ACSA was built with the Helpdesk administrator in mind. Troubleshooting desktop issues requires a vast array of tools and knowledge. ACSA brings those tools together in one central location and adds additional functionality.
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Windows Security PowerPack
[2906] Last Modified: Oct 22, 2010 7:34 PM
This PowerPack was designed by Randy Franklin Smith to solve several long standing gaps in managing and auditing Windows security. Visit http://dev.ultimatewindowssecurity.com/tools/wspowerpack/default.aspx to learn about the 3 problems this PowerPack addresses and how the PowerPack solves them.
[2906] Last Modified: Oct 22, 2010 7:34 PM
This PowerPack was designed by Randy Franklin Smith to solve several long standing gaps in managing and auditing Windows security. Visit http://dev.ultimatewindowssecurity.com/tools/wspowerpack/default.aspx to learn about the 3 problems this PowerPack addresses and how the PowerPack solves them.
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An Introduction to PowerShell Modules
For PowerShell to provide specialised scripting, especially for administering server technologies, it can have the range of Cmdlets available to it extended by means of Snapins. With version 2 there is an easier and better method of extending PowerShell: the Module. These can be distributed with the application to be administered, and a wide range of Cmdlets are now available to the PowerShell user. PowerShell has grown up.
One of the great features of PowerShell is its extensibility. In PowerShell version 1 it was possible for other product teams within Microsoft or elsewhere to use a delivery mechanism known as snap-ins to extend PowerShell with additional PowerShell cmdlets. Although the snap-in mechanism is still supported within PowerShell version 2, the new feature known as a PowerShell module has made it much easier to extend PowerShell to make it more appropriate for specialised uses.
PowerShell modules bring extendibility to the systems administrator, DBA, and developer. Whether it’s simply as a method to share functions and scripts you have created or delving further into providing what would have been snap-in territory in version 1, you should be aware of the capabilities of modules.
PowerShell is an integral part of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Window Server 2008 R2 ships with a number of built-in modules. Further modules become available after installing various additional components of the operating system.
In this article we will examine the fundamentals of modules and then, by way of an example, look at some practical ways you can make use of them in Windows Server 2008 R2.
PowerShell Modules
in PowerShell version 1, Snap-ins were popular with systems administrators who used cmdlets provided by third parties, such as Quest’s Active Directory cmdlets and VMware’s PowerCLI cmdlets. However, you did not find many of those same administrators creating their own snap-ins, particularly if they were just starting out learning PowerShell because it would typically involve writing some C# code.
PowerShell version 2 makes it easier to achieve the objective of sharing functions and scripts as part of a module. In addition, whilst a snap-in can only contain cmdlets and providers, a module can also contain other common PowerShell items such as functions, variables, aliases and PowerShell drives.
Creating Your First PowerShell Module
Before you create your first PowerShell Module you will need to know what to create and where to store it. PowerShell will look in the paths specified in the $env:PSModulePath environment variable when searching for available modules on a system. By default this contains two paths; one in a system location%windir%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules and also in the currently logged on user location%UserProfile%\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules . In this article for the sake of convenience we will store our module in the %UserProfile% location.
Each module should be stored in a sub folder of either of these paths and typically be the name of the module - within that folder you will then store the files that make up the module. At the least, we need a *.psm1 file. In this file could be placed a number of functions or variables that make up the module. In addition it is possible to place PowerShell scripts in *.ps1 files in the module’s folder and reference them in the *.psm1 file. As a final touch, a module manifest file can be created which will give a more professional and rounded feel to your module, but we will come on to manifests later.
Let’s look at the process of creating an example module.
To start with we will place a couple of functions in a *.psm1 file to make the module. There is nothing special in a *.psm1 file other than the file extension, so we can take a normal *.ps1 PowerShell script file containing our functions and rename it to make the *.psm1 file.
Firstly, let’s create two functions that we can use for our module which we will call CurrencyConversion. The first function will convert British Pounds into Euros. It does this by connecting to a web service at http://www.webservicex.net to obtain the current conversion rate between British Pounds and Euros, and then multiplies the inputted value of Pounds by the conversion rate to output the Euro value.
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PowerGUI® 3.0 Hotfix: Double-clicking on a ps1, psm1, or psd1 file to open the Script Editor shows the Start Page as the active page in the Script Editor
- PowerGUI 3.0 (freeware)
- PowerGUI Pro 3.0
Solution
To resolve this problem, a new version of the Script Editor Essentials Add-on has been released. This version (3.0.0.75) includes a modification to the Script Editor behaviour such that any file you use to open the PowerGUI Script Editor will immediately become the active file.
To install this hotfix, please follow these steps:
If you are connected to the Internet
- Open the PowerGUI Script Editor.
- Run the following command from the embedded PowerShell console:
LibreOffice
Firefox
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