We had an issue where the clocks on various hosts got offset beyond the margin allowed by an application we were testing. Here's a way to scan hosts for their clock skew relative to a known good server: function Get-RemoteTime { param ( [ String [...

Hm, I'm surprised this isn't included Out-Of-The-Box. Let's say I have a new deployment of machines and I need to set the ExecutionPolicy for each of them. Now, assuming I'm a domain admin, I should be able to do it remotely: Function Enable-PowerShell...

OCS A/V Edge servers are somewhat wierd critters. One interface is load balanced, the other is accessed only by the trusted server list. The Load Balancer should be able to display the number of connections, but what about the internal interface? Say...

Thanks to http://serverfault.com/questions/18872/how-to-zip-unzip-files-in-powershell/201604#201604 for the core code. Here's a function to unzip files, with rudimentary error handling, and ability to specify source and destination from the command...

Yesterday, we covered how to dump an OCS Edge Server's list of trusted servers, including using PSExec.exe as a workaround to it not exposing the list over remote WMI calls. It turns out the OCS Proxy Server uses a different WMI path, but it can be...

Office Communications Server's Access Edge Servers and MediaRelay roles have a list of hosts they allow to connect on the internal interface. This is managed by the an administrative GUI accessed under ComputerManagement. GUIs are great for discoverability...

PowerShell gives you access to certificates in many ways. You can read it in from a file, or look at it via the certificate: PsProvider, or, use .NET to open [System.Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey] object. However, these don't tell the whole story. It turns...

As an old-time Perl user, I love hashes. In Perl, hashes are the answer, no matter what the question is. (No, not really, but they solve a lot of problems.) In PowerShell, hashes are cool, but you can't do things like "Sort-Object -property value". ...

Let's say I have a function that takes parameters, which all well-written ones should. And they have intelligent defaults, again as well-written ones should. The outer script exposes those parameters via the outer param() statement, but how do I pass...

Short form: Go here http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/researchdesktop/noreplyall.aspx Longer form: Outlook/Exchange, like so many other products, has some 'undocumented features', including a one-bit flag that allows reply-all or not. This...

Again, in V1 PSH, this is what I use for nicely formatted help. If you're on V2, by all means, use the inline help, PLEASE! function Break-Line { # synopsis:: # [-help] # # Description:: # Inserts linefeeds into strings read from STDIN so they wrap...

Quick and dirty wrapper for LogParser to download Event Logs

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I like writing help text for my scripts. Yes, PSH V2 allows Get-Help to parse the inline help in scripts, but I'm stuck in V1 for my production environment. For quick-and-dirty scripts where I don't want to implement a 'real' help subsystem, I use the...

I get asked from time to time why I still put semi-colons at the end of each statement. Part of it is force of habit. Part of it is trying to make sure my script source is useful no matter how the web server, post edtior, and user's brower decide to display...

The title is almost longer than the post. From Chris Dent's http://www.indented.co.uk/index.php/2010/01/12/powershell-iis-and-log-settings/ , I see that he's generating synthetic properties with Select-Object -Property @{n = 'name'; e = { "this...

Of late, I've been seeing some of my scripts do this: if (!(Test-Path file1)) { Write-Warning "File1 not found."; } else { do-something if (!(Test-Something)) { Write-Warning "Test-Something failed"; } else { do-something -part 2 if (!(Test-Something...

This is more of a pointer than an actual article. Chris Dent at www.intended.co.uk has a great post on getting IIS log settings from hosts here: http://www.indented.co.uk/index.php/2010/01/12/powershell-iis-and-log-settings/ The best part is how...

This is dsquery.exe computer -name <foo> function Get-ComputerObjects { param ( [string] $name = "*" ); $directorySearcher = new-object DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher([ADSI] "LDAP://$env:userDnsDomain" ); $directorySearcher .PageSize...

My lab has some machines that are only running PSH v1 (for reasons outside the scope of this article.) The easiest way is to try to run something that exists on V2, such as "import-module". However, the progamatic way is to get the ProductVersion property...

Quick note for my future reference - XPath1.0 evidently doesn't support wildcards nor regular expressions, but does have functions such as 'starts-with', 'contains', etc. $xml.SelectNodes("//nodeName[contains(@attribute, 'substring')]"); http:/...

I need to list the binaries installed to a folder and below for the software I’m testing. I can do that with Get-Command on each one, but this allows me to do it recursively and automagically. function Get-LocalBinaries { param ( [string[]] ...

Load blancers are great, but we don't get iAdmin access to them, so the only way we know if a host is down is to visually scan the web UI. And for whichever EIEIO security standard, we have two-factor auth which times out after a very aggressive interval...

First off, credit where credit's due. The incomparable Lee Holmes first tackled this in his blog: http://www.leeholmes.com/blog/2007/03/19/converting-c-to-powershell/ But I couldn't get it to work. Then I found Bhargav Shukla's method http://blogs...

Yeah, I'm still running 2003. In fact, I'm still asking the lab admins to build out new 2003 boxes. And when I log onto them, I get that next-to-useless "Manage Your Server" box. Here's how to blow it away in a cmd.exe or PowerShell.exe window: ...

In our lab, we don't have Terminal Services Licensing set up. This means our servers have only 2 logon sessions per host. We have a GPO in place to log off non-console sessions after 24 hours of idle time, but we also have tradition of playfully chiding...