Last week I did a presentation at the PowerShell Deep Dive in Frankfurt about turning command line tools into PowerShell tools. A video recording should be posted later. But in the meantime, here is a copy of my slide deck, in PDF and a zip file with my demos and scripts. I have some followup…
Category: CommandLine
Custom Prompts 3 Ways
Recently, a number of PowerShell MVPs were having a discussion about the transcript feature in Windows PowerShell. One comment that arose was a need to see how long tasks have run or otherwise provide some sort of date time information. One solution is to use a customized PowerShell prompt and provide the information yourself. Here…
PowerShell Is Not Omnipotent
Last week I was working on a problem in a PowerShell forum. The admin was having problems getting Add-Computer to work. After a bit of “try this/try that” something became clear, and it’s something that is easy to overlook. Especially when we get lulled into thinking PowerShell is omnipotent.
Get Your TCP Ports Here!
Once again, the PowerShell forum at ScriptingAnswers.com has undone me. I was answering a question about running Netstat in a PowerShell session on a remote computer which got me thinking about a PowerShell function to turn NETSTAT.EXE output into objects. Once you have an object then you can do all sorts of things. Needless to…
WBADMIN Demo
Earlier this year I wrote an article for REDMOND Magazine about the new backup features in Windows Server 2008 R2. I’m not going to re-hash the article here except to say it includes some sample scripts on using the WBADMIN command line tool. One of the scripts is an old-school batch file. The batch file…
PowerShell vs Jesus
Ok. I decided it’s time I finally weigh in on this with more than 140 characters. I’m sure you’ve seen, in forums, Twitter and other social media comparisons between Windows PowerShell and some other shell of choice. Typically the “other” shell is LInux based and the comparison is thrown down as a challenge, “Which is…
Cool Custom Consoles
Ok, maybe this isn’t as slick as something from West Coast Customs but maybe you’d like to add a little style to your PowerShell session. I’m talking about the (by now) staid blue console. Perhaps you don’t like blue or the color contrast isn’t too your liking. Here are some things to try if you…
TechMentor Orlando 2010 Decks and Demos
I had a great time in Orlando at the TechMentor conference. The crowd was enthusiastic and asked good questions. As promised, here are my slide decks and demos. My sessions tend to be heavy on demonstration so I can’t promise you’ll get a ton of value from the decks alone. You’ll simply have to attend…
TechMentor Orlando 2010
I’m busy polishing my presentations and demos for next week’s Techmentor conference in sunny Orlando, Fl. I’ve been presenting at Techmentor for a number of years now and it is a great show for administrators searching for answers to the problems and challenges they face today. You get intimate sessions with industry experts like Don…
Power Up your R2 Server Core Shell
I’ve recently started using the Server Core option for my test servers, especially for things like domain controllers. I can get by with smaller disk and memory requirements. Once you get the server configured, there’s very little you have to do that actually requires logging on to the server. Which is good because all you…
Promoting PowerShell
This question comes up quite often: “How can I encourage adoption of Windows PowerShell in my organization?” I periodically poll people about their adoption plans and what sort of things are standing in the way. Most of the obstacles in my opinion can be cleared with experience, exposure and education. On Twitter today, @ChuckBoyceJr was…
Join Me at Techmentor Orlando
I will be presenting several sessions at Techmentor in Orlando, FL March 8-12, 2010. I will be doing the following sessions: Take Back your File Server (learn about Server 2008 file management features) Top 10 Non-PowerShell CLI Tools you MUST Know (learn about other command line tools that can get the job done) Scripting, Error…
Find That Service
Once again, the fine forum members at ScriptingAnswers.com come through and help get my PowerShell idea engine revving. The latest post posed this basic question: “I need to query my servers and find all services using a specific service account.” The poster thought this would be a good opportunity to learn PowerShell and I wholeheartedly…
All Hail Dir UseALot!
Some of you know my relationship with the a command prompt goes back a long, long way. Naturally I became very adept at using the DIR command, fully taking advantage of its switches to tease out hidden information or to quickly get just the information I wanted. When PowerShell first came out, I made the…
The PowerShell Balloon Festival
I trust by now you are realizing how valuable Windows PowerShell is as a management tool. With a one line command you can accomplish an extraordinary amount of work. Sometimes this work may be long running, which is where background jobs come in handy. Or you may simply kick off a long running script and…