PowerShell

Pulkit Gulati

Test emails on Server with SMTP

You can check whether the port is open on a Server by using tcping.exe which you can download online. Tcping can also be similarly used to check other ports on a Server.

Open Powershell or Command prompt in Admin mode and then type the following command:

tcping smtp.some.domain 25

Port 25 is usually the default port for SMTP communication between mail servers.

You can also telnet to test out this port. Telnet should be enabled on your machine.

telnet smtp.some.domain 25

You can send a test email using Powershell using the below command:

Send-MailMessage -From 'Test User1 <test.user1@test.com>' -To 'Test User <test.user2@test.com>' -Subject 'Test mail' -SmtpServer 'smtp.some.domain'
Pulkit Gulati

Continuous Deployment execute database scripts with TFS

In another post, we’ve learned how we can use a Build definition and Release Management in a CI/CD pipeline. Please go through the articles if you need more information on these topics.

In this post, I’ll explain how we can use Release Definition to execute database scripts as part of the continuous deployment strategy. We will add a task to execute PowerShell script to achieve this.

Create Release definition

The task to be added is PowerShell under Utility. This task should be added before the Application files are deployed in the CD pipeline.

Create a Release definition for your Release pipeline as shown below, the path for the PowerShell script should be a shared path and the database Server is accessible.

Add the below code snippet to the PowerShell script. The script should be modified as per the requirement.

$localScriptRoot = "C:\Scripts"
$Server = "dbserver"
$scripts = Get-ChildItem $localScriptRoot | Where-Object {$_.Extension -eq ".sql"} | Sort-Object -Property Name
$qt = 0
foreach ($s in $scripts)
    {
        Write-Host "Running Script : " $s.Name -BackgroundColor DarkGreen -ForegroundColor White
        $script = $s.FullName	
        Invoke-Sqlcmd -ServerInstance $Server -InputFile $script -username "TFSBuildUser" -password "****" -querytimeout $qt
    }
Write-Verbose "scripts executed successfully" -verbose

The scripts to be executed are present at the location C:\Scripts with extension “.sql”. The password can be also passed as an argument to the PowerShell script and added to the Release Definition secret variable.

Use the Triggers tab to link to the required Build definition of your Project so that the Release definition is integrated with the Build pipeline. The linking can also be done using the Artifacts tab.

You can setup multiple environments using this strategy like Dev, POC and Production.

Pulkit Gulati

Move files based on Date Time using PowerShell

This post shows how we can use PowerShell to move files from one folder to another say while Archiving the files.

$SrcFolder = "C:\Files"
$DestFolder = "C:\Backup\2017"
$count = 0

 if(-not (Test-Path $DestFolder)){
        New-Item -Path $DestFolder -ItemType Directory
 }
 else{
    Write-Host $DestFolder "Path exists"
 }

 Get-ChildItem -Path $SrcFolder | Where-Object {$_.LastWriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddMonths(-13)} | ForEach-Object {
    
    Write-Host "Moving: " $SrcFolder"\"$_ $_.LastWriteTime to $DestFolder
    Move-Item -Path $SrcFolder"\"$_ -Destination $DestFolder
    $count = $count + 1
 }

 Write-Host "Moved" $count "items."

The above code takes each item found in the Source Folder and checks LastWriteTime say for 13 months earlier, and moves the file to the Destination folder.

The command used to Move the files is Move-Item which takes -Path and -Destination as parameters.

Pulkit Gulati

Modify config files using PowerShell

Suppose you need to hide the password in your clear text connection strings at a particular back-up path or any other path in config files. This can be achieved using PowerShell with the following code.

$configFiles = Get-ChildItem "C:\Path\Backup" *.config -rec
foreach ($file in $configFiles)
{
    (Get-Content $file.PSPath) |
    Foreach-Object { $_ -replace "pwd=(\w+);", "pwd=****;" } |
    Set-Content $file.PSPath
}

Write-Verbose "Password changed!"

The above script will replace the string “pwd=(\w+);” with “pwd=****;” in the *.config files matching the regular expression.

I’m using the following parameters for the Get-ChildItem command:

-Path “C:\Path\Backup” 

-Include *.config for including config files

-rec for Recursion to get items in all child containers

Pulkit Gulati

Enable disable Windows Service and Scheduled Tasks with PowerShell

Often we may need to enable/disable Windows Services and Scheduled tasks on a Windows Server.

Below is the snippet to Enable Windows Service and Scheduled task with PowerShell:

$tasknames = "Test Task1","Test task2" $servicename = "Test Service1","Test Service2" foreach($task in $tasknames) {  ##disabling tasks on server  $taskstatus = Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName $task  if($taskstatus.State -eq "Disabled")   {    Enable-ScheduledTask -TaskName $task -Verbose   }   elseif($taskstatus.State -eq "Ready")   {   Write-Host "Task: $task already running"   }      } ##### Service checks and execution  foreach($service in $servicename)  {  $servicestatus = Get-Service $service  if($servicestatus.Status -eq "Stopped")   {    Start-Service $service  -Verbose    }    elseif($servicestatus.Status -eq "Started")    {    Write-host "Service: $service already Started"    }   }

The below snippet shows how to disable the Scheduled tasks and Windows Service:

$tasknames = "Test Task1","Test task2" $servicename = "Test Service1","Test Service2" foreach($task in $tasknames) {  ##disabling tasks on server  $taskstatus = Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName $task  if($taskstatus.State -eq "Ready")   {    Disable-ScheduledTask -TaskName $task -Verbose   }   elseif($taskstatus.State -eq "Disabled")   {   Write-Host "Task: $task already disabled"   }      } ##### Service checks and execution  foreach($service in $servicename)  {  $servicestatus = Get-Service $service  if($servicestatus.Status -eq "Running")   {    Stop-Service $service -Force -Verbose    }    elseif($servicestatus.Status -eq "Stopped")    {    Write-host "Service: $service already stopped"    }   } 

You can save the above scripts in .ps1 format for PowerShell and call them e.g. using a .bat file.
Pulkit Gulati

Good old dir and copy commands

This is a true troubleshooting story!

Today, one of the users of my application wanted to know if we can find out the original title of a ticket created in the Application. Although, we do not store any such logs for modifications, while on the verge of giving up, I remembered we archive the e-mails received by the Windows Service application that processes the e-mails and archives them at a location on the Server on which it is installed. The e-mail Subject line is stored as the ticket title. These tickets which are created by the Windows Service can be viewed in the Web Application.

Since the folder with the archiving e-mails have a lot of ’em, simply doing a Windows Search is a time killer! So I remembered my way through the good old DOS commands.

Since the .eml file has the ticket number, I used the dir command to search for the e-mail name and copy command to copy it to another location quickly.

Firstly cd to the location where the archived e-mails are stored on the Server:

So e.g. if the ticket number is 123456

dir *123456* /s

The /s searches for the File name inside the two wildcard characters asterisk “*” with the dir command.

Then if the file name is e.g. TICKET123456 – abc.eml then use copy command as follows within the same directory:

copy "TICKET123456 - abc.eml" c:\Temp

So, with the e-mail having the original Subject Line preserved, I could share the original ticket title.

Pulkit Gulati

Pre-build versioning with PowerShell script and TFS Build

There are a lot of scenarios where the PowerShell script requires to be run as a Build task in your Build definition. In of the cases, we had a requirement to change version attribute in the AssemblyInfo.cs files in all Projects of our solution. The version number required to be in the format “1.0.0.”. This version number should be visible in the exe properties after installation.

To achieve this, I created a PowerShell script, which recursively found all the AssemblyInfo.cs files in all Projects, checking for the Attribute pattern and replace it.

Create a PowerShell script file in the ISE and copy the following code:

Define the Params:

Param
(
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
[string]$productVersion
)

$YYYY = (Get-Date).year
$SrcPath = $env:BUILD_SOURCESDIRECTORY

$AllVersionFiles = Get-ChildItem $SrcPath AssemblyInfo.cs -recurse
$versions = $productVersion.Split('.')
$major = $versions[0]
$minor = $versions[1]
$patch = $versions[2]
$build = $versions[3]

$assemblyVersion = "$major.$minor.$patch.$build"
$assemblyFileVersion = "$major.$minor.$patch.$build"
$assemblyInformationalVersion = "$major.$minor.$patch.$build"

Replace the Assembly attributes:

foreach ($file in $AllVersionFiles)
{

(Get-Content $file.FullName) |
%{$_ -replace 'AssemblyDescription\(""\)', "AssemblyDescription(""assembly built by TFS Build $productVersion"")" } |
%{$_ -replace 'AssemblyVersion\("[0-9]+(\.([0-9]+|\*)){1,3}"\)', "AssemblyVersion(""$assemblyVersion"")" } |
%{$_ -replace 'AssemblyFileVersion\("[0-9]+(\.([0-9]+|\*)){1,3}"\)', "AssemblyFileVersion(""$assemblyFileVersion"")" } |
%{$_ -replace 'AssemblyInformationalVersion\("[0-9]+(\.([0-9]+|\*)){1,3}"\)', "AssemblyInformationalVersion(""$assemblyInformationalVersion"")" } |
Set-Content $file.FullName -Force

}

The script requires to following parameters which requires to be passed in the Build task:

PSVersion1

The code should be checked in to TFS and mapped to a local folder from the Repository tab so it can be downloaded on to the Agent machine locally.

PSVersion12

This PowerShell build step should be the first step in your Build definition before the Visual Studio Build task so that the version changes can take place as soon as the code is fetched on the TFS Agent work folder.

Tip: Make sure your AssemblyInfo.cs files has the above attributes which you’re replacing with the PS Script in the specified format else some dlls may miss out on the updated versions.