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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Scripting’ Category

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How to turn on automatic logon in Windows

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/09

[WayBack] How to turn on automatic logon in Windows

Describes how to turn on the automatic logon feature in Windows by editing the registry.

Most archivals of the above post fail with a 404-error after briefly flashing the content, but this particular one usually succeeds displaying.

It is slightly different from the one referenced in my blog post automatic logon in Windows 2003, and because of the archival issues, I have quoted most of it below.

A few observations, at least in Windows 10 and 8.1:

  • Major Windows 10 upgrades will disable the autologon: after each major upgrade, you have to re-apply the registry patches.
  • If the user has a blank password, you can remove the DefaultPassword value.
    • Empty passwords allow local logon (no network logon or remote desktop logon), no network access and no RunAs, which can actually help improve security. More on that in a later blog post
  • For a local machine logon, you do not need the DefaultDomainName value either (despite many posts insisting you need them), but you can technically set it to the computer name using reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v DefaultDomainName /t REG_SZ /d %ComputerName% /f
  • If another user logs on and off, the values keep preserved, so after a reboot, the correct user automatically logs on
  • you need a full reboot cycle for this to take effect
  • The AutoLogon tool does not allow blank passwords

I wrote a batch file enable-autologon-for-user-parameter.bat that makes it easier:

if [%1] == [] goto :help

:enable
  reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v AutoAdminLogon /t REG_SZ /d 1 /f
:setUserName
  reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v DefaultUserName /t REG_SZ /d %1 /f
:removePasswordIfItExists
  reg delete "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v DefaultPassword /f
if [%2] == [] goto :eof
:setPassword
  reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v DefaultPassword /t REG_SZ /d %2 /f  
  goto :eof

:help
  echo Syntax:
  echo   %0 username password

The article quote:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Microsoft Surface on Windows 7, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

Windows: starting Chrome in full-screen kiosk mode from a batch file

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/03

When configuring a web-based kiosk for someone with Alzheimer’s disease, I wanted to start Chrome in full-screen kiosk mode.

Chrome full-screen kiosk mode

The secret for full-screen kiosk mode is to pass the -start-fullscreen command-line option. Thanks [WayBack] User ginomay89 – Super User for answering that in [WayBack] tablet – How to set Google Chrome to automatically open up and in full screen – Super User.

Finding chrome

At first I thought about differentiating on the chrome.exe location that you can find in the registry. This turned out to be depending on how you install Chrome:

  • locally for the current user by a non-local-administrator user (by default the location is under %LocalAppData%)
  • globally for all users by a local-administratator user (by default is under %ProgramFiles(x86)%)

Oddly, there is no way (not even by denying UAC elevation!) for a local administrator to install Chrome for only the current user.

This is odd, as when non-local-administrator denies UAC, the installation is locally to the user.

Then I remembered there are two ways for Windows to find an application

The cool thing is that the start command does the latter, so I came up with this batch file that starts chrome with the -start-fullscreen parameter that will initiate kiosk mode with the default chrome settings:

start "Chrome Kiosk Mode" chrome --start-fullscreen

In case I want to compare the registry settings

Basically sorting out the registry settings would mean parsing the references to chrome.exe (often with extra parameters) in the below registry key/value-name pairs.

One day I might need to do this for different reasons, but currently the start trick suffices.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »

Listing information on all active interfaces on MacOS part 1: getting the active interface names

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/07/29

Listing Listing information on all active interfaces on MacOS is a process involving multiple pieces, which then can be combined together.

Listing all active interfaces try 1

This involves both the -l (list with optional criteria) and -u parameter (the up criterion) as per excerpts from the [Archive.is] ifconfig(8) [osx man page] / [WayBack] ifconfig Man Page – macOS – SS64.com:

NAME
     ifconfig -- configure network interface parameters

SYNOPSIS
     ...
     ifconfig -l [-d] [-u] [address_family]
     ...

DESCRIPTION
     The ifconfig utility is used to assign an address to a network interface and/or configure network interface parameters.

     The following options are available:

     ...

     address_family
             Specify the address family which affects interpretation of the remaining parameters.  Since an interface can receive transmissions
             in differing protocols with different naming schemes, specifying the address family is recommended.  The address or protocol fami-
             lies currently supported are ``inet'', ``inet6'', and ``link''.  The default is ``inet''.  ``ether'' and ``lladdr'' are synonyms
             for ``link''.

     ...

     The -l flag may be used to list all available interfaces on the system, with no other additional information.  Use of this flag is mutually
     exclusive with all other flags and commands, except for -d (only list interfaces that are down) and -u (only list interfaces that are up).

Example:

ifconfig -l -u

Each interface on one line:

ifconfig -l -u | xargs -n1 echo

The problem is that on my system, it also lists bridges as active, whereas they are not:

# ifconfig -l -u | xargs -n1 echo
lo0
en1
en2
en0
p2p0
awdl0
bridge0
utun0
en10

# ifconfig bridge0
bridge0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    options=63<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,TSO4,TSO6>
    ether 6a:00:02:9a:23:f0 
    Configuration:
        id 0:0:0:0:0:0 priority 0 hellotime 0 fwddelay 0
        maxage 0 holdcnt 0 proto stp maxaddr 100 timeout 1200
        root id 0:0:0:0:0:0 priority 0 ifcost 0 port 0
        ipfilter disabled flags 0x2
    member: en1 flags=3<LEARNING,DISCOVER>
            ifmaxaddr 0 port 5 priority 0 path cost 0
    member: en2 flags=3<LEARNING,DISCOVER>
            ifmaxaddr 0 port 6 priority 0 path cost 0
    Address cache:
    nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>
    media: 
    status: inactive

So this is where the MacOS and BSD documentation is inaccurate.

Interface types

The above interfaces are many more than just ethernet or WiFi interfaces; there is a list at [WayBack] macos – What are en0, en1, p2p, and so on, that are displayed after executing ifconfig? – Stack Overflow by [WayBack] mcint:

In arbitrary order of my familarity / widespread relevance:

lo0 is loopback.

en0 at one point “ethernet”, now is WiFi (and I have no idea what extra en1 or en2 are used for).

fw0 is the FireWire network interface.

stf0 is an IPv6 to IPv4 tunnel interface to support the transition from IPv4 to the IPv6 standard.

gif0 is a more generic tunneling interface [46]-to-[46].

awdl0 is Apple Wireless Direct Link

p2p0 is related to AWDL features. Either as an old version, or virtual interface with different semantics than awdl.

…

many VPNs will add additional devices, often “utun#” or “utap#” following TUN/TAP (L3/L2)virtual networking devices.

More on AWDL at [WayBack] ios – What is AWDL (Apple Wireless Direct Link) and how does it work? – Stack Overflow.

Listing all active interfaces try 2

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Apple, bash, Development, ifconfig, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

-r argument to pipe (no argument for MacOS)- If no input is given to xargs, don’t let xargs run the utility – Unix & Linux Stack Exchange

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/07/28

TL;DR

There is a non-standard -r option to xargs that allows it to skip executing when there are no arguments at all.

On some operating systems, the -r is default.

MacOS has no -r, but does not execute xargs if there are no arguments given.

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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, bash, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, xargs | Leave a Comment »

Listing information on all active interfaces on MacOS part 2: adding DHCP/BOOTP and routing details

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/07/27

This is a continuation of yesterdays

Listing information on all active interfaces on MacOS part 1: getting the active interface names.

It is based on ideas in these StackExchange posts:

I threw most of the implementation details in the ideas away, as they were way to much based on empirical trial and error, than proper research.

So I tried doing the research and came up with the things below.

Getting the IPv4 address and DHCP/BOOTP information of a NIC

By using the ipconfig command, you can get specific details for a NIC like an IPv4 (with the getifaddr) or DHCP (with the getpacket option to get the latest DHCP packet):

for i in $(ifconfig -l -u); do if ifconfig $i | grep -q "status: active" ; then echo $i; fi; done | xargs -n1 -I_nic_ sh -c 'echo "_nic_: $(ipconfig getifaddr _nic_)"'

or DHCP/BOOTP:

for i in $(ifconfig -l -u); do if ifconfig $i | grep -q "status: active" ; then echo $i; fi; done | xargs -n1 -I_nic_ sh -c 'echo "_nic_: $(ipconfig getpacket _nic_)"'

The latter returns a very long list, which I wanted to shorten into a more readable format.

ipconfig syntax

You can find more information in the [Archive.is] ipconfig(8) [osx man page] / [WayBack] ipconfig Man Page – macOS – SS64.com excerpt:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Apple, bash, Development, DNS, ifconfig, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Windows: batch file to logoff all other users (run as Administrator)

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/07/22

Based on zzz but filters current user, and listener session.

:: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36715033/how-to-logoff-all-users-on-windows-from-command-line-as-a-domain-administrator
:: The findstr bit filters out the current session (starts with ">") and session 65536 (which is the listener)
for /f "skip=2 tokens=2,3 delims= " %%a in ('query session ^| findstr /v /b ">" ^| findstr /v "65536  Listen"') DO (
    echo %%a|findstr /xr "[1-9][0-9]* 0" >nul && (
      logoff %%a 
    )
    echo %%b|findstr /xr "[1-9][0-9]* 0" >nul && (
      logoff %%b 
    )
)
goto :eof

–jeroen

Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Scripting, Software Development, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

Fixing hg.exe “ImportError: DLL load failed: %1 is not a valid Win32 application.”

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/07/21

If you get the below error when running hg.exe, then you are mixing a 64-bit Mercurial with 32-bit dependencies:

C:\>hg --version
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "hg", line 43, in 
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 150, in __getattr__
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 94, in _load
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 43, in _hgextimport
  File "mercurial\dispatch.pyc", line 22, in 
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 248, in _demandimport
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 43, in _hgextimport
  File "mercurial\i18n.pyc", line 28, in 
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 150, in __getattr__
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 94, in _load
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 43, in _hgextimport
  File "mercurial\encoding.pyc", line 24, in 
  File "mercurial\policy.pyc", line 101, in importmod
  File "mercurial\policy.pyc", line 63, in _importfrom
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 164, in __doc__
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 94, in _load
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 43, in _hgextimport
  File "mercurial\cext\parsers.pyc", line 12, in 
  File "mercurial\cext\parsers.pyc", line 10, in __load
ImportError: DLL load failed: %1 is geen geldige Win32-toepassing.

The equivalent English error is [WayBack] “ImportError: DLL load failed: %1 is not a valid Win32 application.” – Google Search.

The problem is the bitness of hg.exe: [WayBack] python – Error while installing Mercurial on IIS7 64bit: “DLL Load Failed: %1 is not a valid Win32 application” – Stack Overflow

You can quickly figure out the bitness of hg.exe:

C:\>where hg
C:\Program Files\Mercurial\hg.exe

C:\>sigcheck "C:\Program Files\Mercurial\hg.exe"

Sigcheck v2.72 - File version and signature viewer
Copyright (C) 2004-2019 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

c:\program files\mercurial\hg.exe:
        Verified:       Unsigned
        Link date:      17:49 9-7-2019
        Publisher:      n/a
        Company:        n/a
        Description:    Fast scalable distributed SCM (revision control, version control) system
        Product:        mercurial
        Prod version:   5.0.2
        File version:   5.0.2
        MachineType:    64-bit

Forcing x86 of Mercurial

Since I use chocolatey for most my installs, I forced x86 the Chocolatey way:

So after these:

choco uninstall --yes hg
choco install --yes --force86 hg

I got this signature check:

C:\>sigcheck "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mercurial\hg.exe"

Sigcheck v2.72 - File version and signature viewer
Copyright (C) 2004-2019 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

c:\program files (x86)\mercurial\hg.exe:
        Verified:       Unsigned
        Link date:      17:50 9-7-2019
        Publisher:      n/a
        Company:        n/a
        Description:    Fast scalable distributed SCM (revision control, version control) system
        Product:        mercurial
        Prod version:   5.0.2
        File version:   5.0.2
        MachineType:    32-bit

–jeroen

Posted in Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, Encoding, Mercurial/Hg, Python, Scripting, Software Development, Source Code Management | Leave a Comment »

Filezilla: figuring out the cause of “Connection timed out after 20 seconds of inactivity”

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/07/21

On one of my Raspberry Pi boxes, somehow I could not access files over SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) via FileZilla.

I would consistently get this error:

"Connection timed out after 20 seconds of inactivity"

Figuring the exact cause took a while.

TL;DR: SFTP uses an interactive non-login shell, then interprets the output from that shell. For that kind of shell, ensure few or none scripts run that output text.

These links finally got me to the cause

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, bash, Communications Development, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Internet protocol suite, Power User, Scripting, SFTP, Software Development, SSH, TCP | Leave a Comment »

How do I get the application exit code from a Windows command line? – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/07/15

[WayBack] How do I get the application exit code from a Windows command line? – Stack Overflow solutions below.

Note they ONLY work when nobody sets the ERRORLEVEL environment variable.

  • You can quickly see what app returns: app.exe & echo %errorlevel% – [WayBack] marbel82
  • something.exe
echo Exit Code is %errorlevel%

    – [WayBack] Samuel Renkert

  • start /wait something.exe
echo %errorlevel%

    – [WayBack] Gary

  • @echo off
my_nify_exe.exe
if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 0 (
   echo Success
) else (
   echo Failure Reason Given is %errorlevel%
   exit /b %errorlevel%
)

    – [WayBack] Curtis Yallop

  • It’s worth noting that .BAT and .CMD files operate differently.Reading https://ss64.com/nt/errorlevel.html it notes the following:

    There is a key difference between the way .CMD and .BAT batch files set errorlevels:

    An old .BAT batch script running the ‘new’ internal commands: APPEND, ASSOC, PATH, PROMPT, FTYPE and SET will only set ERRORLEVEL if an error occurs. So if you have two commands in the batch script and the first fails, the ERRORLEVEL will remain set even after the second command succeeds.

    This can make debugging a problem BAT script more difficult, a CMD batch script is more consistent and will set ERRORLEVEL after every command that you run .

    This was causing me no end of grief as I was executing successive commands, but the ERRORLEVEL would remain unchanged even in the event of a failure. – [WayBack] RockDoctor

–jeroen

Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

windows – What is the proper way to test if a parameter is empty in a batch file? – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/07/14

You can use:

IF "%~1" == "" GOTO MyLabel

to strip the outer set of quotes. In general, this is a more reliable method than using square brackets because it will work even if the variable has spaces in it.

Source: [WayBack] jamesdlin answering on [WayBack] windows – What is the proper way to test if a parameter is empty in a batch file? – Stack Overflow

The tilde (~) strips out double quotes from the command as per

C:\>help for | findstr "~"
    %~I         - expands %I removing any surrounding quotes (")
    %~fI        - expands %I to a fully qualified path name
    %~dI        - expands %I to a drive letter only
    %~pI        - expands %I to a path only
    %~nI        - expands %I to a file name only
    %~xI        - expands %I to a file extension only
    %~sI        - expanded path contains short names only
    %~aI        - expands %I to file attributes of file
    %~tI        - expands %I to date/time of file
    %~zI        - expands %I to size of file
    %~$PATH:I   - searches the directories listed in the PATH
    %~dpI       - expands %I to a drive letter and path only
    %~nxI       - expands %I to a file name and extension only
    %~fsI       - expands %I to a full path name with short names only
    %~dp$PATH:I - searches the directories listed in the PATH
    %~ftzaI     - expands %I to a DIR like output line
values.  The %~ syntax is terminated by a valid FOR variable name.

–jeroen

Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »

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