PoSh Chap

Musings on the splendour of PowerShell...

Use Azure AD PowerShell to Check Synchronised On-Premises AD extensionAttributes 1-15

You wait 271 days for a new PoSh Chap post and, like London buses, two come along at once! How can...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 07/26/2018

Use Microsoft Graph to Check Synchronised On-Premises AD extensionAttributes 1-15

Hello, again! It's been some time, It's been 271 days, This feels GOOD. This feels like... A...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 07/25/2018

Post #200! a.k.a A Brave New Blog

200! It only seems like yesterday that I was celebrating 100 posts. Fugit inreparabile tempus! When...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 10/27/2017

One-Liner: Get Signing Algorithm for Personal Store Certificates

A digital signature is created when a file is run through a hashing algorithm and the resultant hash...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 10/20/2017

AD Groups with Low Member Count

When I was a Systems Administrator, it was often tough to find time to be proactive and housekeep....

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 10/13/2017

More on Get-Acl with Active Directory

In June I posted about searching Active Directory for principals that have the "Write Members"...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 10/06/2017

PowerShell in the Azure Portal... Oh, Happy Day!

I was delivering some Azure training recently. I went to the shell icon in the Azure portal (see...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 09/29/2017

One-Liner: Query the AD Schema for User Object Attributes

I've lost count of just how many blog posts have their origin in a customer question. Here's...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 09/22/2017

PowerShell in the Azure Portal... Almost!

A little while back I noticed a new (but familiar) icon in the Azure portal (see below, not...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 09/15/2017

Intelllisense in the Console

You're running a cmdlet in the PowerShell.exe host console. You want to see what parameters are...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 09/08/2017

Scripting Tips & Tricks: Dynamic Parameters

Imagine you want a secondary parameter (or set of parameters) to ONLY appear if a particular value...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 09/01/2017

AD Cmdlet -Filter Faffing

I'm aware that I write for an international audience and I try to use international English in my...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 08/25/2017

Scripting Tips & Tricks: Dynamic RegEx Queries

Another week of RegEx! I just can't get enough of it at the moment. A bit like sleep. I said sleep,...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 08/18/2017

Scripting Tips & Tricks: RegEx for OU Name & Path

I 'borrowed' this RegEx off my esteemed colleague, Mr Raimund Andree, whilst working on site with...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 08/11/2017

Scripting Tips & Tricks: Review Your Comments

I wrote a PowerShell module recently as part of an update to a service we provide to customers. I...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 08/04/2017

Security Focus: Generate an Alphanumeric Password

If you have to have a password, it's best to have a password that could contain special...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 07/28/2017

Add Multi-Line Content to a Linux File with Add-Content

You have a large number of files to edit that are used by Linux servers. The editing and...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 07/21/2017

One-Liner: PowerShell Pi Mnemonic

I love this. I came across it when looking into how to calculate Pi with PowerShell. "$('How I wish...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 07/14/2017

Profile Power: Adjust Console Opacity

WMF 5.1 comes with some cool improvements to the console. One of which I enable via my $profile, the...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 07/07/2017

Get User's Provisioned Plans with Azure AD PowerShell Module

So... I wanted to check out what o365 licences were assigned to one of my user accounts... and... I...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 06/30/2017

Profile Power: Default Parameter for Format-Table and Format-Wide

I'm lazy. When I run Format-Table and Format-Wide, the effort of typing -A and pressing Tab to give...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 06/23/2017

Get Active Directory "Write Members" WriteProperty

A messaging colleague asked how to check which principals have the Write Members permission on...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 06/16/2017

Profile Power: Tidy Up My Personal Certificate Store

I've decided to do a few posts on the contents of my PowerShell profile. A profile is a script that...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 06/09/2017

Security Focus: Count Vulnerabilities for Monthly Security Updates

Having a monthly single Security update makes sense. Have a cumulative quality update also makes...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 06/02/2017

Security Focus: Get CVE Information for WannaCrypt

You've no doubt heard that the WannaCrypt ransomware is also a worm. The propagation code exploits a...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 05/26/2017

Use CMD to echo a Script Block to an Encoded Command

I like quirky and odd things.  Encoded commands are nothing new, but check out this method for...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 05/19/2017

DNS Forwarders Fours Ways

I'm lucky enough to occasionally eat in nice restaurants. A lot of the time, the menu makes for...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 05/12/2017

Set Password of Azure Active Directory B2B User to Not Expire with PowerShell

First up, non-expiring passwords aren't recommended... but, what if you did want to set an AAD user...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 05/05/2017

Periodically Check PowerShell Job Status

My PowerShell profile starts a load of PowerShell jobs when I'm running as Administrator......

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 04/28/2017

One-Liner: Get TLS Cipher Suite Details with PowerShell

This one is awesome (and short). (Get-TlsCipherSuite).Name

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 04/21/2017

Use PowerShell to List Active Directory Extended Rights

PowerShell providers allow us to traverse various data stores we encounter, as IT professionals, as...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 04/14/2017

Security Focus: User PowerShell to Obtain Microsoft Security Update Information

Want to use PowerShell to create a html report of Microsoft security updates? No problem. Read on......

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 04/07/2017

Restart-Computer (with BitLocker Suspended)

Create a function called Restart-Computer. Use it to call the Restart-Computer cmdlet. Before you...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 03/31/2017

Fun & Frolics: Generate a 0 and 1 Screen Stream

What a ridiculous title! Believe me, the post gets even more ridiculous. Anyway, it's a bit of fun!...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 03/24/2017

Module Manifest - ScriptsToProcess

Here's a nice little trick. When creating a PowerShell module you can specify a list of scripts to...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 03/17/2017

Start-AzureCloudService

Here's a function I use quite a lot. Now, I know it's old-world (ASM rather than ARM) in terms of...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 03/10/2017

Security Focus: Get Mail Enabled Admin Users

Browsing the internet with an admin account is a very, very bad thing to do. Using an admin account...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 03/03/2017

Try to Catch Error Exception Types

When error handling with Try, Catch, Finally you can create conditional catch statements to target...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 02/24/2017

Back to Basics: Generate Monthly Report Folders

I'm always using PowerShell to just, well, help out with day to day stuff I have to do. The other...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 02/17/2017

Security Focus: Enable / Disable MFA on Azure AD Admin Account

Last week I presented a little function that I use to reset my Azure AD admin account passwords....

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 02/10/2017

Security Focus: Update Azure AD Admin Account Password

Got to love this cmdlet - Update-AzureADSignedInUserPassword ! I use it to update admin credentials...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 02/03/2017

Get-OneMillionDigitsofPi

After showing a customer the PI static method of System.Math, they asked, "how do I get more...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 01/27/2017

One-Liner: Find a Renamed and Relocated AD Guest Account WITHOUT using the Well-Known SID

So... someone decided to rename and move the domain's Guest account. You could find searching via...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 01/20/2017

Use PowerShell to Show User Rights Assignments Set by Group Policy

Here's one I came across whilst performing some Group Policy troubleshooting... Get-CimInstance...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 01/13/2017

Stop PowerShell.exe from Starting!

What!? "Have you gone mad?", I hear you cry! Last month (and year), I posted about limiting the...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 01/06/2017

Janus...

The second post in my two-part series that is a departure from my blogging norm... Looking back, the...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 12/29/2016

Happy Holidays 2016!

I'm going to take a blogging holiday for the next couple of weeks. Well, kind of... I'll post...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 12/23/2016

RegEx for Splitting Hairs

Here's some hairs... Wrong hairs! Here is the intended hairs... $Hairs = 'PD112345D123456F£45637'...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 12/09/2016

List Forest SPN Mappings

I was helping a customer setup Kerberos delegation the other day. After all these years, the...

Author: Ian Farr [MSFT] Date: 12/02/2016

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