Chris Dent

Octopus Deploy provides the ability to run PowerShell scripts natively. However, Octopus Deploy can only consume 3 streams when generating logging information: Standard out Warning Error Replacing use of Write-Verbose with Write-Output (standard out) within a script is often a flawed proposition. Doing so

Pester 4.0.7 changes the name of the "Contain" assertion. This script rewrites script files in two ways: It injects "-" before Not, Be, and so on. It replaces "Contain" with "-FileContentMatch". As I have

PSScriptAnalyzer is a static analysis tool, it examines source code and flags issues based on configured rules. PSScriptAnalyzer comes allows a developer to define and inject their own rules using the CustomRulePath parameter. Custom rules might be used to apply an organisation-specific style to

PowerShell defines a number of different types of command. Functions are written in PowerShell (normally), and Cmdlets are written in a compiled language (C# more often than not). Classes, introduced with PowerShell 5, offer the possibility of creating a Cmdlet in PowerShell. The problem

The .NET Framework 4.0 brought an upgrade to the System.IO.Compression classes allowing native handling of zip files. The two scripts below demonstrate compression and expansion uses these classes. The relevant assemblies must be loaded if they are to be used. Add-Type

This short function simplifies the creation of dynamic parameters. The function exposes each of the possible validators as well as a few of the less well known options for ValidateSet and ValidatePattern.

I’ve recently bumped into a need to verify certificates deployed for LDAPS on Active Directory. PowerShell remains my tool of choice for such occasions as this. It is possible to very simply test an LDAPS connection using ADSI (System.DirectoryServices) as shown below:

I thought I’d share my binary (half-interval) searcher implementation. The searcher may be used for finding text in a pre-sorted text file. The advantage of a binary search is that it is extremely fast, especially in large data-sets (thousands or millions of record)

A new function has been added to Indented.NetworkTools: ConvertTo-Subnet. ConvertTo-Subnet is part of Indented.Net.IP. Indented.Net.IP can be installed from the PowerShell Gallery. Install-Module Indented.Net.IP

My wife and daughter are away for a month so I elected to do a little bit of DIY. This is how it went. I set myself a task: To strip, trim and paint all of the interior doors in the house. They’re

Get-InstalledSoftware reads uninstall registry keys from a host, it will also read Uninstall keys from loaded user hives (HKEY_USERS). Get-InstalledSofware does not load hives, a user must have been logged on (at some point) for the hive to be loaded. Rebooting a machine

How to set up an account to scan Windows devices from Spiceworks without administrator level rights. Step 1: Create a group which can be used to grant access to WMI WMI permissions may be set using the WMI Control option in Computer Management. Alternatively

This post shows two functions to draw member trees. The functions are almost identical, a variation on a theme. The first shows group membership by following memberOf, the second shows members of a group by following member. Following MemberOf Following member

I bumped into Zabbix again recently and needed to put together a few templates to improve the monitoring for a few of the Microsoft systems. It could be just me, but it seems hard to find reasonable (up to date) templates. I thought I

The code below allows creation of .NET enumerations in PowerShell without using Add-Type. Before an Enum can be created a Dynamic Assembly and Module must be created. The function below creates the module in a global variable called DefaultDynamicAssembly. Attempting to retrieve the module

This function adds members to an instance of ADSystemInfo in an attempt to simplify use. All properties and methods for the IADsADSystemInfo interface have been accounted for. The return type is the original ComObject, the only change is the addition of NoteProperty and ScriptMethod

I’ve been doing a lot of work with Juniper SRX firewalls recently; JunOS allows administrators to build scripts using either XSLT or SLAX. This is a little SLAX script variant of “show interfaces terse”. I wrote this because I wanted to be able

There are a number of WhoIs scripts knocking around, this is my version. Something of a long development cycle since I started this last year, got busy, then finished it today. Get-WhoIs has been incorporated into a script module: Indented.NetworkTools. It has a

A friend of mine found this enormously useful, one of the things PowerShell can do easily that is (apparently) helpful for people who want nothing to do with it otherwise (where it may be either PowerShell or Windows). PuTTY stores session settings in the

I’ve been extended and upgrading my library of network functions for some time now, I thought I’d post the functions that work directly with my original collection. The functions described here have been updated since posting this article. The updated functions are

A quick PowerShell 2 function for a Monday evening. A function to return properties from the WinNT provider, most commonly used to enumerate local group membership. This should also work for domain groups (using the domain as the SystemName), although if the domain is

I’ve been migrating our Office Communications Server to Lync over the last few days. Last night I started looking at the client policies. The intention is that we use the in-band-provisioning, which is great, and you’ll find a nice article on Elan

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and since it’s almost Christmas I thought I’d better get on with it. Without further ado I want to post NetShell (I’m not very good at coming up with imaginative names). NetShell

After fixing a couple of authentication bugs with Set-DnsRecord and New-DnsRecord I decided to make an attempt to finish off some of the zone and server CmdLets. The module now contains these additional CmdLets. Refresh-DnsZone – Implements the ForceRefresh method for Secondary Zones Reload-ADDnsZone – Implements

A new version of DnsShell has been released, this release improves Get-ADDnsRecord and adds Get-ADDnsPartition and Get-ADDnsZone. The updated release is available on MSDN as version 0.2.0. code.msdn.microsoft.com/dnsshell Basic help is available for each of the new CmdLets.