Posted by jpluimers on 2010/09/14
Using the Windows command shell, I recently needed a batch file that operated on the first occurrence of a file in a certain directory, where the filename was dynamically obtained from a list.
Wait: that sounds too complex; lets make this clear with an example. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in CommandLine, Development, Power User, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/08/30
Sometimes the VMware tools need to be restarted in order to get the shared clipboard functionality working again.
From inside a Windows VM, you can do that like this:
net stop vmtools
This will create this output:
The VMware Tools Service service is stopping.
The VMware Tools Service service was stopped successfully.
Then start the service again:
net start vmtools
Giving this output:
The VMware Tools Service service is starting.
The VMware Tools Service service was started successfully.
From outside your virtual machine, you can do it like on this URL using sc: http://www.dailyhypervisor.com/2009/03/25/script-restarting-vmware-tools-remotely/
–jeroen
Posted in Batch-Files, CommandLine, Development, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/08/19
In my VM’s, I often run different instances and/or versions of SQL Server.
Finding the right instance of SQL server, and the right version of SQLCMD.EXE / OSQL.EXE can be a pain.
That’s why I have written the two batch-files shown below for that.
They are not perfect, but they do work for me, and show a few interesting batch-file tricks.
As for preferring SQLCMD: [WayBack] sql server – What are the differences between osql, isql, and sqlcmd? – Stack Overflow
This finds the most up-to-date SQLCMD.EXE (or OSQL.EXE for SQL Server 2000) and puts the location of it in the sqlcmd environment variable.
@echo off
rem find the highest version of SQLCMD.EXE or OSQL.EXE and put it in the sqlcmd environment variable
rem this prefers SQLCMD.EXE over OSQL.EXE
set sqlcmd=
for %%d in ("%ProgramFiles%", "%ProgramFiles(x86)%") do for %%v in (80, 90, 100) do for %%f in (OSQL, SQLCMD) do (
call :sqlcmdtest "%%~d\Microsoft SQL Server\%%v\Tools\Binn\%%f.EXE" %1
)
if !!==!%sqlcmd%! for %%f in (OSQL, SQLCMD) do (
call :find-on-path %%f.EXE
)
if !%1!==!! echo SQLCMD: %sqlcmd%
goto :exit
rem be carefull not to specify the .EXE in the %%f FOR loop-expression, otherwise it tries to dine SQLCMD.EXE and OQSL.EXE in the current directory
rem http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178653.aspx
rem 80 = SQL Server 2000
rem 90 = SQL Server 2005
rem 100 = SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2
:find-on-path
set sqlcmd=%~f$PATH:1
if not ""=="%sqlcmd%" set sqlcmd="%sqlcmd%"
goto :exit
:sqlcmdtest
if exist %1 if !%2!==!! echo found %1
if exist %1 set sqlcmd=%1
:exit
Tricks used:
This batch file finds the SQL Server instances on the local machines from the naming of the SQL Server services that are running.
Note that it won’t work if you choose custom names for your SQL Server services (but that will probably break a lot of other stuff out there as well).
@echo off rem find best matching instance of SQL Server on this machine set sqlinstance= set sqlservice= for /f "usebackq tokens=1,2,3 delims=:$" %%i in (`sc query`) do ( rem %%j is " MSSQL" because we dropped space as a delimiter if "%%i"=="SERVICE_NAME" call :bare-service %%j %%k ) if !%1!==!! echo SQL Instance=%sqlinstance% if !%1!==!! echo SQL Service=%sqlservice% goto :exit :bare-service rem %1 equals "MSSQL" because of the command-line parsing trims spaces rem the order is important: we favour named instances over unnamed: if "%1"=="MSSQLSERVER" call :process-instance %1 . if "%1"=="MSSQL" call :process-instance MSSQL$%2 .\%2 goto :exit :process-instance if !%1!==!! echo found service "%1" providing instance "%2" if "%sqlinstance%"=="" set sqlinstance=%2& set sqlservice=%1 for /f "usebackq tokens=1,2,3,4" %%s in (`sc query %1`) do ( if "%%s"=="STATE" if !%1!==!! echo state of %1 is %%v ) goto :exit :exit
Tricks used:
sc query sample fragment:
SERVICE_NAME: MSSQL$SQLEXPRESS
DISPLAY_NAME: SQL Server (SQLEXPRESS)
TYPE : 10 WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
STATE : 4 RUNNING
(STOPPABLE,PAUSABLE,ACCEPTS_SHUTDOWN)
WIN32_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0)
SERVICE_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0)
CHECKPOINT : 0x0
WAIT_HINT : 0x0
My final batch-file ties both together:
set sqlrun= call %~dp0sql-find-sqlcmd.bat %* call %~dp0sql-find-instance.bat %* if not !!==!%sqlcmd%! if not !!==!%sqlinstance%! set sqlrun=%sqlcmd% -S %sqlinstance% -E if !%1!==!! echo SQLRUN=%sqlrun%
The output of that batch-file is like this:
found "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Binn\OSQL.EXE" found "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Binn\SQLCMD.EXE" found "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\OSQL.EXE" found "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\SQLCMD.EXE" SQLCMD: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\SQLCMD.EXE" found ".\SQLEXPRESS" state of service MSSQL$SQLEXPRESS with SQL Server instance .\SQLEXPRESS is RUNNING found "MSSQLSERVER" (.) state of service MSSQLSERVER with SQL Server instance . is RUNNING SQL Instance=.\SQLEXPRESS SQLRUN="C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\SQLCMD.EXE" -S .\SQLEXPRESS -E
Hope this helps a few people.
–jeroen
Posted in CommandLine, Database Development, Development, Software Development, SQL Server | 8 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/06/15
In a lot of network environments, you (still ) find a situation where workstations run a .EXE from a network share.
In these situations, you cannot update the .EXE on the server: you get “Access Denied” errors.
Below is a simple batch-file trick to overcome this.
It kills all the handles that the workstations have to the .EXE
After you have run this batch-file, you can copy the .EXE.
Note:
There still is a small race condition: if between you kill the handles and copying the new .EXE, someone starts the old .EXE Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in CommandLine, Development, Power User, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/06/03
When you try to delete an EISA Hidden Recovery or Diagnostic partion, some options fail:
Luckily, this thread discusses both problems, and points to this page for a solution with DiskPart.
Posted in CommandLine, Development, Power User, Software Development | 6 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/04/15
Last week, I posted a C# implementation of the tee filter from Sterling W. “Chip” Camden.
Since then I have modified it slightly.
Not because the implementation is bad, but because some pieces of software play dirty when saving their redirected output.
One of those applications is SubInAcl, otherwise a great tool for showing and modifying ACL and Ownership information of Windows NT objects (files, registry entries, etc).
However, when redirecing output or piping it, it writes a zero byte after each byte of text.
I’m not sure why: it might try to face some Unicode output, or just be buggy.
The new sourcecode is below. You can also download the project and binary as tee.C#.7z (you need the freeware 7zip compression tool to decompress this).
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in .NET, ASCII, C#, C# 2.0, CommandLine, Development, Encoding, Software Development, Unicode, Visual Studio and tools | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/04/13
Every once in a while I need to do some text editing in a *nix environment that has a minimum toolset installed.
Which means: use VI.
VI is a versatile text editor from the early *nix days, but it is not straight forward to use.
Since I don’t use VI often enough, I tend to forget some of the commands.
Time to share my favourite VI link: Mastering the VI editor edit: link rot, now it is at Mastering the VI editor.
The link points to the basic stuff, but the page contains most of what you ever want to know about VI.
–jeroen
PS:
If possible, I install the JOE text editor on systems where I am admin.
JOE uses WordStar like key bindings, and supports UTF-8. Talking about “something old, something new” :-)
Posted in *nix, CommandLine, Development, Encoding, Power User, Software Development, Unicode, UTF-8, UTF8, vi | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/04/09
A while ago, I asked a question on percentage expansion in batch-files on superuser.com: a great site with great answers, similar to stackoverflow.com and serverfault.com , but now for asking “Power User” kind of questions.
The percentage sign (%) in URL‘s is to escape (or URLencode) characters that should not be in a URL itself.
(Note that the old new thing had a very interesting article on URL encoding: there are many different opinions on how to to this ‘right’, and a few of these ‘right’ opinions are not always compatible with each other).
In Windows batch-files and the command-line, the percentage sign is used to expand environment variables, arguments and for loop indexes.
To make life ‘easier’, inside a batch-file, the percentage sign has a slightly different meaning than on the command-line itself.
This can break your batch-files when you use URL encoded parameters.
It does not matter if these parameters are quoted or not: cmd.exe expands them, unless you escape them properly.
So, the command for downloading the URL with wget (similar to curl) differs from running it on the plain command-line or in a batch-file.
So the best way to escape percentages in batch files is to double them: each % becomes %%.
There is even a very old (MS-DOS era!) knowledge base article about this topic, that I just found when doing the research for this blog article :-)
As a sidenote: manually decode thesed escaped URL’s is always a pain.
There are many sites that can do URL decoding on-line.
PS: This was the original question: How can I stop percentage expansion in a batch file? – Super User.
Posted in *nix, Batch-Files, CommandLine, Development, Encoding, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, URL Encoding, wget | 3 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/04/07
The usage of tee - image courtesey of Wikipedia
The tee command stems from a *nix background.
It is a command-line filter that allows you to deviate a stream from the regular stdout/stdin redirected pipeline into a file.
Recently, I needed this in a Windows Embedded Stadard (a.k.a. WES) system for logging purposes.
This way, a post-install-script (similar to the Windows Post-Install Wizard, but command-line based) could log to both the console and a log-file at the same time.
WES is the successor Windows XP Embedded (a.k.a. XPe), which is a modularized version of Windows XP.
Se WES usually means that you don’t have the luxury of everything that Windows XP has.
This in turn means that you need to be careful when selecting external tools: a lot of stuff that works on plain Windows XP won’t work.
There are various Win32 ports of tee available.
This time however, I needed a Unicode implementation, so I searched for a .NET based implementation.
Windows PowerShell 2.0 does contain a tee implementation, but:
Luckily Sterling W. “Chip” Camden started with such a .NET implementation of tee – in Visual C++ – back in 2005.
Though his TEE page indicates it is based on .NET 1.1, his current implementation is done in Visual Studio 2008 using C++.
Now that is a problem for the targeted WES image: that image is based on .NET 2.0.
But when using Visual C++ in .NET, you need additional run-time libraries (for instance the ones for Visual C++ 2005, or the ones for Visual C++ 2008).
If you don’t have these installed, tee.exe does not start, and you get error messages like this on the command-line:
K:\Post-Install-Scripts>tee
The system cannot execute the specified program.
and entries like this in the Eventlog:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: SideBySide
Event Category: None
Event ID: 59
Date: 01/04/2010
Time: 19:09:22
User: N/A
Computer: MYMACHINE
Description:
Generate Activation Context failed for K:\Post-Install-Scripts\tee.exe. Reference error message: The operation completed successfully.
The odd thing in this error message is “The operation completed successfully”: it didn’t :-)
Anyway: translating the underlying C++ code to C# is pretty straightforward, so:
I did change a few things, none of them major:
The implementation is pretty straightforward:
This is the C# code:
using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Collections.Generic;
// Sends standard input to standard output and to all files in command line.
// C# implementation april 4th, 2010 by Jeroen Wiert Pluimers (https://wiert.wordpress.com),
// based on tee Chip Camden, Camden Software Consulting, November 2005
// ... and Anonymous Cowards everywhere!
//
// TEE [-a | --append] [-i | --ignore] [--help | /?] [-f] [file1] [...]
// Example:
// tee --append file0.txt -f --help file2.txt
// will append to file0.txt, --help, and file2.txt
//
// -a | --append Appends files instead of overwriting
// (setting is per tee instance)
// -i | --ignore Ignore cancel Ctrl+C keypress: see UnixUtils tee
// /? | --help Displays this message and immediately quits
// -f Stop recognizing flags, force all following filenames literally
//
// Duplicate filenames are quietly ignored.
// Press Ctrl+Z (End of File character) then Enter to abort.
namespace tee
{
class Program
{
static void help()
{
Console.Error.WriteLine("Sends standard input to standard output and to all files in command line.");
Console.Error.WriteLine("C# implementation april 4th, 2010 by Jeroen Wiert Pluimers (https://wiert.wordpress.com),");
Console.Error.WriteLine("Chip Camden, Camden Software Consulting, November 2005");
Console.Error.WriteLine(" ... and Anonymous Cowards everywhere!");
Console.Error.WriteLine("http://www.camdensoftware.com");
Console.Error.WriteLine("http://chipstips.com/?tag=cpptee");
Console.Error.WriteLine("");
Console.Error.WriteLine("tee [-a | --append] [-i | --ignore] [--help | /?] [-f] [file1] [...]");
Console.Error.WriteLine(" Example:");
Console.Error.WriteLine(" tee --append file0.txt -f --help file2.txt");
Console.Error.WriteLine(" will append to file0.txt, --help, and file2.txt");
Console.Error.WriteLine("");
Console.Error.WriteLine("-a | --append Appends files instead of overwriting");
Console.Error.WriteLine(" (setting is per tee instance)");
Console.Error.WriteLine("-i | --ignore Ignore cancel Ctrl+C keypress: see UnixUtils tee");
Console.Error.WriteLine("/? | --help Displays this message and immediately quits");
Console.Error.WriteLine("-f Stop recognizing flags, force all following filenames literally");
Console.Error.WriteLine("");
Console.Error.WriteLine("Duplicate filenames are quietly ignored.");
Console.Error.WriteLine("Press Ctrl+Z (End of File character) then Enter to abort.");
}
static void OnCancelKeyPressed(Object sender, ConsoleCancelEventArgs args)
{
// Set the Cancel property to true to prevent the process from
// terminating.
args.Cancel = true;
}
static List<String> filenames = new List<String>();
static void addFilename(string value)
{
if (-1 == filenames.IndexOf(value))
filenames.Add(value);
}
static int Main(string[] args)
{
try
{
bool appendToFiles = false;
bool stopInterpretingFlags = false;
bool ignoreCtrlC = false;
foreach (string arg in args)
{
//Since we're already parsing.... might as well check for flags:
if (stopInterpretingFlags) //Stop interpreting flags, assume is filename
{
addFilename(arg);
}
else if (arg.Equals("/?") || arg.Equals("-h") || arg.Equals("--help"))
{
help();
return 1; //Quit immediately
}
else if (arg.Equals("-a") || arg.Equals("--append"))
{
appendToFiles = true;
}
else if (arg.Equals("-i") || arg.Equals("--ignore"))
{
ignoreCtrlC = true;
}
else if (arg.Equals("-f"))
{
stopInterpretingFlags = true;
}
else
{ //If it isn't any of the above, it's a filename
addFilename(arg);
}
//Add more flags as necessary, just remember to SKIP adding them to the file processing stream!
}
if (ignoreCtrlC) //Implement the Ctrl+C fix selectively (mirror UnixUtils tee behavior)
Console.CancelKeyPress += new ConsoleCancelEventHandler(OnCancelKeyPressed);
List<BinaryWriter> binaryWriters = new List<BinaryWriter>(filenames.Count); //Add only as many streams as there are distinct files
try
{
foreach (String filename in filenames)
{
binaryWriters.Add(new BinaryWriter(appendToFiles ?
File.AppendText(filename).BaseStream :
File.Create(filename))); // Open the files specified as arguments
}
using (BinaryReader stdin = new BinaryReader(Console.OpenStandardInput()))
{
using (BinaryWriter stdout = new BinaryWriter(Console.OpenStandardOutput()))
{
Byte b;
while (true)
{
try
{
b = stdin.ReadByte(); // Read standard in
}
catch (EndOfStreamException)
{
break;
}
// The actual tee:
stdout.Write(b); // Write standard out
foreach (BinaryWriter binaryWriter in binaryWriters)
{
binaryWriter.Write(b); // Write to each file
}
}
}
}
}
finally
{
foreach (BinaryWriter binaryWriter in binaryWriters)
{
binaryWriter.Flush(); // Flush and close each file
binaryWriter.Close();
}
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.Error.WriteLine(String.Concat("tee: ", ex.Message)); // Send error messages to stderr
}
return 0;
}
}
}
Some alternatives that might (or might not) support unicode:
http://www.commandline.co.uk/mtee/
http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ (cannot be downloaded any more – pitty, as they were pretty good)
–jeroen
Update: 201009041030 – Syntax highlighting didn’t work, so changed
sourcecode language=”C#“
into
sourcecode language=”csharp“
Posted in .NET, C#, C# 2.0, CommandLine, Development, Encoding, Power User, Software Development, Unicode, UTF-8, Visual Studio and tools, XP-embedded | 13 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2009/10/11
Recently, I had to change the “Password Never Expires” flag for some users on Windows systems.
In the past, there used to be a netuser tool available from WindowsITPro where you could use the pwnexp flag to set or clear that flag.
That tool seems to be vanished, so I was searching for alternatives.
Most alternatives I found depend on some kind of scripting, or the use of the WMIC WMI command line interface: that was “out” because this particular setup is running on Windows XP Embedded, which is trimmed down very much.
The only C# example I found was on CodeProject, but it does
Hence the solution below:
C#, with the proper ADS_USER_FLAG_ENUM enum from the MSDN documentation and no COM Interop, it also moves all literals to constants.
Posted in .NET, C#, C# 2.0, CommandLine, Development, Software Development, XP-embedded | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 