Three times a week (Monday/Wednesday/Friday), John Savill tackles your most pressing IT questions.
Read through the FAQ archives, or send him your questions via email.
Today: Three PowerShell items about accessing remote files, suppressing command output, and sending multiple lines for a script block.
Q. I'm trying to access a file share from a remote PowerShell session but it's not working?
A. This is the double-hop problem where you are trying to use your credential on a remote session and then go to a remote machine from within the remote session. This requires the use of CredSSP or constrained Kerberos delegation. Another approach is to pass a credential and map a drive to the remote file server you are trying to access.
In this example, focus on the parts in bold. You can see I pass the credential as an attribute to the code running remotely.
$NPSServers = "azuusenps1","azuusenps2","azuuswnps1","azuuswnps2","azueuenps1","azueuenps2","azuasenps1","azuasenps2"
$todayDate = Get-Date -Format MM-dd-yy $ExportName = $todayDate + "-NPSConfig.xml"
$cred = Get-Credential
foreach($NPSServer in $NPSServers) { write-output "Updating $NPSServer" Invoke-Command -ComputerName $NPSServer -ScriptBlock { if (-not (Test-Path 'c:\NPS')) { New-Item -Path C:\NPS -ItemType Directory } if (Test-Path C:\NPS\$($args[0])) {Remove-Item -Path C:\NPS\$($args[0]) -Force } Export-NpsConfiguration -Path C:\NPS\$($args[0]) if (Test-Path C:\NPS\NPSConfig_output.xml) {Remove-Item -Path C:\NPS\NPSConfig_output.xml -Force } New-PSDrive -Name X -PSProvider FileSystem -Root \\AZUUSWNPS2\NPSGeneration -Credential $args[1] | out-null Copy-Item X:\NPSConfig_output.xml C:\NPS Remove-PSDrive X Import-NpsConfiguration -Path C:\NPS\NPSConfig_output.xml } -ArgumentList $ExportName, $cred }
Q. How can I suppress output from commands in PowerShell?
A. The easiest way to suppress output is to send that output to null, e.g.
<command> | out-null
Q. How can I send multiple lines for a script block with PowerShell?
A. It's actually very simple. Just put the lines on new lines within the curly brackets and it should work. For example:
Invoke-Command -ComputerName $NPSServer -ScriptBlock { if (-not (Test-Path 'c:\NPS')) { New-Item -Path C:\NPS -ItemType Directory } #if (Test-Path C:\NPS\$($args[0])) {Remove-Item -Path C:\NPS\$($args[0]) -Force } Export-NpsConfiguration -Path C:\NPS\$($args[0]) if (Test-Path C:\NPS\NPSConfig_output.xml) {Remove-Item -Path C:\NPS\NPSConfig_output.xml -Force } New-PSDrive -Name X -PSProvider FileSystem -Root \\AZUUSWNPS2\NPSGeneration -Credential $args[1] | out-null Copy-Item X:\NPSConfig_output.xml C:\NPS Remove-PSDrive X Import-NpsConfiguration -Path C:\NPS\NPSConfig_output.xml } -ArgumentList $ExportName, $cred
