Search results matching tags 'Powershell' and 'Windows'

Burn CD's and DVDs with Powershell

Austin — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 21:47:00 GMT

Included with Microsoft Vista is a new API for scripting against optical drives; the Image Mastering API version 2 or IMAPI2. This makes it possible to retrieve information from optical storage media like CDs and DVDs and write to them.

The story around the IMAPI and what you can do with it can be found on msdn but what brought it to my attention was the Scriptcenter newsletter this week where a VB sample of how to burn CDs/DVDs using the Image Mastering API was described. Yep, if we can do it with VB there's got to be a PoSHer way to do the same thing so I gave it a go and over a couple of hours managed to get my version to work.

Who needs ISO burning tools anymore ay? Roll your own!

My modification of the script accepts one argument which is the path to the ISO file and it barfs if a wrong path is given.

The assumption is that the CD/DVD writer is first optical drive on the system (If it's not, change the msftdiscMaster2 index used in the msftdiscrecorder2 initializedrecorder method ).

Minor error checking has been thrown in to ensure a valid path to an ISO file is provided and that the disc is blank.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

param(
[string]$path = $( throw "Please Specify path to an ISO file")
)
# Set binary file type
Set-Variable -name adFileTypeBinary -value 1 -option Constant

# Test if path exists else fail
if (Test-Path -path $path -isValid)
{
$isoFile = $path

# Create disc master to burn to optical drives
$obm = New-Object -comobject "imapi2.msftdiscMaster2"

    # Create a DiscRecorder object for the specified burning device
    $obr = New-Object -comobject "imapi2.msftdiscrecorder2"
    $obr.initializediscrecorder( $obm.item(0) )
    $dataWriter = New-Object -comobject "IMAPI2.MsftDiscFormat2Data"
    $dataWriter.Recorder = $obr
    $dataWriter.ClientName = "ISOTest1"

    # Write stream to disc using the specified recorder
    Write-Host "Writing to disc..."
    $objStream = New-Object -comobject "ADODB.Stream"
    $objStream.open()
    $objStream.type = $adFileTypeBinary
    $objStream.LoadFromFile( "$isoFile" )

    # Check disk is blank else fail
    $addr = $dataWriter.NextWritableAddress
        if ( $addr = "0" )
            {
                $dataWriter.Write( $objStream )
                Write-Host "Done"
            }
        else
            {
                Write-Host "Cannot write to disk" }
            }

else
    {
    Write-Host "A valid ISO file was not found"
    }

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Scriptcenter site shows other examples in VB and they can all be converted to Powershell with very little effort.

Binaries for for versions of IMAPIv2 for other platforms can be obtained here:

Image Mastering API v2.0 for Windows XP

Image Mastering API v2.0 for Windows Sever 2003

Image Mastering API v2.0 for Windows XP x64 Edition

Image Mastering API v2.0 for Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition

PoSH is here to stay!

Austin — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 19:42:00 GMT

I'm sure a lot of my crew are almost getting to their wits end with my persistent harping about the capabilities of Powershell and the need for anyone involved in Windows management to get on the act now. I ain't stopping though. This is probably the single most significant change to the way we will do things in the Windows space.

During my regular cruise of my favorite blogs, I came across the entry yesterday on Dmitry's blog where he caught on the jist from Citrix that they were rewriting their APIs for the next version of Presentation Server codenamed Parra so they had Powershell interfaces!

This is another massive join to the Powershell community and it's only going to get bigger and better.

TechEd IT Forum In Barcelona

Austin — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 19:42:26 GMT

Anyone visiting my blog who's going to be at TechEd in Barcelona from the 12th - 16th of November, do let me know. I'll be there and looking forward to another exciting week learning stuff and trading "war stories" with my kinda geeks!

Guys not to miss at TechEd, in my opinion, Markus Murray of Trusec and of course Mr Steve Riley. These guys run their sessions in ways that keep you interested and always happy you attended. Always standing space only too so be sure to be early for the sessions ;-)

PING me and hope to see you there.

Creating Test AD users with Powershell- Improved!

Austin — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 08:53:22 GMT

Remember the PoSH add users to AD script? Well, it got picked up by “The Man” himself, Dmitry Sotnikov of PowerGUI fame and he rolled it into a one-liner:

1..500 | ForEach-Object {
New-QADUser -ParentContainer ps64.local/test -Name “testuser$_“ -SamAccountName “testuser$_“ -UserPrincipalName “testuser$_@example.com“ -FirstName “testUser$_“ -LastName “example$_“ -UserPassword “password_123“ | Enable-QADUser
}

Steve Green and I, coincidentally, were having a go at getting it as short as possible and eventually came down to the same steps but Awesome to see “The Internet” at work!

Enjoy!

Group Policy meets Powershell in a big way!

Austin — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 23:36:33 GMT

Today I attended an invitational-only product demo given by Thorbjörn Sjövold the CTO of Special Operation Software of their up coming product Specops Command. This product, in it's pre Beta version, tries to resolve the "last mile" problem currently facing Powershell in Version 1. Today Powershell is installed on a management workstation and carrying out remote tasks or running Powershell scripts against remote machines requires Powershell installed on those machines, using wmi or rolling your own .Net methods.

With Specops Command, you still need Powershell installed on the machines but it takes away the pain of managing which of the versions of Powershell to install (there are different versions for XP SP2, WS03, Vista and also x32 and x64 versions for each OS).

Specops CSE's on the Workstation detect its version and download the appropriate version for install.

The main Features of the Specops Command Group Policy extension are:

Auto Management of Native and 3rd party cmdlets on all workstations under the scope of the Specops Command policy
The ability to configure the running of cmdlets and scripts in the Security Context of the logged on User or Computer
Script Execution Feedback -> No longer "fire and forget" when running scripts with reporting of the execution results of all scripts on all workstations under scope of the policy. Also, the ability to drill down into the results and identify down to line numbers in the code where an issue arose. you can also configure custom feedback where results are stored in a central repository and, I presume, can then be queried using regular methods.
Undo Scripts. This was one that "tickled my fancy". The ability to cache Powershell code on the client machine that ran when the Specops Command GP was no longer in scope! this can be used to return the machine to a default state or run in any configuration state you may decide on.
Very granular "Targeting" Mechanism for users and computers.
Granular Scheduling of when the policy changes are applied.
The ability to sign scripts and
Verbose Enterprise Reporting.

Sometime in March this year, Special Operations Software entered a Collaboration agreement with Darren Mar-Elia's SDM Software who make GP management and troubleshooting tools. Both firms are heavily into Powershell and this is further proof that to be able to manage the modern Windows environments of the future (read 6 months at the most), Powershell knowledge will be vital.

Specops Command will, by an order of magnitude, enhance the ability to securely manage, with the scripted intelligence that Powershell provides, Windows environments in a manner that is more affordable and maintainable by Corporations.

Can't wait to get my hands on the early Beta! Stay tuned!!

Learn Powershell Today! And keep a lookout for the interesting things lots of clever people are doing with it.

Creating Test AD users with Powershell

Austin — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:42:05 GMT

Sometime last week on the Microsoft AD newsgroup, someone asked for a script to populate test users in Active Directory using a source text file with he user names and passwords. Of course, several people suggested VB scripts to do the task and Richard Mueller gave a pointer to an excellent script on his site.

Of course, I immediately started thinking of a way to do it PoSH style. The thinking, as always, was, "I bet Powershell can do this easier!"

The steps I came up with were:

1. Use Powershell to generate the csv ( I can even omit this step entirely and create the users on the fly)

2. Import the users into AD from the the csv

3. Enable the users

And here's my short PoSH script for the task:

#Create the csv and run in the headings

$outfilename = "out.csv"
"samAccountName,userPrincipalName,cn,sn,givenName,Password" | Out-File $outfilename -encoding ASCII

# Now, populate the csv for 500 users

for ($i = 1; $i -lt 500; $i++){
$samAccountName = "testUser" + "$i"
$userPrincipalName = 'testUser' + "$i" + '@example.com'
$cn = "testUser" + "$i"
$sn = 'example' + "$i"
$givenName = "testUser" + "$i"
$password = "password_123"

"$samAccountName, $userPrincipalName, $cn, $sn, $givenName, $password" | Out-File $outfilename -encoding ASCII -append
}

# Import the csv entries into AD as user objects

Import-Csv out.csv | ForEach-Object { New-QADuser -ParentContainer 'OU=test,DC=example,DC=com' -Name $_.samAccountName -samAccountName $_.samAccountName -userPrincipalName $_.userPrincipalName -FirstName $_.cn -LastName $_.sn -password $_.password }

# Enable the user objects

Get-QADUser -SearchRoot 'example.com/Test' | Set-QADuser -ObjectAttributes @{userAccountControl='512'}

# EASY!

This script compared to Richards, is an order of magnitude shorter and I think, easier to comprehend for almost anyone. It can also be extended, as I will still do to it, to require the number of users to be created to be entered as a variable, connection credentials for AD to be requested and the OU to create the users in as some other variable. Error checking can also be included to make it more shareable.

Thomas Lee gives us a mention!

Austin — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 20:42:00 GMT

Thomas Lee, well known IT Evangelist, author and MVP gives me a mention in his September PC Pro article on WMI and Powershell. Nice! Enjoy the article.

sdmsoftware release GPExpert™ Scripting Toolkit for PowerShell

Austin — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 20:51:22 GMT

The sdmsoftware crew have released GPE Toolkit for the automation of Group Policy settings. I can see this PoSH based tool being an essential part of every GP admins kit. The Power and flexibility it gives for the creation of policies and ensuring the settings are exactly as in your design plans is awesome. Repeatability of policy creation and settings is also greatly enhanced. Neat stuff this!

Scripting Group Policy settings!

Austin — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 23:31:00 GMT

I spent this weekend playing with a beta copy of SDM Softwares' GPExpert Scripting Toolkit kindly advanced to a colleague of mine and I by Darren Mar Ellia, the CTO of SDMS.

Darren is one of the better known GPO gurus there are out there and when he sniffed on the ActiveDir.org newsgroup during one of our rants, that I worked in an environment with over 2,500 Group policy objects in AD, he offered to let us play with a beta copy.

What it essentially is is a Powershell cmdlet that allows you manage the individual settings within a Group Policy Object.

Already, with PoSH and GPMC installed on an admin workstation, you could, with the APIs exposed by GPMC, create GPOs and even script the production of reports to display the settings within GPOs.

See below for and example of creating a GP object in the domain example.com.

-------------example1-----------------

$gpobj = New-Object -comObject GPMgmt.gpm

$gpConstants =$gpobj.GetConstants()

$myDomain = $gpobj.GetDomain("example.com", "", $gpConstants.UseAnyDC)

$myNewGpo = $myDomain.CreateGPO()

$myNewGpo.DisplayName = "PoSH Group Policy"

-------------/example1-----------------

What could not be done with the GPMC APIs was the configuring of the individual settings within the GPO.

The SDM GPExpert Scripting toolkit fills this gap the PoSH way! You can now extend your powers to scripting the individual settings within the GPO you just created. The example below sets the "rename Guest account" setting in the policy we created earlier called "PoSH Group Policy".

-------------example2-----------------

$gpo = Get-SDMgpobject -gpoName "gpo://example.com/Posh Group Policy" -openByName $true;

$stng = $gpo.GetObject("Computer Configuration/Windows Settings/Security Settings/ Local Policies/Security Options/Accounts: Rename guest account");

$stng.Put("Defined", $true);

$stng.Put("Value", "62150138"); #all accounts in the Domain use 8 digit usernames.

$stng.Save();

-------------/example2-----------------

I think this is awesome stuff! This will not only ensure some extra degree of reliability in the configuration of the settings of GPOs, it will also save time if these settings need to be changed in large numbers of policies. Anything that increases the automation of group policy creation and configuration, in very predictable ways, is always a good thing. And the learning curve with this is not in any way steep.

I am sure the GPExpert toolkit will be an essential part of every group policy admins "bag 'o tricks" when it's released. Excellent stuff!

Quest Software wins Microsoft Global ISV Partner of the year

Austin — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 13:02:00 GMT

Quest Software, at the Microsoft Partner conference held in Denver ,won the Global ISV Partner of the Year award for their adoption and use of Powershell.

Quests Active Directory cmdlets and stuff from Dmitry Sotnikovs' PowerGUI team are some of the Powershell apps coming out of the software house, and they are FREE!!.

I would like to throw a big “shout out” to Dmitry and say “Congrats dude!!” on behalf of the Powershell User Group in the UK.

You guys Rock!!