One of the most intriguing features of ChatGPT is its ability to take a plain-English description of desired functionality and turn that into a simple script or program in a variety of programming and scripting languages, including PowerShell.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t do this well.
Get-NetAdapter | Where-Object {$_.InterfaceDescription -Match "Cisco AnyConnect"} | Set-NetIPInterface -InterfaceMetric 4000
Get-NetIPInterface -InterfaceAlias "vEthernet (WSL)" | Set-NetIPInterface -InterfaceMetric 1
The PowerShell cmdlet Get-FileHash accepts only files or streams as inputs. If I want to generate a hash for a string, I could save it as a file and then feed that file to the command, or I could simply send the string to the command as a string:
PS C:\Working> $stringStream = [System.IO.MemoryStream]::new()
PS C:\Working> $writer = [System.IO.StreamWriter]::new($stringStream)
PS C:\Working> $writer.write("Please hash me.")
PS C:\Working> $writer.Flush()
PS C:\Working> $stringStream.Position = 0
PS C:\Working> Get-FileHash -InputStream $stringStream | Select-Object Hash
Hash
----
50981297AEA627CA3AA5026EB31475FAFD0D28D430165506A2A69B7A30C36AC6
A hash table is an array of key/value pairs, along with accompanying functions for
readily accessing or modifying values by way of their corresponding keys. Continue reading
A handy way to securely store credentials for use by a PowerShell script (particularly one running from within a Scheduled Task) is to use the Windows PasswordVault class. Please note that this should not be confused with the Credential Manager module.
Credentials are store and incrypted in the PasswordVault on a per-user basis. If credentials are being stored for use by a Scheduled Task, be sure to login to the system and stash the credentials using the account that the Task will be running under. Continue reading
As an Exchange administrator, a long-standing source of frustration for me has been the fact that Microsoft does not provide tools for administratively inspecting and repairing delegate settings. Apart from granting Full Access permissions on the mailbox and logging into it with Outlook, all an Exchange admin can really do is inspect the GrandSendOnBehalfTo attribute (a.k.a. publicDelegates), tinker with relevant folder sharing permissions, and use MfcMAPI to nuke the hidden delegate forwarding rule when it is misbehaving, which is rather drastic as it stops ALL delegate forwarding for that mailbox.
Well, there is another option: turning to (or building) the tools to do the job. A fine example of just such a tool is the MessageOps EWS PowerShell Module, which builds upon Exchange Web Services to add a host of Exchange commands to PowerShell, including tools for dealing with delegates. While it is a fine tool which I’ve found quite useful, I got it into my head to write my own set of delegate management tools, if for no other reason than to get a better handle on how delegates actually work under the hood. In short, I’m a glutton for punishment, so I set about re-inventing the wheel…. Continue reading
Not too long ago, I received a ticket from a user who was having quota issues and could not account for what was using up their Exchange quota. With a simple Exchange Management Shell one-liner, I was able to provide a list of every folder in that user’s mailbox, the number of items in each folder, and size of the folder contents:
[PS] E:\working\scripts>Get-MailboxFolderStatistics jane.user | sort-object item sinfolder -descending | ft Name, FolderPath, ItemsInFolder, FolderSize -auto Name FolderPath ItemsInFolder FolderSize ---- ---------- ------------- ---------- Inbox /Inbox 33 103574B Calendar /Calendar 25 64012B Deleted Items /Deleted Items 7 9101B Sent Items /Sent Items 6 7690B Notes /Notes 0 0B Outbox /Outbox 0 0B Tasks /Tasks 0 0B RSS Feeds /RSS Feeds 0 0B Contacts /Contacts 0 0B Top of Information Store / 0 0B Drafts /Drafts 0 0B Junk E-Mail /Junk E-Mail 0 0B Journal /Journal 0 0B
But wait, there’s more. As mentioned in my previous article, I’ve encountered issues with folders which have leading or trailing whitespace in their name. Sure enough, I was able to crank out a simple one-liner to list all folders possessing this defect:
[PS] E:\working\scripts>get-mailbox -resultsize unlimited | Get-MailboxFolderStatistics | where {($_.Name -like "* ") -or ($_.Name -like " *")} | fl Name,Identity,FolderPath[PS] E:\working\scripts>get-mailbox -resultsize unlimited | Get-MailboxFolderSta tistics | where {($_.Name -like "* ") -or ($_.Name -like " *")} | fl Name,Identi ty,FolderPath
In general, PowerShell is able to detect when a mathematical operation is being performed and convert strings on the fly to permit this:
PS C:\> $x = 10 + “20”
PS C:\> $x
30
However, there are cases where this does not always work as expected:
PS C:\> $x = “1000”
PS C:\> $y = $x + 500
PS C:\> $y
1000500
As you can see, instead of converting the value of $x to an integer and performing the expected addition, it simply treated the entire command as a string concatenation operation. Note, however, that subtraction works just fine:
PS C:\> $z = $x – 500
PS C:\> $z
500
Knowing this, combined with the fact that subtracting the negative of a value is the same as adding the value, we have a workaround:
PS C:\> $y = $x – (-500)
PS C:\> $y
1500
A more straightforward solution, however, is to force PowerShell to treat our variable as an integer:
PS C:\> $y = [int]$x + 500
PS C:\> $y
1500
The magic mojo for listing the SMTP addresses of all members of a Distribution Group is as follows:
Get-DistributionGroupMember “My Distribution Group Name” | ForEach {$_.PrimarySMTPAddress.ToSTring()}
Invocation of the ToString() method is necessary since the PrimarySMTPAddress property contains objects with separate properties for the address length, the portion of the address before the @, the domain, and a Boolean specifying whether or not the address is valid.
As part of the rollout of the Exchange 2010 beta, Microsoft has released a beta API library for working with Exchange Web Services which can also be used in conjunction with an Exchange 2007 server. As with any .NET library, this can be invoked from PowerShell. There is an example here of retrieving the number of unread messages in the Inbox, as well as some attributes from the last message received. Unfortunately, the API documentation doesn’t give PowerShell examples, so figuring out how to invoke the calls requires a bit of trial and error. Here is a script I cobbled together which simply sends an email message:
Continue reading
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