A question came up about piping between advanced functions. The input to the second function might be an array. To illustrate how this works imagine a function that gets disk information ““ or better still use this one.
`function
get-mydisk
{
[
CmdletBinding
(
)
]
param
(
[string]
$computername
=
“$env:COMPUTERNAME”
)
BEGIN
{
}
#begin
PROCESS
{
Get-WmiObject
-Class
Win32_LogicalDisk
-ComputerName
$computername
|
foreach
{
New-Object
-TypeName
PSObject
-Property
@{
Disk
=
$_
.
DeviceID
Free
=
$_
.
FreeSpace
Size
=
$_
.
Size
}
}
}
#process
END
My test environment usually has a dozen or so machines at any one time. Some of these are short lived and used for a particular piece of testing ““ others are kept for years. I decided that I wanted to keep up to date on the patching of these virtual machines so installed WSUS on a Windows 2012 box.
One issue is that if a VM isn”™t started for 10 days WSUS starts complaining that it hasn"™t been contacted and if you run the WSUS clean up wizard the non-reporting servers may be removed. Checking the WSUS console for which machines haven"™t sync"™d recently is a chore.
Ok the embarrassing moral of this story is that you shouldn’t answer questions in a hurry at the end of the evening. 5 minutes after shutting down I realised that there is a far, far simpler way to get the info. Win32_AccountSID is a WMI linking class. It links Win32_SystemAccount and Win32_SID classes.
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_SystemAccount | select Caption, Domain, Name, SID, LocalAccount
gets you all you need
I realised there is an easier way to get the data
`function
get-SID
{
param
(
[string]
$computername
=
$env:COMPUTERNAME
)
Get-WmiObject
-Class
Win32_AccountSID
-ComputerName
$computername
|
foreach
{
$exp
=
“[wmi]'”
$(
$_
.
Element
)
“'”
Invoke-Expression
-Command
$exp
|
select
Domain
,
Name
,
SID
,
LocalAccount
}
}
`Use the wmi type accelerator with the path from the Element and you can just select the data you want. As a bonus you can discover if the account is local or not
A question asked about passing a function name into another function which then called the function. It sounds worse than it is. if you need to pass the name of a command and then call it try using invoke-expression
`function
ffour
{
Get-Random
}
function
fthree
{
Get-Date
}
function
ftwo
{
param
(
[string]
$fname
)
Invoke-Expression
$fname
}
“date”
ftwo
fthree
“random”
ftwo
ffour
`
A question on the forum asked about finding the accounts and SIDs on the local machine.
`function
get-SID
{
param
(
[string]
$computername
=
$env:COMPUTERNAME
)
Get-WmiObject
-Class
Win32_AccountSID
-ComputerName
$computername
|
foreach
{
$da
=
(
(
$_
.
Element
)
.
Split
(
“.”
)
[
1
]
)
.
Split
(
“,”
)
$sid
=
(
$_
.
Setting
-split
“=”
)
[
1
]
-replace
‘"’
,
''
$props
=
[ordered]
@{
Domain
=
(
$da
[
]
-split
“=”
)
[
1
]
-replace
‘"’
,
''
Account
=
(
$da
[
1
]
-split
“=”
)
[
1
]
-replace
‘"’
,
''
SID
=
$sid
}
New-Object
-TypeName
PSObject
-Property
$props
}
}
`Pass a computer name into the function ““ default is local machine.
`**When: Tuesday, Jan 29, 2013 7:30 PM (GMT)
Where: virtual
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
`Active Directory is one of the commonest automation targets for administrators. This session will covert the basics of automating your AD admin – scripts and the Microsoft cmdlets. The new features in PowerShell for Windows 2012 AD will also be covered
Notes**`Richard Siddaway has invited you to attend an online meeting using Live Meeting.**[Join the meeting.](https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=RCRWH3&role=attend&pw=5p7%24%7DS_%21h)****Audio Information****Computer Audio****To use computer audio, you need speakers and microphone, or a headset.
First Time Users:To save time before the meeting, check your system to make sure it is ready to use Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
TroubleshootingUnable to join the meeting? Follow these steps:
One of the new features in PowerShell v3 is the capability to update the help files. In fact you have to do this because PowerShell v3 doesn"™t ship with any help files. Since Windows 8 RTM"™d there have been a succession of new help files released.
I discovered one of my netbooks didn"™t have the latest version of the help files installed. So I needed to update them. This got me thinking that it would be better if the machine did this for me.
