Scripts

I do a fair amount of sysadmin scripting. Guess it's time to wikify some of that work!

See the Navigate Pages section of the sidebar --->

CMD

I still default to CMD when I need to script something. Why? Because I can count on it being installed on whatever system I might need to run the script on. This is also true of VBscript, I admit. But cmd scripting is what I learned first, and I still love its pure pithiness. If you can accomplish the task in both VBscript and cmd, the cmd script will generally be shorter and (in my opinion) easier to read.

• SS64 command reference
• The FOR command is the heart of many cmd scripts. 1
• Tim Hill's Windows NT Shell Scripting is still the definitive reference to basic cmd scripting.
  CMD string handling tricks

WSH/VBscript

• WSH Reference
• VBscript Language Reference
• Technet Script Repository / Script Center (has powershell stuff too)
• ADSI

WMI/WMIC

• WMI page o' links
• The important WMI connection string and WMI scripting reference
• WMI Reference, DNS WMI provider, WMI Secrets, WQL (WMI query language) 
• see the WMIC Snippets page

Powershell

• Getting started with powershell is something I haven't yet done. Time and braincells are limited, and the knowledge that Powershell isn't installed by default any version of the OS keeps me from going whole-hog on learning this amazing tool. Because then I'd keep wanting to use it in places where it isn't yet installed.

Must-have utilities

I have a whole site with a more or less custom 'distro' of utilities. But these are the ones I consider to be part of my lifeblood; I often use scripts which call these utilities.

• pstools - psexec, psshutdown, psservice, pslist, pspasswd - these are my favorites, but there are more, and they are all handy.
• The Windows 2003 Resource Kit utilities include
  • subinacl - syntax is painful at times. But this is the tool for permissions work.
  • robocopy - the Windows rsync. Copy/sync files or dirs and their permissions. A daily workhorse.
  • sleep.exe - batchfile 'wait' command.
  • srvinfo - WMIC does more, but srvinfo is a quick way to get vital info about a remote server (if you have admin privs)
• The Windows 2003 Adminpak gives you:
  • dsquery/dsget/dsmod/etc - hugely valuable for querying and modifying AD attributes like users, groups, and computers.
  • ntdsutil - hugely valuable for maintaining AD's FSMO roles, among other things.
  • much more
• Windows 2000 Resource Kit tools which need to be downloaded separately from Dynawell:
  • timethis -time the execution of a command or script
  • cusrmgr - add/delete/change users from commandline (syntax). Oldschool, but it still works!
• The XP SP2 Support Tools contains the following gems (among others!):
  • addiag - for diagnosing AD problems.
  • dhcploc - great for finding rogue DHCP servers, and diagnosing DHCP issues.
  • netdiag - diagnose network issues
  • nltest - check domain secure channels
  • netdom - commandline Windows domain join/part/change/test tool.
  • setx - commandline tool for setting machine-level environment variables
  • whoami is that embarrassing little command for alleviating my Alzheimers-like problem of forgetting whether I'm logged in with admin privs or not. It's part of the resource kit utilities
• nbtscan is a handy network scanner for Windows systems. Probably growing a bit less useful as local firewalls proliferate and netbios naming dies its slow death.
• portqry (download) (docs) is handy for troubleshooting connectivity issues.
• eldump is a great commandline event log dumper.
• wget is handy for downloading things from the commandline
• openssh is an alternative to Putty's need for a GUI window of its own. Openssh uses cygwin but does not need to have the full cygwin install on your system*. The Openssh installer can put an SSH server daemon on your system as well as a client (I do not use the server daemon).
• Unxutils is a nice source of basic bash-style utilities ported to run natively on the Windows commandline. No cygwin* needed.
• You need a good text editor. Currently I use and love EditPadPro, which is gui (and has both pay and free versions). I keep meaning to find a good cmd implementation of nano, (they do have one at the nano website), but I still haven't gotten 'round to it. I guess I'm more comfortable editing text in the GUI.

* For some reason I am suspicious of cygwin's security robustness. I know this isn't something I can rationally prove by pointing to verifiable sources. Yet still my suspiscions remain.