Powershell

Create Environment Variables with PowerShell

March 11, 2019 by Paulie Leave a Comment

Creating environment variables in PowerShell is easy. This post will show you how to create a PowerShell environment variable which is scoped:

Locally to your current PowerShell session.
To your user profile and available to all other processes that you execute
To the machine, and accessible to all processes that run on that system.

Creating a simple locally scoped PowerShell Environment Variable

To create an environment variable that is local to your current PowerShell session, simply use:

$env:SiteName = 'tachytelic.net'

Then you can check the value of the environment variable with this code:

Get-ChildItem Env:SiteName

This method is fine, but the variable will vanish when the PowerShell process ends.

Create a PowerShell Environment Variable scoped to the User

To set an environment variable which will be available to all processes that your account runs, use the following:

[System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable('siteName','tachytelic.net',[System.EnvironmentVariableTarget]::User)

Now you can see the variable is set from the Environment variables section of the system properties:

Create a PowerShell Environment Variable scoped to the Machine

To create an environment variable visible to every process running on the machine:

[System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable('siteName','tachytelic.net',[System.EnvironmentVariableTarget]::Machine)

Note: This command will probably fail unless you run PowerShell as an administrator.

The new PowerShell System environment variable is visible:

How to connect to Office 365 with PowerShell

December 22, 2018 by Paulie 1 Comment

Many of the posts on this blog and others will require you to connect to Office 365 with PowerShell. The web admin interface for Office 365 is very good, but there are times when PowerShell is more suited. So this post shows you how it is done and the problems you might come up against. I will go through each step in detail and then post complete code.

Connect to Office 365 with PowerShell

Open a PowerShell session
Store your Credentials in a variable:
```
$Cred = Get-Credential
```
Enter your Office 365 Credentials when prompted:

Create a new PowerShell session from the Office 365 Server:

$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/ -Credential $Cred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection

Import the session:
```
Import-PSSession $Session
```
If you do not receive any errors on this step, continue to step 6. You may receive the error:

Import-PSSession : Files cannot be loaded because running scripts is disabled on this system.

If you do get this error, you need to change your PowerShell Execution Policy.
Now you can run any commands you need.
When you have finished, remove the session you created in step 2:
```
Remove-PSSession $Session
```

Complete code to connect to Office 365 with PowerShell

$Cred = Get-Credential
$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/ -Credential $Cred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
Import-PSSession $Session
# Run any commands you want here
Remove-PSSession $Session

Change PowerShell Execution Policy

If you received this error when you tried to execute step 5:

Import-PSSession : Files cannot be loaded because running scripts is disabled on this system.

Then you need to change your PowerShell execution policy. To connect to Office 365 with Powershell your execution policy to at least Remote signed:

Open PowerShell as an administrator:
In your PowerShell window run the command:
```
Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
```
Choose “Y” when prompted to change the execution policy.

You will now be able to connect to Office 365 with Powershell.

Office 365: How to add or remove an email alias using Powershell

December 19, 2018 by Paulie 3 Comments

Use the Powershell cmdlet Set-Mailbox to check email aliases assigned to Office 365 accounts, add aliases or remove aliases. Additionally the handy form underneath will generate the correct Powershell commands for you.

Check current email aliases assigned to an Office 365 account:

Get-Mailbox mailboxName | select -ExpandProperty emailaddresses | Select-String -Pattern "smtp"

Add an email alias to an Office 365 account:

Set-Mailbox mailboxName -EmailAddresses @{Add='[email protected]'}

Remove an email alias from an Office 365 account:

Set-Mailbox MailboxName -EmailAddresses @{Remove=’[email protected]’}

Or you can just use the form below and the required Powershell will be generated for you….

Now that you have got multiple email aliases, here is how to configure Outloook so that you can send from an alias.

Test for open ports from using Telnet, Portqry or Powershell

December 18, 2018 by Paulie 1 Comment

Checking if a port is open interactively or through a script is quite a common operation for any administrator. There are all sorts of reasons you might want to do this:

Check if a web server is down.
Check if a printer is working.
Check if a firewall is blocking a port.
Check if an SMTP Server is reachable etc.

You can test for open ports using a variety of different tools all of which have their pros and cons.

Telnet
Portqry.exe
Powershell Test-NetConnection

Using Telnet to test for open ports

This is the probably the most common method to check for an open port. Unfortunately Microsoft stopped including the telnet client by default on Windows Server, so you will need to install the telnet client first if it is not already installed.

The general syntax is: “telnet host portnumber”. If you do not specify a port number it will attempt to connect to the host on port 23, which is the standard telnet port.

Telnet example to Check an SMTP Server

You can check if a server has SMTP server running and available by using telnet to connect to port 25. In this example I am testing connection to my own mail server which is on Office 365:

telnet tachytelic-net.mail.protection.outlook.com 25

If you can successfully connect you will see a response from the mail server:
You can even manually send an email message directly to the SMTP server interactively using telnet.

Telnet example to check a Web Server

You can connect to a Web server on port 80 to check that it is serving requests:

telnet www.tachytelic.net 80

In the case of a webserver you will probably just receive a blinking cursor while it waits for some input, but this does indicate a successful connection and that the port is open. You can take it a step further by issuing a HTTP Request with telnet, for example:

GET /2018/12/email-vbscript-vba-office-365/ HTTP/1.1
host: www.tachytelic.net

I get a response from the server issuing a 301 redirect sending me to the HTTPs version of the same page:

Telnet example to check a printer

You can check if a printer is working (and actually print to it) using telnet. Many printers will have port 9100 open for HP Jetdirect style printing. My printer is on 192.168.250.34. So if I run the telnet command:

telnet 192.168.250.34 9100

I will come to a flashing cursor while the print server embedded in my HP Printer waits for input. If I type “This is a test” and then quit telnet it prints a page with those words on it.

Advantages of using telnet

Quick and easy to do a port test
Interactive so you can do more extensive testing of certain services.
More or less available on any operating system.

Disadvantages of using telnet

It is interactive, so it is not suitable for automated tests.
Not installed by default on recent versions of Windows. But easy to install, follow these instructions.
Not useful for check UDP ports.

Using Portqry.exe to test for open ports

Portqry.exe is an old tool but still works well and has extensive options for port testing. It’s much easier to use within scripts or automated checks. It can be used to check multiple ports in a single command and makes it easy to check UDP ports as well as TCP ports.

Example Portqry command to check a single port on a web server

In this example I am checking port 443 (https) of this blog:

portqry -n www.tachytelic.net -p tcp -e 443

Here you can see the test was successful:

Example Portqry to check multiple ports on a Web server

This example shows how to use Portqry to test multiple ports at the same time, in this case ports 80 and 443:

portqry -n www.tachytelic.net -p tcp -o 80,443

Again, the results are good:

Example Portqry to check an SMTP Server

Portqry is aware of some types of applications and can show you additional information returned from the server, SMTP is a good example:

portqry -n tachytelic-net.mail.protection.outlook.com -p tcp -e 25

As you can see from the screenshot, Portqry.exe returns the initial response from the SMTP Server:

Portqry.exe is excellent for scripting because of the vast number of options and that it can operate in quiet mode where it will simply return a status code, which is exactly what you would want if you were building this into a script. Portqry.exe has many options so it is well worth reading the documentation.

Advantages of using Portqry.exe

Easy to use.
Many options for checking both TCP and UDP ports.
Quiet mode is excellent for scripting.
Very fast.

Disadvantages of using Portqry.exe

It is not installed by default.
It is old software, but still works perfectly on recent operating systems.

Using Powershell Test-NetConnection to test for open ports

You can also use Powershell to test for open ports and this is a great option because it works well both interactively and for usage within a script. It’s built in to recent versions of Powershell and it is very easy to use.

Example Test-NetConnection Powershell to check a single port on a Web server

Again, this code shows how to test port 443 of this blog using Powershell:

Test-NetConnection -ComputerName www.tachytelic.net -Port 443

Here is the output of the successful test:

Example Test-NetConnection Powershell to check an SMTP Server

Test-NetConnection -ComputerName tachytelic-net.mail.protection.outlook.com -Port 25

And the successful output:

Advantages of using Test-NetConnection

Built in to recent versions of Windows
Great for scripting if you are already using Powershell
Quick and Easy

Disadvantages of using Test-NetConnection

Not available on all versions of Windows by default.
Only available via Powershell – which isn’t a problem, but might not fit in with some of your existing scripts.

Change network from public to private on Windows Server 2016

November 27, 2018 by Paulie Leave a Comment

Open Powershell
Type Get-NetConnectionProfile
If you have only one network connection you can change the profile to private by typing:
```
Get-NetConnectionProfile | Set-NetConnectionProfile -NetworkCategory Private
```
If you have multiple network interfaces and would like to change a specific adapter use the Interface Index Property like this:
```
Set-NetConnectionProfile -InterfaceIndex 3 -NetworkCategory Private
```
You can then verify the change has taken place by running Get-NetConnectionProfile again:

How to change network profile to public

The same command also works to switch back to a public profile

Set-NetConnectionProfile -InterfaceIndex 3 -NetworkCategory Public