Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/13
On nx, I’m used to xargs which allows to convert from a pipe of output into arguments passed to a command. This is useful, as many commands only accept arguments as parameters.
In PowerShell, you can usually avoid an xargs equivalent because commandlet output is a stream of objects that you can post-process using . I for instance used that in PowerShell: recovering from corrupt empty *.nupkg files after a disk was accidentally full during update.
Here are some xargs equivalency examples:
Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, xargs | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/13
Anders Hejlsberg: software legend.
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, C#, Development, Pascal, Software Development, Turbo Pascal, TypeScript | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/12
For my link archive:
I also need to check out [WayBack] Martin Farach-Colton – Wikipedia, as his algorithm is likely more optimised and more versatile.
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, Algorithms, C#, Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Ruby, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/12
After watching an autologon system not logging on automatically over the past years, the pattern seems to be that at least major, and some less minor Windows updates remove autlogon parts of the registry.
I’m not sure where the boundary between “major” and “less minor” lies (though I suspect “cumulative updates” and larger), nor if more than these values are affected:
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon"
AutoAdminLogon gets removed or becomes value 0DefaultUserName gets removedDefaultPassword gets removedThis means that now after each startup, I need to schedule a task that runs a script setting the values I need depending if a password is needed or not.
The script also needs credentials, so I need to figure out how to properly do that.
I still need to decide between PowerShell or batch file script, as I already have the batch file from How to turn on automatic logon in Windows and automatic logon in Windows 2003.
For my future reference, some more links on things that can get deleted:
- [WayBack] Windows Update deletes custom registry settings
- [WayBack] Windows 10 update deletes the registry Run command – Super User
- [WayBack] Windows 10 May Delete Your Programs Without Asking
- [WayBack] Don’t break Windows 10 by deleting SID, Microsoft warns – Naked Security
- [WayBack] Windows 10 KB4532693 Update Bug Hides User Data, Loads Wrong Profile
- [WayBack] why has the latest windows update moved all my files into another user – Microsoft Community
Hopefully these links will help me writing the scripts:
For several reasons, mostly security-related, PowerShell scripts aren’t as easily portable and usable as batch scripts can be. However, we can bundle a batch script with our PowerShell scripts to work around these issues. Here, we’ll show you a few of those problem areas, and how to build a batch script to get around them.
–jeroen
Posted in Batch-Files, CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/08
Preparing for another PowerShell article, I found this blast from the past, as somehow this missed the publishing schedule back in 2014!
After struggling with [Wayback] PowerShell ISE for a while ([Wayback] it started as a proof of concept and wasn’t meant to be an IDE you know) reading [Wayback] Powershell Studio vs Primal Forms Free CE vs PowerShellPlus Pro (also free) – Spiceworks, I’ve started using the free [Wayback] PowerGUI IDE for PowerShell by Dell.
The [Wayback] free PowerGUI used to be maintained by Quest, and after [Wayback] the acquisition of Quest by Dell in 2012, it is still free and is now at Product Support – PowerGUI Pro.
It is great (even got [Wayback] full support for PowerShell 3.0) and you can get it at the [Wayback] PowerGUI Downloads.
Notes:
–jeroen
Posted in Development, Missed Schedule, PowerShell, Scripting, SocialMedia, Software Development, WordPress | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/06
Access Denied
I knew it was possible to generate QR codes to access quest networks (as the QR code has credentials) for WiFi networks having a fixed SSID.
I just never bothered, but did when needed home care with quite a few different people providing the care.
Generating was easier than I anticipated, though I hoped I just could put the parameters in a URL and fire off to get a page including the QR code.
Alas, the pages I found require you to enter the SSID name and key/password phrase.
That’s OK: I have saved the PNG files for our network and my brother’s as images so I can put them on-line, and printed them out so guests can scan and use the network at once.
Here we go:
Posted in Barcode, Development, Fritz!, Fritz!Box, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Network-and-equipment, Power User, QR code, Scripting, Software Development, Web Development, WiFi | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2021/09/29
The below one will fail in a script, both both work from the PowerShell prompt:
Success
Get-NetFirewallRule -DisplayGroup "File and Printer Sharing" | ForEach-Object { Write-Host $_.DisplayName ; Get-NetFirewallAddressFilter -AssociatedNetFirewallRule $_ }
Failure
Get-NetFirewallRule –DisplayGroup "File and Printer Sharing" | ForEach-Object { Write-Host $_.DisplayName ; Get-NetFirewallAddressFilter -AssociatedNetFirewallRule $_ }
The error you get this this:
At C:\bin\Show-File-and-Printer-Sharing-firewall-rules.ps1:5 char:52 + ... -TCP-NoScope" | ForEach-Object { Write-Host $_.DisplayName ; Get-NetF ... + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The string is missing the terminator: ". + CategoryInfo : ParserError: (:) [], ParentContainsErrorRecordException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : TerminatorExpectedAtEndOfString
Via [WayBack] script file ‘The string is missing the terminator: “.’ – Google Search, I quickly found these that stood out:
That hyphen character in your
-Reset(noticed by /u/SeeminglyScience) is an En-Dash (Decimal unicode character 8211). (Copy paste it and do[int]([char]'–')to see).PowerShell can handle en-dash as a hyphen (for the curious, see the case for it in the PowerShell tokenizer source code here where hyphen, en-dash, em-dash and horizontalBar all fall into the same code block), but because it’s a Unicode character your source code will have to be saved as a unicode encoded .ps1 file. (UCS2-LE, UTF8+BOM, UTF8-BOM seem to work for me).
If you don’t, and you save it as ASCII/ANSI, what gets saved is
–which has a string opening in it. So the code becomes:Set-ADAccountPassword $uname -NewPassword $newpwd –Reset -confirm -PassThruWhich now has an open string that doesn’t finish, and throws errors about unterminated strings.
Look closely at the two dashes in
unzipRelease –Src '$ReleaseFile' -Dst '$Destination'This first one is not a normal dash but an en-dash (
–in HTML). Replace that with the dash found beforeDst.
Before DisplayGroup, the first line has a minus sign and the second an en-dash. You can see this via [WayBack] What Unicode character is this ?.
Apparently, when using Unicode on the console, it does not matter if you have a minus sign (-), en-dash (–), em-dash (—) or horizontal bar (―) as dash character. You can see this in [WayBack] tokenizer.cs at function [WayBack] NextToken and [WayBack] CharTraits.cs at function [WayBack] IsChar).
When saving to a non-Unicode file, it does matter, even though it does not display as garbage in the error message.
Similarly, PowerShell has support for these special characters:
internal static class SpecialChars { // Uncommon whitespace internal const char NoBreakSpace = (char)0x00a0; internal const char NextLine = (char)0x0085; // Special dashes internal const char EnDash = (char)0x2013; internal const char EmDash = (char)0x2014; internal const char HorizontalBar = (char)0x2015; // Special quotes internal const char QuoteSingleLeft = (char)0x2018; // left single quotation mark internal const char QuoteSingleRight = (char)0x2019; // right single quotation mark internal const char QuoteSingleBase = (char)0x201a; // single low-9 quotation mark internal const char QuoteReversed = (char)0x201b; // single high-reversed-9 quotation mark internal const char QuoteDoubleLeft = (char)0x201c; // left double quotation mark internal const char QuoteDoubleRight = (char)0x201d; // right double quotation mark internal const char QuoteLowDoubleLeft = (char)0x201E; // low double left quote used in german. }
The easiest solution is to use minus signs everywhere.
Another solution is to save files as Unicode UTF-8 encoding (preferred) or UTF-16 encoding (which I dislike).
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, CommandLine, Development, Encoding, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Unicode, UTF-16, UTF-8, UTF16, UTF8 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2021/09/28
One of the drawbacks of Google Cloud Shell is that it will delete the home directory after 120 days of not using it: [WayBack] Deletion notice for my Google Cloud Shell home directory – Stack Overflow
This is documented [WayBack] here:
If you do not access Cloud Shell for 120 days, we will delete your home disk. You will receive an email notification before we do so and simply starting a session will prevent its removal.
This only applies to the home directory of your Cloud Shell instance (you may want to store it on Cloud Storage anyway if you want to keep it). Any other Google services you use will be unaffected.
I hardly use the cloud shell, as it is a last resort to shell out from overly protected networks. Fewer and fewer environments restrict so much, so I’ve bumped into the home directory deletion a few times now.
I might use it more in the future, as I recently discovered there is a URL trick so you can start a cloud shell with parameters like an initial git repository: [WayBack] Open in Cloud Shell | Google Cloud
The Open in Cloud Shell feature allows you to publish a link that opens the Cloud Console and either automatically clones a Git repository into Cloud Shell or starts Cloud Shell with a custom image. It also allows for instructions to be printed to the terminal to help users interact with the content.
The Open in Cloud Shell feature helps developers experiment with code samples and APIs without having to worry about downloading Cloud SDK, installing required dependencies, or searching for relevant source files. This page explains how to add this feature to your Git repository.
Currently, only GitHub and Bitbucket repositories are whitelisted. If you would like to add a different repository, send feedback with the repository type you’d like to use with Open in Cloud Shell.
Setting up the home directory with my scripts can be a curse, so I have contemplated on these kinds of solutions:
Some links that will hopefully help me with that:
mount the bucket in your Cloud Shell using gcsfuse:
Create a directory in your Cloud Shell user home
mkdir ~/mybucketNow mount your bucket in that directory using gcsfuse:
gcsfuse bucket_name ~/mybucketChange the current directory to mount point directory:
cd mybucket(if you want to have some fun run “df -h .” to see how much space you got in that mount point)
…
seems to work for all file sizes:
curl http://speedtest.tele2.net/10GB.zip | gsutil cp - gs://YOUR_BUCKET_NAME/10GB.zipBasically curl “streams” the data directly to the bucket.
[WayBack] Limitations and restrictions | Cloud Shell | Google CloudUsage limits
Cloud Shell inactivity: If you do not access Cloud Shell for 120 days, your home disk will be deleted. You will receive an email notification before its deletion and simply starting a session will prevent its removal. Please consider a different solution on Google Cloud storage for sensitive data you wish to store long term.
Non-interactive usage: Cloud Shell is intended for interactive use only. Non-interactive sessions will be ended automatically after a warning. Note that Cloud Shell sessions are capped at 12 hours, after which sessions are automatically terminated. You can use a new session immediately after.
Weekly usage: Cloud Shell also has weekly usage limits. If you reach your usage limit, you’ll need to wait until the specified time (listed under Usage Quota, found under the three dots menu icon) before you can use Cloud Shell again.
Restoring a session after a service limit violation: If your session is terminated or cannot be established because you exceeded a service limit, Cloud Shell will display an error with a link to a form that allows you to appeal the limit violation. Click the feedback link and submit the form with more information about the tasks you were performing before your session was terminated.
–jeroen
Posted in bash, Development, Google, GoogleCloudShell, GoogleDrive, Internet, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, SpeedTest | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2021/09/28
Shortly after UltraVNC mismatching sha256 hash the chocolatey checksum check (Chocolatey: when upgrades or installs keep insisting the hash has changed, and over time the mismatch changes as well), I bumped into another occasion: now (because of a zero sized .nupkg file), I had to force reinstall sysinternals.
The problem however is that sysinternals chocolatey will always install the latest version as per [WayBack] Chocolatey Software | Sysinternals 2019.12.19
Notes
- This package supports only latest version.
- This package by default installs to tools directory which will create shims for all applications. When you install to different directory, shims are not created but directory is added to the PATH.
- This package downloads the nano edition of sysinternals suite when installing it on a nano server.
- To have GUI for the tools, install nirlauncher package and use
/Sysinternalspackage parameter.
It means that when reinstalling an older version (in the process of fixing a broken chocolatey install), it is OK to ignore the error caused during forced reinstall:
C:\bin\bin>choco install --force --yes sysinternals Chocolatey v0.10.15 Installing the following packages: sysinternals By installing you accept licenses for the packages. sysinternals v2019.6.29 already installed. Forcing reinstall of version '2019.6.29'. Please use upgrade if you meant to upgrade to a new version. Progress: Downloading sysinternals 2019.6.29... 100% sysinternals v2019.6.29 (forced) [Approved] sysinternals package files install completed. Performing other installation steps. Sysinternals Suite is going to be installed in 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\sysinternals\tools' Downloading sysinternals from 'https://download.sysinternals.com/files/SysinternalsSuite.zip' Progress: 100% - Completed download of C:\Users\jeroenp\AppData\Local\Temp\chocolatey\sysinternals\2019.6.29\SysinternalsSuite.zip (29 MB). Download of SysinternalsSuite.zip (29 MB) completed. Error - hashes do not match. Actual value was 'AE0AB906A61234D1ECCB027D04F5A920D78A31494372193EE944DD419842625C'. ERROR: Checksum for 'C:\Users\jeroenp\AppData\Local\Temp\chocolatey\sysinternals\2019.6.29\SysinternalsSuite.zip' did not meet 'db59efe1739a2262104874347277f9faa0805a1a7a0acd9cc29e9544fb8040c5' for checksum type 'sha256'. Consider passing the actual checksums through with --checksum --checksum64 once you validate the checksums are appropriate. A less secure option is to pass --ignore-checksums if necessary. The install of sysinternals was NOT successful. Error while running 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\sysinternals\tools\chocolateyInstall.ps1'. See log for details. Chocolatey installed 0/1 packages. 1 packages failed. See the log for details (C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\logs\chocolatey.log). Failures - sysinternals (exited -1) - Error while running 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\sysinternals\tools\chocolateyInstall.ps1'. See log for details.
So in this case, as always the most recent Sysinternals file is used, it is OK to follow the bold guideline above (and quoted below) use the checksum for that file. You might even want to ignore it, as the file is downloaded over https so tampering is virtually impossible:
Consider passing the actual checksums through with --checksum --checksum64 once you validate the checksums are appropriate. A less secure option is to pass --ignore-checksums if necessary.
For this checksum, the forced reinstall becomes choco install --force --yes sysinternals --checksum AE0AB906A61234D1ECCB027D04F5A920D78A31494372193EE944DD419842625C
Alternatively (with a slight chance of yet another checksum) would be choco install --force --yes sysinternals --ignore-checksums
Related:
Posted in .NET, Chocolatey, CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, SysInternals, Windows | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2021/09/23
For my future self.
Due to an issue with choco-cleaner versions [WayBack] 0.0.6 and [WayBack] 0.0.7, I needed to ensure it was installed as version [WayBack] 0.0.5.2 and keep it that version.
Not sure if this is the canonical way, but this worked:
choco uninstall --yes choco-cleaner choco install --yes choco-cleaner --version 0.0.5.2 choco pin add --name=choco-cleaner --version 0.0.5.2 choco pin list
This worked to revert:
choco pin remove --name=choco-cleaner choco pin list choco upgrade --yes choco-cleaner
Aftere this upgrade, choco-cleaner version 0.0.7.1 shows a nice error message when the environment variable %ChocolateyToolsLocation% fails to exist.
In that case calling RefreshEnv.cmd will create that environment variable.
Related:
Default
%ChocolateyToolsLocation%location is%systemdrive%\toolsaccording to [WayBack] https://github.com/chocolatey/choco/blob/master/src/chocolatey.resources/helpers/functions/Get-ToolsLocation.ps1#L61
The readme.md on GitHub is out of sync… a bunch of stuff is that I need to get to eventually.
The new package page on chocolatey.org should be current and has this:
Release Notes
INSTRUCTIONS:
Edit C:\tools\BCURRAN3\choco-package-list-backup.config to customize your backup(s). It’s easy, there are comments.
From PowerShell or the Command Prompt, type CHOCO-PACKAGE-LIST-BACKUP to backup your Chocolatey packages list.
From Windows, click Chocolatey Package List Backup in the Windows Start Menu or Package List Backup inside the Chocolatey folder if Chocolatey Shortcuts is installed.
CHANGELOG:
2019.08.27 – can now put title and summary info into the packages.config file, new -EditConfig parameter to edit the config file, Now works from Command Prompt as well as PowerShell, script installation endpoint changed, config file renamed from .xml to .config
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, Chocolatey, CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 