Range("B:B").FormatConditions.Item(1).IconCriteria.Item(2).Operator = 5  78: $Info.Range("B:B").FormatConditions.Item(1).IconCriteria.Item(3).Value = 1  79: $Info.Range("B:B").FormatConditions.Item(1).IconCriteria.Item(3).Operator = 7  80:    81:    82:    83:  

I have included MSDN links in the code to the Excel enumerations used to write this script.
All that is left to do is to schedule it and save it somewhere accessible to the Support Center staff. Another todo from a VM scripting perspective is figure out a way to get the custom fields. Leave me a comment if you have already figured that one out!

Enjoy!!

PowerShell/Log Parser 2.2 and Add-Member

2009-02-16T16:22:00.011-05:00

I recently stumbled upon a great post by David Muegge titled “Log Parser and PowerShell - Part II”. David does a great job of wrapping PowerShell around Log Parser. I highly recommend that you take a look at his blog post. I was looking at his functions and decided that I should give them a try against some production data. I decided to look at failed login attempts (we have had an issue with an particular application).

What I was looking for was a count of failed logins (from the Strings property). The following code assumes that you are using David’s Library.

$query = "SELECT Strings FROM '\\XX-P01\Security' WHERE EventID = 529"
$inputformat = Get-LPInputFormat "evt"
$records = Get-LPRecordSet $query $inputformat
$records  `
    Add-Member -name "User" `
    -value {$this.Strings.substring(0,$this.Strings.indexof(""))}`
    -memberType ScriptProperty -force -passThru  `
        Group-Object User -noElement `
        Sort-Object -descending Count `
        Select-Object -first 10

In order to get exactly what I wanted, I added a new property to this object: "User"

In order to do this, I needed to parse the Strings property of my $Records object for everything before the first pipe.

$this.Strings.substring(0,$this.Strings.indexof("")) achieves the desired value.

This gives us:


Count Name
----- ----
   81 cluster
   30 mastersql
   18 Administrator
    9 home50
    8 marg98
    7 bart01
    7 lisa27
    6 Nels07
    5 barn10
    4 skin01

Just what I was looking for!
Enjoy!

Project Euler and PowerShell - Problem 13

2009-02-04T10:35:00.002-05:00

This one was simple!

Work out the first ten digits of the sum of the following one-hundred 50-digit numbers.

37107287533902102798797998220837590246510135740250
46376937677490009712648124896970078050417018260538
74324986199524741059474233309513058123726617309629
91942213363574161572522430563301811072406154908250
23067588207539346171171980310421047513778063246676
89261670696623633820136378418383684178734361726757
28112879812849979408065481931592621691275889832738
44274228917432520321923589422876796487670272189318
47451445736001306439091167216856844588711603153276
70386486105843025439939619828917593665686757934951
62176457141856560629502157223196586755079324193331
64906352462741904929101432445813822663347944758178
92575867718337217661963751590579239728245598838407
58203565325359399008402633568948830189458628227828
80181199384826282014278194139940567587151170094390
35398664372827112653829987240784473053190104293586
86515506006295864861532075273371959191420517255829
71693888707715466499115593487603532921714970056938
54370070576826684624621495650076471787294438377604
53282654108756828443191190634694037855217779295145
36123272525000296071075082563815656710885258350721
45876576172410976447339110607218265236877223636045
17423706905851860660448207621209813287860733969412
81142660418086830619328460811191061556940512689692
51934325451728388641918047049293215058642563049483
62467221648435076201727918039944693004732956340691
15732444386908125794514089057706229429197107928209
55037687525678773091862540744969844508330393682126
18336384825330154686196124348767681297534375946515
80386287592878490201521685554828717201219257766954
78182833757993103614740356856449095527097864797581
16726320100436897842553539920931837441497806860984
48403098129077791799088218795327364475675590848030
87086987551392711854517078544161852424320693150332
59959406895756536782107074926966537676326235447210
69793950679652694742597709739166693763042633987085
41052684708299085211399427365734116182760315001271
65378607361501080857009149939512557028198746004375
35829035317434717326932123578154982629742552737307
94953759765105305946966067683156574377167401875275
88902802571733229619176668713819931811048770190271
25267680276078003013678680992525463401061632866526
36270218540497705585629946580636237993140746255962
24074486908231174977792365466257246923322810917141
91430288197103288597806669760892938638285025333403
34413065578016127815921815005561868836468420090470
23053081172816430487623791969842487255036638784583
11487696932154902810424020138335124462181441773470
63783299490636259666498587618221225225512486764533
67720186971698544312419572409913959008952310058822
95548255300263520781532296796249481641953868218774
76085327132285723110424803456124867697064507995236
37774242535411291684276865538926205024910326572967
23701913275725675285653248258265463092207058596522
29798860272258331913126375147341994889534765745501
18495701454879288984856827726077713721403798879715
38298203783031473527721580348144513491373226651381
34829543829199918180278916522431027392251122869539
40957953066405232632538044100059654939159879593635
29746152185502371307642255121183693803580388584903
41698116222072977186158236678424689157993532961922
62467957194401269043877107275048102390895523597457
23189706772547915061505504953922979530901129967519
86188088225875314529584099251203829009407770775672
11306739708304724483816533873502340845647058077308
82959174767140363198008187129011875491310547126581
97623331044818386269515456334926366572897563400500
42846280183517070527831839425882145521227251250327
55121603546981200581762165212827652751691296897789
32238195734329339946437501907836945765883352399886
75506164965184775180738168837861091527357929701337
62177842752192623401942399639168044983993173312731
32924185707147349566916674687634660915035914677504
99518671430235219628894890102423325116913619626622
73267460800591547471830798392868535206946944540724
76841822524674417161514036427982273348055556214818
97142617910342598647204516893989422179826088076852
87783646182799346313767754307809363333018982642090
10848802521674670883215120185883543223812876952786
71329612474782464538636993009049310363619763878039
62184073572399794223406235393808339651327408011116
66627891981488087797941876876144230030984490851411
60661826293682836764744779239180335110989069790714
85786944089552990653640447425576083659976645795096
66024396409905389607120198219976047599490197230297
64913982680032973156037120041377903785566085089252
16730939319872750275468906903707539413042652315011
94809377245048795150954100921645863754710598436791
78639167021187492431995700641917969777599028300699
15368713711936614952811305876380278410754449733078
40789923115535562561142322423255033685442488917353
44889911501440648020369068063960672322193204149535
41503128880339536053299340368006977710650566631954
81234880673210146739058568557934581403627822703280
82616570773948327592232845941706525094512325230608
22918802058777319719839450180888072429661980811197
77158542502016545090413245809786882778948721859617
72107838435069186155435662884062257473692284509516
20849603980134001723930671666823555245252804609722
53503534226472524250874054075591789781264330331690

I saved the above list of 50 digit numbers as a text file and ran the following PowerShell code

$file = Get-Content -path c:\numbers.txt
[double]$total = 0
foreach($line in $file)
{
    $total += $line
}

$total

Told you it was easy!

Compare-Object –SyncWindow parameter

2009-01-30T14:25:00.005-05:00

I was comparing two lengthy configuration files (XML) knowing ahead of time that there were only a couple differences between them. The code I used was as follows:

$a = Get-Content file1.xml
$b = Get-Content File2.xml
Compare-Object $a $b

My result set was not at all what I expected. Instead of being a few lines it was almost the size as my two files combined! I was confused (and a little hungry). Turning to Get-Help compare-object -full, I saw this:

-syncWindow (int)
Defines a search region where an attempt is made to re-sync the order if there is no match.

Required? false
Position? named
Default value 5
Accept pipeline input? false
Accept wildcard characters? false

I must admit that I did not find this intuitive. Looks like by default it will look 5 lines up and 5 lines down for a match before moving on. Grabbing a Snickers and Diet Coke, I took my newly acquired knowledge and tried the following:

$a = Get-Content file1.xml
$b = Get-Content File2.xml
Compare-Object $a $b -SyncWindow 50

Success!! Fat and happy, I now have the results I expected.

InputObject	SideIndicator
driver-configuration dn="...."	"=>"
shim-auth-id value=""	"=>"

Enjoy!

Project Euler and PowerShell - Problem 19

2009-01-24T20:08:00.004-05:00

Eleven down, 14 more to go before I reach level 1 (tetrahedron) on Project Euler. This one was easy if you know what PowerShell can do with dates!

How many Sundays fell on the first of the month during the twentieth century (1 Jan 1901 to 31 Dec 2000)?


$startDate = Get-Date "01/01/1901"
$endDate = Get-Date "12/31/2000"
$cnt = 0
for($date=$startDate; $date -lt $endDate; $date = $date.AddMonths(1))
{
    if ($date.DayOfWeek -eq 'Sunday')
    {
        $cnt++
    }    
}    
$cnt

PowerShell and Exchange 2003

2009-01-14T12:28:00.004-05:00

Was tasked with getting some information out of Exchange 2003. Basically they wanted me to match up mailbox accounts with AD Users. The only consistent way to do this in our environment was to compare the LegacyDN property from the root\MicrosoftExchangeV2 - Exchange_Mailbox class with the AD User property LegacyExchangeDN. Following is the script used to iterate through our Exchange 2003 servers and generate an Excel report (CSV file).

function Get-ExchangeInfo

{

BEGIN

{

$Start = Get-Date

Write-Host "Script Started: $start`nProcessing"

}

PROCESS

{

$MailBoxes = Get-WmiObject `

-namespace 'root\MicrosoftExchangeV2' `

-class 'Exchange_MailBox' `

-computerName $_ | sort size -desc | `

Select MailBoxDisplayName, `

ServerName, `

StorageGroupName, `

StoreName, `

Size, `

TotalItems, `

legacyDN

Write-Host "Server: $_"

foreach($MailBox in $MailBoxes)

{

$ldap = "(LegacyExchangeDN={0})" -f $MailBox.legacyDN

$User = Get-QADUser `

-SizeLimit 0 `

-IncludeAllProperties `

-LdapFilter $ldap | `

SELECT SamAccountName, Department, DisplayName

$obj = New-Object psobject

$obj | Add-Member NoteProperty SamAccountName $User.SamAccountName

$obj | Add-Member NoteProperty Department $User.Department

$obj | Add-Member NoteProperty DisplayName $User.DisplayName

$obj | Add-Member NoteProperty Size $MailBox.Size

$obj | Add-Member NoteProperty TotalItems $MailBox.TotalItems

$obj | Add-Member NoteProperty ServerName $MailBox.ServerName

$obj | Add-Member NoteProperty StorageGroupName $MailBox.StorageGroupName

$obj | Add-Member NoteProperty StoreName $MailBox.StoreName

$obj | Add-Member NoteProperty LegacyDN $MailBox.LegacyDN

Write-Output $obj

}

}

{

$End = Get-Date

Write-Host "Script completed: $end"

Write-Host "Total Duration: $($end-$Start).minute"

}

}

Clear-Host

$Servers = 'ms01','ms02','ms03','ms04','ms05','ms06'

$Servers | Get-ExchangeInfo | Export-Csv -path 'c:\ExchangeInfo.csv' -noTypeInformation

Enjoy!

PowerShell and XML

2009-01-13T14:29:00.007-05:00

After my last post, I thought it might be a good idea to spend a little more time explaining the XML capabilities of PowerShell. I had 2 people ask for clarification on it so I obviously didn't give it the attention it deserved! Following are a few examples of what can be done with the XML type in PowerShell.

The file that we will be using is from a Microsoft Baseline Security Analysis. To follow along with the examples, it would be beneficial if you had a similar file. You can use this sample. It looks something like this.

The first thing we need to do is explicitly cast it as an XML file:
[XML]$ScanResult = Get-Content 'c:\sampleMBSA.xml'

Now that we have the XML file, lets see what we can do with it.

Get the Server (Machine) name:
PS> $File.SecScan.Machine
PS> Test-VP01
Get the IP address:
PS> $file.SecScan.IP
PS> 12.345.67.890
What 3 areas were scanned:
PS> $file.SecScan.Check Select Name
Name
Office Security Updates
SDK Components Security Updates
Windows Security Updates
See the complete list of updates (installed or not) for Office Security Updates:
Note that we had 3 areas that were scanned, we are looking at the first one, so we start with [0] index.
PS> $file.SecScan.Check[0].Detail.UpdateData Select Title
Title
Office 2003 Service Pack 2 for Proofing Tools
Security Update for Office 2003 (KB920813)
Security Update for Excel 2003 (KB925257)
Security Update for Word 2003 (KB923094)
Visio 2003 Service Pack 2
Security Update for Office 2003 (KB924424)
....
See the complete list of updates that need installed for Office Security Updates:
PS> $file.SecScan.Check[0].Detail.UpdateData `
> Where{$_.IsInstalled -eq $false} `
> Select Title
Office 2003 Service Pack 2
Security Update for Office 2003 (KB954478)
Security Update for Office 2003 (KB923272)
Security Update for PowerPoint 2003 (KB9230
Security Update for Microsoft Office Excel
Security Update for Office 2003 (KB936048)
Security Update for Excel 2003 (KB940602)
Outlook Live 2003 Service Pack 2
Project 2003 Service Pack 2
Security Update for Office 2003 (KB924424)
...
See the list of critical updates that need to be installed for Office Security Updates:
PS> $file.SecScan.Check[0].Detail.UpdateData `
> where{$_.IsInstalled -eq $false -and $_.Severity -eq 4} `
> select Title, @{name="Severity";Expression={"Critical"}}
Severity Title
Critical Security Update for Access Snapshot Viewer 2003 (KB955439)
Critical Security Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 (KB945432)

Hopefully, this clarifies some of possibilities with XML and PowerShell.

Enjoy!

PowerShell & MBSA logs

2009-01-10T12:06:00.004-05:00

Was recently asked if I could iterate over a directory containing *.MBSA files from a scheduled run of the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer. These *.MBSA files are XML files that contain some basic machine information as well as the number of security and service packs that are required to get the machine to a secure state. The GUI shows the information as follows: The specifics of the request that I received were to grab the count of the following updates per machine (circled in the picture above):

SDK Components Security Updates
SQL Server Security Updates
Windows Security Updates
BizTalk Server Security Updates
Exchange Security Updates
Office Security Updates

What a great opportunity to use PowerShell's XML capabilities! The following script iterates over each file in the directory, parses the file and looks for the count. This information is dynamically entered into an Excel spreadsheet.

# grab our XML files
$files = Get-ChildItem -path 'C:\SecurityScans'
# Get Excel ready
$Excel = New-Object -comobject Excel.Application
$Excel.visible = $True
$Workbook = $Excel.Workbooks.Add()
$Info = $Workbook.Worksheets.Item(1)
# Create our column headers
$Info.Cells.Item(1,1) = "Server name"
$Info.Cells.Item(1,2) = "SDK Components Security Updates"
$Info.Cells.Item(1,3) = "SQL Server Security Updates"
$Info.Cells.Item(1,4) = "Windows Security Updates"
$Info.Cells.Item(1,5) = "BizTalk Server Security Updates"
$Info.Cells.Item(1,6) = "Exchange Security Updates"
$Info.Cells.Item(1,7) = "Office Security Updates"
# Add a little formatting
$Style = $Info.UsedRange
$Style.Interior.ColorIndex = 19
$Style.Font.ColorIndex = 11
$Style.Font.Bold = $True
$intRow = 2
# iterate over each .mbsa file
foreach ($file in $files)
{
[XML]$ScanResult = Get-Content $file
$Scanned = $ScanResult.SecScan.Check | select Name, Advice
$Server = $ScanResult.SecScan.Machine
foreach($Scan in $Scanned)
{
# if Advice doesn't start with a numeric value then set it equal to 0
if( $Scan.Advice -match '^(?<Cnt>[0-9]*)'){$Advice=$matches.cnt} else{$Advice=0}
$Style.Cells.Item($intRow, 1) = $Server
switch ($Scan.Name)
{
"SDK Components Security Updates" {$Style.Cells.Item($intRow, 2) = $Advice;break}
"SQL Server Security Updates" {$Style.Cells.Item($intRow, 3) = $Advice;break}
"Windows Security Updates" {$Style.Cells.Item($intRow, 4) = $Advice;break}
"BizTalk Server Security Updates" {$Style.Cells.Item($intRow, 5) = $Advice;break}
"Exchange Security Updates" {$Style.Cells.Item($intRow, 6) = $Advice;break}
"Office Security Updates" {$Style.Cells.Item($intRow, 7) = $Advice;break}
}
}
$intRow = $intRow + 1
}

The result is a nicely formatted Excel spreadsheet that has the total number of updates.

This script hopefully demonstrates a how to use few different PowerShell features:

Creating a COM object
Using Regular Expressions
Using [XML] type

Enjoy

Verify PSSnapin (Script vs PrimalForms)

2009-01-07T13:46:00.004-05:00

When running a script from the console or the various IDE's, you can check for a specific snap-in with the #requires statement. See ALEKSANDAR's blog post for the complete description.

When running a script as a winform (like through PrimalForms), you may need to attack from a different angle. It may be necessary to capture the fact that a particular snap-in is not installed and present it in the GUI or a messagebox. For this the following may be a better approach:

$snapin = "Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement"
if ((get-pssnapin -name $snapin -erroraction silentlycontinue) -eq $null)
{
    $statusBar1.text = "$snapin is not installed" 
}

Enjoy!

PrimalForms & PowerShell AD Tool

2009-01-05T16:53:00.016-05:00

We are in the middle of a file migration and our policy dictates that as our file shares are moved they need to have the following structure:

Access.Neurosurgery.Public.Change
Access.Neurosurgery.Public.Full
Access.Neurosurgery.Public.Read

So every time a new group is requested, the admin has to create 3 distinct groups, assign the scope & type and add the "Managed By" username. Not hard, but time consuming. This looked like a great candidate for PrimalForms!

The UI is pretty straight forward. It asks for the group name, the scope and the owner.

When the Verify Group button is pressed, we perform a few checks before we create the groups. First we check to see if there are similar groups. In this case, the panel is now visible and the status bar indicates that like groups already exist.

Once we verify the group name, we need to verify that the entered group owner is in fact a legitimate AD object.

In this case, the user is not valid. Once all the data is verified, we give the user one last chance to cancel before the groups are created.

That's about it!

Enjoy!

FatBeard's Adventures in PowerShell

PowerShell - Let SQL sort it out

Creating an LDIF file with PowerShell

PowerShell - Project Euler Problem 102

Will Rogers Phenomenon

More Training Questions: Connect to different domain

Training Questions: Date and Numeric Formatting with PowerShell

PowerShell ActiveDirectory Module vs Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement Snapin

PowerShell and Benford's Law

Setting user LogonWorkstations and LogonHours in Active Directory

Printer exploration with PowerShell

PowerShell doesn't cure insomnia

Project Euler 112

Getting Database counts per Exchange Server via PowerShell

Managing Proxy Settings with PowerShell

PowerShell & User Certificates

Where's my attribute?

Project Euler and PowerShell - Problem 42

Finding instances of BitLocker

Get-LatticePoints

Query AD & ND concurrently (Yep, you heard me right)

WPK Snippets

WPK Snippets

Dynamic Variable Values

Query DNS with PowerShell

Calling a Web Service with PowerShell

Using F# BigInt in PowerShell

Defining Object Formatting or "How to always show Military time"

PowerShell and ZedGraph – Example 3

PowerShell and ZedGraph – Example 2

PowerShell and ZedGraph – Example 1

2009 Summer Scripting Games – Beginner Event 3

Removing Header/Footer lines from CSV files

Central Ohio PowerShell Users Group

Searching for files remotely

PowerShell Formatting Error

TechED 2009 (Pics)

File Migration with PowerShell

Using PowerShell, LogParser and PowerGadgets to get Exchange 2003 storage information – Part 1

Quest Management Shell 1.2 – Updated AD cmdlets!

HIMSS - MSHUG Presentation

Additional cmdlets for PowerShell

PowerShell and WSUS

PowerShell, VM & Excel (Conditional Formatting)

PowerShell/Log Parser 2.2 and Add-Member

Project Euler and PowerShell - Problem 13

Compare-Object –SyncWindow parameter

Project Euler and PowerShell - Problem 19

PowerShell and Exchange 2003

PowerShell and XML

PowerShell & MBSA logs

Verify PSSnapin (Script vs PrimalForms)

PrimalForms & PowerShell AD Tool