Invoke-WebRequest is a versatile Powershell CmdLet. However the way it works behind the scene creates sometimes strange behaviors. As you may aware the HTML parser engine greatly depends on system components and Web Browser such as Internet Explorer. A consequence of such a “design”, is that even on Windows Server […]
In an old post, I was writing about the commands you could use to retrieve the list of your RDS Licensing servers in a domain. Generalizing this LDAP Filter example, you can retrieve a list of Service Principal Names enabled accounts. The examples are as follows: In the powershell syntax […]
In a previous post, we looked at some powershell oddities when it comes to Credential use. In this “Powershell criticism: part 2”, let’s look at some language construction irritating way to express things shortly, when doing nested enumeration. As a language used by system administrators, you’ll use Powershell in two […]
In a Tweet, Jeffrey Snover was asking if the community had anything to say to make Powershell better. This kind of tweet may not be very easy to answer in 280 characters, but if you take time to think about it, it interrogates the way you’re using the language. Did […]
During good old Windows 2003 times, the Terminal Licensing Servers were published in the Active Directory using the Sites object and the entry TS-Enterprise-License-Server as explained here. Under WIndows 2008R2, the RDS Licensing role service registers a service connection point; however few documents tells you where to find this SCP […]
If you are managing Sharepoint or Active Directory Federation Services, you sometimes have to register DLLs in the GAC without your supplier providing you a nice MSI installer to do so. Once solution would be use gacutil but it is now a .Net Framework Utility, and you may not want […]
Need to have a process listening on some port to test your firewall rules? Instead of using a netcat or ncat, here’s a very simple Powershell implementation of this ncat/netcat feature:
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function Wait-OnPort ($port) { $endpoint = new-object System.Net.IPEndPoint ([ipaddress]::any, $port) $listener = new-object System.Net.Sockets.TcpListener $endpoint $listener.start() $listener.AcceptTcpClient() # wait until somebody connect $listener.stop() } |
If you need a TCP Client, the code is very straightforward:
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$t = New-Object System.Net.Sockets.TcpClient("servernameorIPAddress",port) #port is not open, you get an exception New-Object : Exception calling ".ctor" with "2" argument(s): "No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it 10.254.212.81:666" At line:1 char:16 + $t = New-Object <<<< System.Net.Sockets.TcpClient("servernameorIPAddress",port) + CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (:) [New-Object], MethodInvocationException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : ConstructorInvokedThrowException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.NewObjectCommand #port is open, you get nothing $t.Close() |
The Powershell ISE may not be your favorite editor because of its limitations (long to start, has issues with high-consuming parallel workflows). However its snippets you can insert with the CTRL+J shortcut may be worthwhile to have a look at. One is particularly interesting: the powershell function header template. The […]
As mentioned previously, Powershell 3.0 introduces a cmdlet called Invoke-WebRequest that allows do script your web exchanges, as it allows to retrieve URLs, fill forms back, and easily analyze any HTML output. One usage of such a cmdlet is to download documents. However many examples on the web do not […]
After our simplistic approach in the 1st part and our discoveries about optimization in part 2, it is time to gather our learnings to lower the total time our script will run: We know that hashtables can be initialized with the number of elements they will approximately contain to avoid […]
