Author Archive | jbmurphy

I am interested in using Active Setup more throughout our environment. The thing I like about Active Setup is that if I screw up, it will only run once and not over and over! Kidding, but the “run one” nature of Active Setup is nice. I wanted a PowerShell function to create Active Setup registry entries, so I can script the updates on multiple machine. Here is that function:

Function JBMURPHY-AddToActiveSetup {
  Param([parameter(Mandatory = $true)]$ActiveSetupUniqueName,
	[parameter(Mandatory = $true)]$ActiveSetupStubPath,
	[parameter(Mandatory = $true)]$ActiveSetupVersion)
  $ParentKey="HKLM:Software\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components"
  $Key=$ParentKey + "\" + $ActiveSetupUniqueName
  # Check for key
  if (!(Test-Path $Key)){
    New-Item -type Directory $($ParentKey + "\" + $ActiveSetupUniqueName)
  }
  else {
    write-host "Key exists"
  }
  Set-ItemProperty $($Key) -name "StubPath" -value $ActiveSetupStubPath
  Set-ItemProperty $($Key) -name "Version" -value $ActiveSetupVersion
}

I made an error. More like an incorrect assumption in this post, specifically this code.:

Function JBMURPHY-AD-GetHomeSite {
Param($username=$(cat env:username))
foreach ($group in "OfficeGroup1","OfficeGroup2","OfficeGroup3") {
    foreach ($user in $(Get-ADGroupMember $group)){
    if ($user.SamAccountName -eq $username) {return $group}
    }
}
}

My incorrect assumption was that the AD PowerShell components were installed on every machine (they are only my machine). I needed to rewire this code above to use ADSI, since Get-ADGroupMember is not on everyone’s machine. Below is that code:

Function JBMURPHY-AD-GetHomeSite {
Param($username=$($env:USERNAME))
$groups=([AdsiSearcher]"samaccountname=$username").Findone().properties.memberof | % {([adsi]"LDAP://$_").cn}
foreach ($officegroup in "OfficeGroup2","OfficeGroup2","OfficeGroup3") {
    foreach ($group in $groups){
    if ($group -eq $officegroup) {return $group}
    }
}
}

I wanted a function that I could pass some text, and it would put that text in a dialog box for the user to click okay. Simple, but I will reuse it I am sure.

Function JBMURPHY-DisplayWindowsForm(){
Param([parameter(Mandatory = $true)]$TextToDisplay,
$Title="DefaultTitle")
		[void] [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Drawing") 
		[void] [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Windows.Forms")
		$objForm = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Form 
		$objForm.Text = $Title
		$objForm.Size = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(600,500) 
		$objForm.StartPosition = "CenterScreen"
		$OKButton = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Button
		$OKButton.Location = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(250,400)
		$OKButton.Size = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(75,23)
		$OKButton.Text = "OK"
		$OKButton.Add_Click({$x=$objTextBox.Text;$objForm.Close()})
		$objForm.Controls.Add($OKButton)
		$objLabel = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Label
		$objLabel.Location = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(10,20) 
		$objLabel.Size = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(500,400) 
		$objLabel.Text = $TextToDisplay
		$objForm.Controls.Add($objLabel) 
		$objForm.Topmost = $True
		$objForm.Add_Shown({$objForm.Activate()})
		[void] $objForm.ShowDialog()
}

If you have users in distribution groups associated with each site in your organization, it should be easy to tell if a user is visiting from another office (more on why I want to do this later). First function returns the current site that the user is logging into:

Function JBMURPHY-AD-GetCurrentSite {
return [System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.ActiveDirectorySite]::GetComputerSite().name
}

The second function loops through all “office groups” and if a user is in that office, it returns the group name

Function JBMURPHY-AD-GetHomeSite {
Param($username=$(cat env:username))
foreach ($group in "OfficeGroup1","OfficeGroup2","OfficeGroup3") {
	foreach ($user in $(Get-ADGroupMember $group)){
	if ($user.SamAccountName -eq $username) {return $group}
	}
}
}

Simple I know, but I want to put these together to do some custom startup activity (maybe via “Active Startup”)

In my previous post, I showed how to create a new ACL and apply it to a folder. Why apply it to the folder if the folder is already set correctly? I wrote the following function to compare the ACLs of a folder to a desired set of ACLs (either created by hand (lines 3-12) or copied from an existing folder (lines 12-15).

function JBMURPHY-PERMS-ArePermsCorrect {
        Param([parameter(Mandatory = $true)]$Path,
              [parameter(Mandatory = $true)]$CorrectACL,
              [switch]$ShowCorrect)

    $folderACLs=get-acl(get-item $Path)
    if ((compare-object $($folderACLs.access) $($CorrectACL.access) -property FileSystemRights,IdentityReference,InheritanceFlags,PropagationFlags).count -gt 0) {
    Write-host "$PATH is INCORRECT"
    return $false
    }
    else {
    if ($ShowCorrect.IsPresent){write-host "$PATH is correct"}
    return $true
    }
}

If the compare-object command returns nothing, then they are the same, if they are not the same then the items returned will be greater than 0, and the first part of the conditional will be used.