Utilizing Windows PowerShell Compatibility

The PowerShell 7 Windows Compatibility solution allows you to use older Windows PowerShell commands whose developers have not (yet) ported the commands to work natively in PowerShell 7. PowerShell 7 creates a special remoting session into a Windows PowerShell 5.1 endpoint, loads the modules into the remote session, then uses implicit remoting to expose proxy functions inside the PowerShell 7 session. This remoting session has a unique session name, WinPSCompatSession. Should you use multiple Windows PowerShell modules, PowerShell 7 loads them all into a single remoting session. Also, this session uses the "process" transport mechanism versus Windows Remote Management (WinRM). WinRM is the core transport protocol used with PowerShell remoting. The process transport is the transport used to run background jobs; it has less overhead than using WinRM, so is more efficient.

An example of the compatibility mechanism is using Get-WindowsFeature...

Installing RSAT Tools

The Remote Server Admin Tools (aka RSAT) is a set of management tools you use to manage individual Windows Features. The RSAT tools are fundamental to administering the roles and features you can install on Windows Server. The Windows Server DNS Server feature, for example, comes with both an MMC console and a module that you use to manage the DNS Server on a given host. A nice thing about the commands in the ServerManager module – everything is a feature, meaning you do not know whether the tools manage a Windows Feature or a Windows Role.

Each feature in Windows Server can optionally have management tools, and most do. These tools can include PowerShell cmdlets, functions, aliases, GUI Microsoft Management Console (MMC) files, and Win32 console applications. The DNS Server's RSAT tools include a PowerShell module, an MMC console as well as the command line tool dnscmd.exe. While you probably do not need the console applications since you can use the...

Exploring Package Management

The PackageManagement PowerShell module provides tools that enable you to download and install software packages from a variety of sources. The module, in effect, implements a provider interface that software package management systems use to manage software packages.

You can use the cmdlets in the PackageManagement module to work with a variety of package management systems. This module, in effect, provides an API to package management providers such as PowerShellGet, discussed in the "Exploring PowerShellGet and PS Gallery" recipe.

The primary function of the PackageManagement module is to manage the set of software repositories in which package management tools can search, obtain, install, and remove packages. The module enables you to discover and utilize software packages from a variety of sources, including the PowerShell Gallery.

The modules in the various Internet repositories, including the PowerShell Gallery, vary in quality. Some are excellent...

Exploring PowerShellGet and the PS Gallery

In a perfect world, PowerShell would come with a command that performed every single action any IT Professional should ever need or want. But, as Jeffrey Snover (the inventor of PowerShell) says: To Ship is To Choose. And that means PowerShell itself, as well as Windows Server features, may not have every command you need. At a practical level the various Windows feature teams, as well as the PowerShell team do not have infinite resources to implement every good idea. And that is where the PowerShell community and the PowerShell Gallery (PS Gallery) comes in.

The PS Gallery provides a huge range of PowerShell artifacts for you to leverage. To some degree, if you can conceive of a use for PowerShell, there are likely to be things in the Gallery to delight you. If you are a Grateful Dead fan, for example, there are some scripts to manage your live concert collection (https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/gdscripts/1.0.4). If you need to generate...

Creating and using a local package repository

In the "Exploring PowerShellGet and PS Gallery" recipe, you saw how you could download PowerShell modules and more from the PS Gallery. You can install them, or save them for investigation. One nice feature is that after you install a module using Install-Module, you can later update the module using Update-Module.

As an alternative to using a public repository, you can create your own private repository. You can then use the commands in the PowerShellGet module to find, install, and manage your modules. A private repository allows you to create your modules and put them into a local repository for your IT professionals, developers, or other users to access.

There are several methods you can use to set up your internal package repository. One approach would be to use, a third-party tool such as ProGet from Inedo (see https://inedo.com/ for details on ProGet).

A simple way to create a repository is to set up an SMB file share. Then...

Establishing a script signing environment

You can often find that it is essential to know if an application, or a PowerShell script, has been modified since it was released. You can use Windows Authenticode Digital Signatures for this purpose.

Authenticode is a Microsoft code-signing technology that identifies the publisher of Authenticode-signed software. Authenticode also verifies that the software has not been tampered with since it was signed and published.

You can also use Authenticode to digitally sign your script using a PowerShell command. You can then ensure PowerShell only runs digitally signed scripts by setting an execution policy of AllSigned or RemoteSigned.

After you sign a PowerShell script, you can set PowerShell's execution policy to force PowerShell to test the script to ensure the digital signature is still valid and only run scripts that succeed. You can set PowerShell to do this either for all scripts (you set the execution policy to AllSigned) or only for scripts...

Working with shortcuts and the PSShortCut module

A shortcut is a file which contains a pointer to another file or URL. You can place a shell link shortcut to some executable program, such as PowerShell, on your Windows desktop. When you click the shortcut in Windows Explorer, Windows runs the target program. You can also create a shortcut to a URL.

Shell link shortcuts have the extension .LNK, while URL shortcuts have the .URL extension. Internally, a file shortcut has a binary structure which is not directly editable. For more details on the internal format, see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-shllink/.

The URL shortcut is a text document which you could edit with VS Code or Notepad. For more details on the URL shortcut file format, see http://www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/tech/dot_url_format_-_an_unofficial_guide.html.

There are no built-in commands to manage shortcuts in PowerShell 7. As you saw earlier in this book, you can make use of older COM objects...

Working with Archive files

Since the beginning of the PC era, users have employed a variety of file compression mechanisms. An early method used the ZIP file format, initially implemented by PKWare's PKZip program quickly became a near-standard for data transfer. A later Windows version, WinZip, became popular. With Windows 98, Microsoft provided built-in support for .ZIP archive files. Today, Windows supports ZIP files up to 2GB in total size. You can file more information about the ZIP file format at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_(file_format).

Numerous developers have, over the years, have provided alternative compression schemes and associated utilities, including WinRAR and 7-ZIP. WinZip and WinRAR are both excellent programs, but are commercial programs. 7-Zip is a freeware tool that is also popular. All three offer their own compression mechanisms (with associated file extension) and support the others as well.

For details on WinZip see https://www.winzip.com/win/en, for...