PFE Ireland : Scripting

PowerShell – Read an XML configuration file

gmcshera — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:44:46 GMT

I was recently asked a question about PowerShells ability to read in an XML configuration file at a Virtual Academy I ran last week. One of the strengths of PowerShell is its ability to perform lots of time saving tasks … one of which is reading in an...(read more)

Scripting: Hyper-V - Mount VHDs by right clicking

gmcshera — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:20:00 GMT

There are plenty of posts on the interweb that show you how to mount and unmount vhds via powershell. I downloaded the Hyper-V PowerShell management library from CodePlex.com here as created by James O'Neil. In it he kindly provides two scripts (mount-VHD.ps1 and Unmount-VHD.ps1) along with a REG file. Assuming you have PowerShell 1.0 installed (available feature in Windows Server 2008) these scripts and registry settings work fine.

I ran into problems once I downloaded and installed the Windows PowerShell 2.0 Community Technology Preview (CTP). Powershells execution policy wouldnt let the scripts run anymore.

You can change the executionPolicy a number of ways:

Registry:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\ShellIds\Microsoft.PowerShell

Change the key: REG_SZ ExecutionPolicy to Unrestricted

PowerShell:

set-executionpolicy unrestricted

Note: By changing the execution policy you are technically opening your system up to remote execution of PowerShell scripts from unsigned/untrusted sources. I want to be able to mount vhds easily coz Im a lazy kinda guy. Im running Hyper-V on my laptop so Im not too concerned about security in this instance. You should think carefully about making this change in a production environment.

The second thing I noticed was that the registry settings provided by James no longer worked. So I came up with a slight modification as follows:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Virtual.Machine.HD]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Virtual.Machine.HD\DefaultIcon]
@="%SystemRoot%\\system32\\imageres.dll,26"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Virtual.Machine.HD\shell]
@="Mount"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Virtual.Machine.HD\shell\Mount]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Virtual.Machine.HD\shell\Mount\command]
@="cmd /k \"powershell -NoProfile -Command \"& 'c:\\Program Files\\Hyper-V\\Mount-VHD.ps1' '%1'\"\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Virtual.Machine.HD\shell\Unmount]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Virtual.Machine.HD\shell\Unmount\command]
@="cmd /k \"powershell -NoProfile -Command \"& 'c:\\Program Files\\Hyper-V\\Unmount-VHD.ps1' '%1'\"\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.vhd]
@="Virtual.Machine.HD"

I've used cmd/k instead of cmd/c so I can see what the PowerShell script reports when its finished along with a couple of changes to get PowerShell to accept the string after the -Command.

Now all is great in the land of Hyper-V on my laptop.

Scripting: Check if a W2K3 box is running Terminal Server in Application Mode

gmcshera — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 16:48:00 GMT

I was recently asked (two hours ago) how to tell if a server was running Terminal Services in Application Mode. The customer wanted to run a different script if users were logged into a Terminal Server.

They had looked through the registry and came across the TSEnabled value in :

HKLM\Software\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server

While this key does indicate whether or not TS is enabled, it does not tell you if the server is in Application Mode. To compound the issue this key is also set to 1 by default on Windows XP. So, surely there was a more appropriate way to check? Indeed there is … the Win32_TerminalServiceSetting WMI class will allow you to check. See the code below:

Dim strComputer, objWMIService, colClass, objClass, strTSMode

strComputer = "."

Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")

Set colClass = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_TerminalServiceSetting")

For Each objClass in colClass

    strTSMode = objClass.TerminalServerMode

    If strTSMode = 1 Then

        Wscript.Echo "Terminal Server is in Application Server mode."

    Else

        Wscript.Echo "Terminal Server is in Remote Administration mode."

    End If

Next

Note: This will not work under Windows 2000 as the WMI class does not exist. I have not checked it in Windows 2008.

Scripting: How to edit an INI file from a script

gmcshera — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:37:20 GMT

I was asked how to modify an INI from a script. Its quite straight forward. Firstly have a read of the Scripting Guy article here. It explains the process quite well actually. However, I wanted to go a step further and setup arguments to make the script re-useable. So here is the modified script:

'Usage: modini.vbs <full path to ini>, Parameter to change, New Value
'Example: modini.vbs c:\folder\my.ini, Script, change

Const ForReading = 1
Const ForWriting = 2

strINIFile = WScript.Arguments.Item(0)
strParam = WScript.Arguments.Item(1)
strValue = WScript.Arguments.Item(2)

If WScript.Arguments.Count <> 3 Then WScript.Quit

Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set objTextFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile(strINIFile, ForReading)

Do Until objTextFile.AtEndOfStream
    strNextLine = objTextFile.Readline

    intLineFinder = InStr(strNextLine, strParam)
    If intLineFinder <> 0 Then
        strNextLine = strParam & "=" & strValue
    End If

    strNewFile = strNewFile & strNextLine & vbCrLf
Loop

objTextFile.Close

Set objTextFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile(strINIFile, ForWriting)

objTextFile.WriteLine strNewFile
objTextFile.Close

Here is a sample batch file calling the VBS script:

cscript //nologo modini.vbs "c:\my.ini" "Blog" "sometimes"

And thats it! Short and sweet.

Batch Files : Date Stamp in a filename

gmcshera — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:35:00 GMT

Ive been asked this a number of times this past month.... How do I get the date into a filename in a batch file?

Most people try using the %date% variable. Which will not work as you cannot have /'s in the filename.

So, try this:

for /f "tokens=1-4 delims=/ " %%i in ("%date%") do set datestring=%%i%%j%%k

You can now use %datestring%.txt as the filename

Note: The delim character changes depending on your locale. Eg. deliims=. for Germany. You may want to change the filename to %%k%%j%%i to get multiple logs sorted in order within Windows Explorer sorted by YearMonthDate

Windows 2000 Terminal Server : Modify RDP-tcp permissions via script

gmcshera — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:30:36 GMT

I was recently asked how to modify the rdp permissions on a large number of Windows 2000 SP4 servers running in Remote Admin mode. Well, normally Id make use of WMI and make the changes using Win32_TSPermissionsSetting class. Unfortunatly this class is not available in Windows 2000.

To get around this issue in Windows 2000 try the following:

Create a domain group and manually assign the permissions to the RDP-Tcp connection on a single server
Export the following reg key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\Security (REG_BINARY)
You can now import this reg key on any number of servers across your enterprise. Since the change was not made using the API you may have to reboot the server