Podcast to be Released on Friday

21 07 2008

Hi everyone.  We just wanted to let you know that this week’s show will not come out until Friday.  This is a one-time thing, we will be back to our normal Monday release schedule soon.

In the meantime, you can get a preview of the topics we’ll be discussing here and here.

Talk to you Friday!


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Categories : Podcast

Episode 33 – Cage Match: PowerScripting vs. Quest

13 07 2008

A Podcast about Windows PowerShell.

Listen:

In This Episode

We have a great show lined up for you today.  With us via Skype will be MVPs Kirk Munro and Dmitry Sotnikov both from Quest.  And no show would be complete without News, Resources, and Tips!

News

Today’s news is brought to you by iTripoli.
“Admin Script Editor provides a true integrated scripting environment for PowerShell.  Advanced features include an integrated PowerShell debugger, advanced code generating tools for Active Directory, Databases, XML files and the exclusive PowerShell forms designer.  Come see for yourself– Admin Script Editor v3.5 is availble for a 45 day trial at AdminScriptEditor.com.”

  • Preview video up of a very interesting new open-source project called PoshBoard.  It’s a solid clone of iGoogle, including the AJAX widgets, but the widgets are…PowerShell code!
  • And we have more videos.  Marco Shaw has posted the videos from PS VUG meeting #6.
  • We’re really excited about PoshCode.org.  This is a new domain but an old resource with a bit of a facelift and some new features.  This is the same script repository back end featured at PowerShellCommunity.org and PowerShellCentral.com.  Joel Bennett is adding features to make this a very useful tool.

Panel

This segment is brought to you by Quest!

Do you have what it takes to be the ultimate script warrior? Find out with Quest’s PowerPack Challenge ’08.

Quest Software is sponsoring a PowerShell Scripting contest where you can test your skills and get paid. Just create some cool PowerShell scripts using Quest’s PowerGUI and then post them to our site. You’ll get a score and our celebrity judges will weigh in as well.

Do you have the muscle to bring home the prize? Check out the details here.

We decided to do something different for the interview section.  Instead of an interview, we picked a few topics and went at it round-robin.  Hope you like it!

  1. Providers vs cmdlets (e.g. IIS7 providers)
  2. Does PowerShell belong on a web server?
  3. Aside from remoting–what is version two’s most killer feature?

Resources

This section is brought to you by SAPIEN Technologies

  • DevInfra-US - Very cool English version of a French PowerShell blog. In his words: “Microsoft Infrastructure Development solutions with PowerShell, C#, ASP.NET and silverlight… Best Effort English translation from Devinfra.blogspot.com :)”
  • Antoine from DevInfra has written three articles (one, two, three) on how to call PowerShell script from within an ASP page.  Very cool stuff!
  • get-admin - This is a new “Enterprise Administration and Automation” blog by Glenn S. He starts off with a nice screencast showing you how to run a posh script as a scheduled task.
  • HyperVoria | Hyper-V PowerShell library - now on Codeplex – Thanks to Steve Murawski for pointing this one out. The Codeplex project page is here.

Thanks for listening!  Don’t forget to follow Jon and Hal on Twitter.


Comments : 3 Comments »

Categories : Podcast

Episode 32 – Citrix does PowerShell

7 07 2008

A Podcast about Windows PowerShell.

Listen:

In This Episode

We have a great show lined up for you today.  We’re interviewing Peter Schulz with Citrix to talk about their PowerShell product Workflow Studio.  And as always: News, Resources, Tips, and more!

News

Today’s news is brought to you by SAPIEN Technologies.

Interview

This interview is brought to you by iTripoli.
“Admin Script Editor provides a true integrated scripting environment for PowerShell.  Advanced features include an integrated PowerShell debugger, advanced code generating tools for Active Directory, Databases, XML files and the exclusive PowerShell forms designer.  Come see for yourself– Admin Script Editor v3.5 is availble for a 45 day trial at AdminScriptEditor.com.”

Our interview today is with Peter Schulz from Citrix.  Enjoy.  Here’s our notes from the conversation:

  1. Intro
    1. Peter Schulz has been with Citrix for over 8 years in Consulting, Engineering, Product Marketing, and is now the Technical Product Manager for Citrix Workflow Studio, a new IT Process Automation tool that is currently available as a technology preview.
    2. Background
    3. PowerShell’s adoption inside Citrix
  2. Workflow Studio
    1. Background / Why the acquisition?
    2. Features
      1. Overview
      2. Built-in tasks
        1. How are these made?
        2. Can a user create new ones?
        3. How often will Citrix be updating them?
        4. Selected Categories / tasks
          1. AD: Create Random Password
          2. input/output: user choice
          3. flow control: split task
      3. Can workflows be executed on remote systems directly?
      4. You can double-click on a task and you drill down into a function?  How does this work?
    3. Will the product remain free?
      1. There will always be a free version similar to what is in the tech preview now.  The commercial version will of course have more stuff in it.
    4. Ship date?
      1. Second half of this year
    5. How are customers using it so far?
    6. Vision / future plans
      1. .net 3.5
  3. For more information?
    1. Peter’s blog: http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/petersc
    2. Workflow Studio download link: http://citrix.com/wfsinsider
    3. Community page: http://community.citrix.com/display/cdn/Citrix+Workflow+Studio

Resources

Do you have what it takes to be the ultimate script warrior? Find out with Quest’s PowerPack Challenge ’08.

Quest Software is sponsoring a PowerShell Scripting contest where you can test your skills and get paid. Just create some cool PowerShell scripts using Quest’s PowerGUI and then post them to our site. You’ll get a score and our celebrity judges will weigh in as well.

Do you have the muscle to bring home the prize? Check out the details here.

Tips 

  • Variable expansion in strings. We’ve talked about it before, but I saw someone fighting with it just yesterday.
    • “$object.parameter something else” does not work. Use “$($object.parameter) something else” instead
  • From Poshoholic: Essential PowerShell: Name your custom object types
    • One important thing that is often overlooked when people are writing scripts that do this is that they can also give those objects a type name.
  • Sepeck on the #PowerShell IRC channel (irc.freenode.net) shared a link with us about his experiences with PowerShell help files.  It’s a good before-and-after story with a lesson.  :)  He links to one of Don Jones’ articles with further advice on the topic.

One-Liner

  • [system.directoryservices.activedirectory.domain]::GetCurrentDomain().DomainControllers | fl Name

 

A big thanks to Peter Schulz for coming on the show tonight.  We’re looking forward to interviewing the Kirk and Dmitry from the PowerGUI team.  Send in your questions!  As always, you can contact the show by email to feedback@powerscripting.net.  You can also leave us reviews on iTunes and comments on the blog.  Don’t forget to check out Quest’s contest details at quest.com/powerscripting.

Other ways to interact with us: Facebook Group (forums, networking), Twitter (jonwalz & halr9000)


Comments : 1 Comment »

Categories : Podcast

Episode 31 – Money for Nothin’ and Tips for Free

30 06 2008

A Podcast about Windows PowerShell.

Listen:

In This Episode

We have a ton of stuff foryou today.  News, Resources, Tips, and even an old favorite, the Cmdlet of the Week.

News

The news is brought to you by iTripoli.

“Admin Script Editor provides a true integrated scripting environment for
PowerShell.  Advanced features include an integrated PowerShell debugger,
advanced code generating tools for Active Directory, Databases, XML files
and more.  Let’s not forget about the exclusive PowerShell forms designer.
What’s coming up? Soon its innovative and feature-rich ScriptPackger tool
will offer support for the dynamic installation of cmdlets! Come see for
yourself– Admin Script Editor v3.5 is availble for a 45 day trial at
AdminScriptEditor.com.”

  • EWeek lists PowerShell as #7 on the list of the best Microsoft products of all time
  • SAPIEN has released ActiveXPoSH as a free download
    • The ActiveXPoSH COM component released with PrimalScript 2007 Service build 566 is now available as a free download from SAPIEN.com
  • Microsoft is looking for people to participate in a PowerShell usability study July 22 to 29th
  • Quest has released version 1.1 of their AD cmdlets (from Rod Trent at myITforum.com)
    • The theme of this release was native AD permission management and so we added the following cmdlets in the 1.1 release
      • Add-QADPermission
      • Get-QADObjectSecurity
      • Get-QADPermission
      • Get-QADRootDSE
      • Get-QARSAccessTemplate
      • Get-QARSAccessTemplateLink
      • New-QARSAccessTemplateLink
      • Remove-QADPermission
      • Remove-QARSAccessTemplateLink
      • Set-QADObjectSecurity
      • Set-QARSAccessTemplateLink

Resources

This segment brought to you by Sapien Technologies 

Tips

This segment brought to you by Quest Software.

Do you have what it takes to be the ultimate script warrior? Find out with Quest’s PowerPack Challenge ’08.

Quest Software is sponsoring a PowerShell Scripting contest where you can test your skills and get paid. Just create some cool PowerShell scripts using Quest’s PowerGUI and then post them to our site. You’ll get a score and our celebrity judges will weigh in as well.

Do you have the muscle to bring home the prize? Check out the details here.

  • “Unix like command for tac?” (reverse cat, or in our case Tnetnoc-Teg)
    • Keith Hill proposes a neat solution using System.IO.FileStream which I found interesting simply because I had never seen that .NET object used before.  However, there was some discusssion on the IRC channel about this and Jaykul pointed out that it would be much faster (for moderate-size files) to just read the whole thing in and print it out in reverse.
    • $foo = gc .\tac.ps1; [array]::reverse($foo); $foo
  • Brandon Shell shows us how to use ADSI to change the local admin password
  • Hal has a script up called Get-Parameter.

CmdLet

  • get-variable

Comments : 1 Comment »

Categories : Podcast

Episode 30 – TechEd Report

22 06 2008

A Podcast about Windows PowerShell.

Listen:

We have a ton of stuff for you today.  Our interview is with Thorbjörn Sjövold from Special Operations Software.  Also on tap: news (yes we have some today), resources, tips and even a gotcha.

News

The news is brought to you by Sapien Technologies.

Interview

Our interview today is brought to you by Quest Software.

For a limited time, Quest is offering Powerscripting Podcast listeners a free copy of Jeffery Hicks upcoming book, Managing Active Directory with Windows PowerShell: TFM from Sapien Press.

Go to www.quest.com/powerscripting to register for your copy and download their free graphical user interface, script editor and Active Directory commands.

Resources

The resources are brought to you by iTripoli.

“Admin Script Editor provides a true integrated scripting environment for PowerShell.  Advanced features include an integrated PowerShell debugger, advanced code generating tools for Active Directory, Databases, XML files and more.  Let’s not forget about the exclusive PowerShell forms designer. What’s coming up? Soon its innovative and feature-rich ScriptPackger tool will offer support for the dynamic installation of cmdlets! Come see for yourself– Admin Script Editor v3.5 is availble for a 45 day trial at AdminScriptEditor.com.”

Gotcha

  • This is from a longtime Citrix expert Brian Madden (brianmadden.com).  The article is from April, but I just came across it the other day.  The key part of the article is this quote:  “a student in our 5-day Citrix Master class in Ausralia a few weeks ago told of doing the “right” thing. He said that he had taken the time to learn PowerShell and rewrote all of his VBS Citrix login scripts in PowerShell. The result? Login times went from about 2.5 seconds to over 15 seconds per user!”
    • What’s the lesson here?  Don’t use PowerShell for login scripts? I would say it is a non-issue for single-user workstations, but may be something to consider for your Citrix or Termainl Server app servers.  Hopefully we’ll see this improve for V2.
    • There’s some amusing commentary on the article, you may want to check that out.

Please email us (feedback@powerscripting.net) tips and feedback!  We also love iTunes reviews and blog comments.  Other ways to interact with us: Facebook Group (forums, networking), Twitter (jonwalz & halr9000)


    Comments : 1 Comment »

    Categories : Podcast

    PowerScripting Podcast - Bonus Episode - TechEd Day1

    11 06 2008

    A Podcast about Windows PowerShell.

    Listen:

    Hal gives us an update from day 1 of TechEd08. Enjoy!

    Comments : No Comments »

    Categories : Podcast

    Episode 29 – Exchange with Ilse Van Criekinge

    8 06 2008

    A Podcast about Windows PowerShell.

    Listen:

    In This Episode

    • Today we’ll be speaking to noted Exchange MVP, trainer, and author Ilse van Criekinge.  Also on tap: news, resources, and a bunch of PowerShell tips for you.

    News

    The news is brought to you by Sapien Technologies.

    • From the GPOGUY we get two new cmdlets get-SDMADTombstone and restore-SDMADTombstone - blog post: PowerShell Hits the Morgue
    • PowerShell sill be big at TechEd next week
    • Oisin has released a new Codeplex project he has been working on called PSMobile.  This is a PowerShell provider for your Windows Mobile phone.  Features include:
      • Copy, Move, Delete items between folders on your device (including Storage Card) with standard PowerShell Cmdlets
      • Move/Copy files to/from your device and your desktop with ConvertTo-WMFile and ConvertFrom-WMFile
      • Get device information and manipulate and explore the registry with a rich device object returned from Get-WMDevice

    Interview

    Our interview today is brought to you by Quest Software.

    For a limited time, Quest is offering Powerscripting Podcast listeners a free copy of Jeffery Hicks upcoming book, Managing Active Directory with Windows PowerShell: TFM from Sapien Press.

    Go to www.quest.com/powerscripting to register for your copy and download their free graphical user interface, script editor and Active Directory commands.

    On Skype with us today is Ilse van Criekinge.  Ilse is the founder of Pro-Exchange, a resource for Belgian Exchange professionals.  She is the co-author of "Exchange Server 2007 Messaging Design and Deployment Study Guide", and author of Exchange Management Shell: TFM.  She was given a Microsoft MVP award for her work in the Exchange Server community.  Ilse is currently a trainer at Global Knowledge where she teaches classes on Exchange and other MS products.

    Here are some rough notes from the interview:

    Resources

    Tips

    The tips are brought to you today by iTripoli.

    "Admin Script Editor provides a true integrated scripting environment for PowerShell.  Advanced features include an integrated PowerShell debugger, advanced code generating tools for Active Directory, Databases, XML files and more.  Let’s not forget about the exclusive PowerShell forms designer. What’s coming up? Soon its innovative and feature-rich ScriptPackger tool
    will offer support for the dynamic installation of cmdlets! Come see for yourself– Admin Script Editor v3.5 is availble for a 45 day trial at AdminScriptEditor.com."

    • Hal’s struggle with untruncated strings

      • "ls | ft Mode, LastWriteTime, Length, FullName -auto |out-file test.txt -width 1000000"
        As long as you put -auto on the format-table, it doesn’t space-pad the lines to the full width, so the file size is only as big as it needs to be to make the data fit in the columns

    • Working with type extensions
    • From Hal: PowerShell + VMware Script: Get-HostHealth.ps1
    • From the $cript Fanatic blog we learn that it’s faster to select and then sort

    Gotcha

    Closing

    Please send us feedback!  You can send email to feedback@powerscripting.net, leave us reviews and vote for us on iTunes and PodcastAlley, blog comments and anywhere else you find us.

    Don’t forget to visit www.quest.com/powershell to get the free book offer.

    Other ways to interact with us: Facebook Group (forums, networking), Twitter (jonwalz & halr9000)


      Comments : 1 Comment »

      Categories : Podcast

      PowerScripting Podcast - Episode 28 - Jeffrey Snover talks about WinRM

      1 06 2008

      A Podcast about Windows PowerShell.

      Listen:

      In This Episode

      We have a great show for you guys today.  Several weeks back we had Jeffrey Snover on the show.  We had teased at the time that there was a third portion to the interview that deals with WinRM and WS-MGMT.  We’re going to play that today for you.  Also on tap: news, resources, and a bunch of PowerShell tips for you.

      News

      The news is sponsored by Sapien Technologies.

      • BGShell now has a Codeplex page
      • Microsoft Forefront 2008 (code-named Stirling) looks to be built on PowerShell. Here’s a blog post.
      • PowerShell Plus supports the new CTP2 STA feature
        • This is big because it allows for you to play with all of the new WPF stuff we’ll be talking about later in the show.

      Interview

      Admin Script Editor provides a true integrated scripting environment for
      PowerShell.  Advanced features include an integrated PowerShell debugger,
      advanced code generating tools for Active Directory, Databases, XML files
      and more.  Let’s not forget about the exclusive PowerShell forms designer.
      What’s coming up? Soon its innovative and feature-rich ScriptPackger tool
      will offer support for the dynamic installation of cmdlets! Come see for
      yourself– Admin Script Editor v3.5 is available for a 45 day trial at
      AdminScriptEditor.com.

      We hope you enjoy the Jeffrey Snover clip on Win-RM and WS-MGMT.

      Resources

      Tips

      One-Liner

      $a = (get-clipboard).split(”`n”).trim()

      Get Involved!

      • We love feedback.  You can tell because we ask for it at the beginning and end of every show.  :)  You can reach us by email to feedback@powerscripting.net.  Also, please write reviews and vote for us on iTunes, Podcast Alley, Digg, and other podcast portals you use.  And blog comments are great, too.
      • Don’t forget to visit www.quest.com/powershell to get the free book offer (while supplies last).
      • Other ways to interact with us:

      Comments : 3 Comments »

      Categories : Podcast

      PowerScripting Podcast - Episode 27 - Darren Mar-Elia talks about Group Policy

      26 05 2008

      A Podcast about Windows PowerShell.

      Listen:

      In This Episode

      We have an interview this week with noted group policy expert, Darren Mar-Elia.  And we have no news for you today, but a lot of resources, tips, and one-liners to ease your scripting pains.  And don’t forget about Quest’s excellent book giveaway offer.  Keep listening for details on that.

      Interview

      Interview sponsored by iTripoli.

      Admin Script Editor provides a true integrated scripting environment for PowerShell.  Advanced features include an integrated PowerShell debugger, advanced code generating tools for Active Directory, Databases, XML files and more.  Let’s not forget about the exclusive PowerShell forms designer. What’s coming up? Soon its innovative and feature-rich ScriptPackger tool will offer support for the dynamic installation of cmdlets! Come see for yourself– Admin Script Editor v3.5 is availble for a 45 day trial at AdminScriptEditor.com.

      Be sure to listen to the show for the interview, it’s a great one!

      Resources

      This segment is sponsored by our friends at Sapien. 

      Tips

      The tips this week are brought to you by Quest Software.

      For a limited time, Quest is offering Powerscripting Podcast listeners a free copy of Jeffery Hicks upcoming book, Managing Active Directory with Windows PowerShell: TFM from Sapien Press.

      Go to www.quest.com/powerscripting to register for your copy and download their free graphical user interface, script editor and Active Directory commands.

      One-Liner

      # Find files not touched in the last month

      dir | ? { $_.LastWriteTime -le ([datetime]::Now).AddDays(-30) } | rm -whatif

      # From Keith Hill on the newsgroup, a quick replacement for the pslist.exe util from Sysinternals

      Get-Process PowerShell | Select ProcessName -Expand Modules


      Comments : 1 Comment »

      Categories : Podcast

      PowerScripting Podcast - Episode 25 - "CTP 2: The Return of CTP"

      10 05 2008

      A Podcast about Windows PowerShell.

      Listen:

      In This Episode

      • We have a great show lined up for you today.  Don Jones from Sapien is here.  [applause]  He’ll be giving us a taste of the trade show circuit, going into CTP2, and other goings-on in the PowerShell world.  And of course we have tips and resources and whatever else we can throw in.
      • We will be announcing the winner of our Vista Ultimate giveaway on Show 26 next week.  If you haven’t entered yet, now is the time!  It’s really easy, just send feedback about the show to powerscripting@gmail.com and you are in the running.

      News

      The News today is sponsored by SDM Software. 
      “SDM Software provides innovative solutions that combine PowerShell and Group Policy to help reduce the complexity of managing your Windows systems.  Their unique GPExpert Scripting Toolkit for PowerShell, provides the means to automate the management of your Group Policy Objects. To get more information about these products and download trial copies,
      visit sdmsoftware.com/powerscripting.php.”

      Interview

      [sponsor] Our interview today is brought to you by Quest Software.
      Quest LOVES PowerShell. Go to www.quest.com / PowerShell and download their free graphical user interface, script editor and Active Directory cmdlets. While you’re there, join their online community where you can share ideas and download free PowerPacks to extend PowerGUI.  Visit www.quest.com / powershell today!

      We have Don Jones with us on the phone today.  Don Jones, for the three people who don’t know who he is, has authored over thirty books.  He’s a frequent speaker at conventions and also runs training classes for PowerShell.  Here are some notes we took during the conversation. 

      • MS MVP Summit
      • MMS last week
        • 5th year
      • Training videos
        • fundamentals class, twice a week for 4 weeks = $400
        • scriptingoutpost.com
      • New version of Primalscript 2007
        • coming soon: visual forms editor
      • Blog: blog.sapien.com
      • CTP2
        • e-book on sapienpress.com: PowerShell v2: TFM, updated for CTP2!
        • Remoting
          • push cmds to remote computer
          • bring results back
          • interactive like ssh
        • transactional registry operations
        • create your own cmdlets (script cmdlets)
        • new little features
          • convertTo-Html
            • head parameter
            • css links
          • get-wmiobject
          • get-process, get-service
        • send feedback to connect.microsoft.com
        • New graphical console
      • Shows coming up: Tech Mentor, TechEd
      • New e-books: 2008 Server - What’s New, What’s Changed, Exchange Management: TFM, cookbook style

      Resources

      Tips

      • We found a nice script on the blog post PowerShell and Excel (from the “Powershell,Passion,Persistence and Pursuit” blog).  This script reads a server list from a text file and collects IP configuration settings of each server and uses that data to populate an excel sheet.
      • Using SQL with Powershell
      • Hal wrote an article that explains how to automate the syncing of iTunes to your iPod, using PowerShell of course.
      • Interesting article that talks about working with Hyper-V virtual hard disks.  Some neat examples in there about passing text to console apps like diskpart.exe.

      One-Liner

      • $env:path.split(’;') updated by John Cook

      Gotchas

      • The alias for Set-Content collides with sc.exe.  Workaround is to be sure to type sc-dot-exe.
      • There is no Remove-Alias cmdlet!  You can use the alias: PSProvider with “del” to get the job done.
      • Oisin Graham has written about a big gotcha with working with remoting and WinRM with computers which are not domain members.

      Give Away

      • As mentioned at the top of the show, we’ll be announcing the winner of our Vista Ultimate giveaway next week.  If you want a chance at it, send us feedback about the show to powerscripting@gmail.com.

      Emails!

      • We got some GREAT feedback from a few listeners lately.  Some of whom were obviously motivated by the free copy of Vista, which is why we did it.  :)

      Comments : 1 Comment »

      Categories : Podcast

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