The Solutions I found include Check GroupWise Users for Password – Batch and Check GroupWise Users for Password – Exe, both of which made use of GWSend. Being an avid scripting aficionado myself I opted for the first, so I could make changes.

First step was to export all User Objects with NGW: Object ID into an Excel sheet using DSReport. Then export all GroupWise External Entities with NGW: Object ID to a different Excel Sheet. Finally I needed to export all GroupWise Resources, which do not have an NGW: Object ID, but their CN is effectively the NGW: Object ID for which we can log in and try to send emails. Upon completing this I compiled a single list of Allusers.csv which had the NGW: ObjectID/CN in the first column, and the DN for the Object Name and Location within the tree. This makes it far easier to track down the location of generic accounts (Something that none of the scripts account for).

So, my first run through the script ended in Fail. Apparently the above solutions are expecting Email Addresses without Spaces. So after fixing that up I run it again, and again hit a Fail. Apparently the above solutions fail to account for special characters (/ in this instance). So, I fix this up as well… My script runs, I get a report, then I realise that I have more results than original users. Apparently the above script also assumes that there is only 1 line in the result.txt file. So I modified the script to only print out a result once all lines of the result.txt file had been parsed, using a SET to determine if the “Error:” had been encountered or not (Error indicating that a Password is on the account, no Error indicating that there is No password).

So, now I run through and notice that the audit fails to log the full line of text, even though it is capable of actually running the audit against that account. Fortunately none of the accounts without passwords were affected by this, but I decided to fix this for future runs. To break down the issues I needed to fix into a list here is the summary:

1. We have spaces in our Email Account Names
2. We have /’s in our Email Account Names
3. We have &’s in our Email Account Names
4. We are trying to create a HTML file with the above special characters (specifically &)
5. & doesn’t tend to work too nicely in batch files when using an open Echo (tries to run everything after the & as a program
6. I wanted to be able to track back to objects (DN’s) as opposed to just the GroupWise Account Name

Spaces were easy to fix… When running the command against an account simply put the “account in quotes”. The next step is to handle the Email and DN objects as Strings within Quotes as well, but we don’t want to output the quotes, which means we need to handle them properly. Examine the following issue:

SET String=A String With Special Chars&Slashes/ In \ it^ OK
ECHO %String%

This will return “‘Slashes’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.” Also, if we try and escape each of the characters we run into issues too.

SET String=A String With Special Chars&Slashes/ In \ it^ OK
SET String=%String:^=^^%
SET String=%String:\=^\%
SET String=%String:/=^/%
SET String=%String:&=^&%
ECHO %String%

The Output ends up as “A String With Special Chars”. So, in order to fix this we need to handle the string within Quotes, and only output it at the end:

SET String="A String With Special Chars&Slashes/ In \ it^ OK"
SET String=%String:^=^^%
SET String=%String:\=^\%
SET String=%String:/=^/%
SET String=%String:&=^&%
ECHO %String:~1,-1%

Finally, our output is “A String With Special Chars&Slashes/ In \ it^ OK”, without the quotes. So the first part works now for my output to the Logs (although my logs are CSV so I tend to leave the quotes on just in case there is a lurking comma, but this does provide a pretty Output to the Console). Now we need to convert these for HTML output.

SET String=%String:^&=^&%
SET String=%String:<=^&lt;%
SET String=%String:>=^&gt;%
ECHO %String:~1,-1%

Just provides that little added extra safety net for an echo directly into a HTML log. I am annoyed that I didn’t manage to figure this out earlier as I had some scripts I went directly to VBScript for to avoid the & errors I was getting. I had no idea that it was my subsequent SET x=%x:a=b%, SET x=%x:c=d% calls on an unquoted string.

The one caveat I have found to this is fixing quote marks within a string. I have yet to find a way to strip them effectively without breaking the string/batch file in the process. The closest I have come will work in most situations, but requires a placeholder you have to be sure will never exist within your string:

SET String=Thi\s" is ^a &t"es/t
SET String="%String:"="%"
Set String=%String:^=^^%
SET String=%String:&=^&%
SET String=%String:/=^/%
SET String=%String:\=^\%
SET String=%String:"=^"%
ECHO %String:~1,-1%

One other note I’d like to add is that of Padding numbers. This is a fairly well known feature of WinBatch, but I found it useful for getting well aligned output for which record I was currently up to:

Set _Num=0
...
SET /A %_Num%=%_Num%+1
SET DispNum=     %_Num%
Echo %DispNum:~-4%

This pads the leading digits with spaces and specifies that I want a 4 character long string returned for the end of the string. (so ” 1″ in the first instance but in my case up to ” 900″ or “9091″).

Hope this adds a little food for thought.

Cheers, Chris.

After a rather hectic week of scripting a solution and then distributing it under an excessively short deadline, I have been asked to provide stats on the result of forcing this solution out to clients. The solution that I had to develop keeps tabs on a System Volume Image of PCs, and ensures that this Image never gets out of date too far. Currently I am not forcing a Store every restart, as the planned solution was to do, but I do inform the client that their current Image is out of date and ask them if they want to do a Store now. If they click on Yes then their PC is rebooted and the Store is done (providing that one of many flaws in the current Store process do not interrupt the process).

Because of some of the issues that we have had, as well as Managements want to view the impact of what we have done in a statistical format, I was required to provide a secondary application, which is just an updated version of an AutoIT Script that logs the Image Date into a log file during login. Because this file was preexisting it has been used in this way to gather stats for some time.

The issue is that the log file includes EVERY instance of a login for a PC, and I want only the most recent with the timestamp of the image, not all the other instances, or the log values that are too old (I was unable to clear the logs due to current procedure). Therefore I was required to learn some new things in the VBScript world. This solution is surprisingly fast considering how much data it is required to crunch in order to produce the output CSV file.

Const ForReading = 1
Const ForWriting = 2

Dim arrLines()
i = 0

Set objDictionary = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

objStartFolder = WScript.ScriptFullNameobjStartFolder = Replace  (objStartFolder, WScript.ScriptName, "") 

Set objFolder = objFSO.GetFolder(objStartFolder & "Logs")

Set colFiles = objFolder.Files
For Each objFile in colFiles
    Set textFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile(objFile.Path, ForReading)

    Do Until textFile.AtEndOfStream
        Redim Preserve arrLines(i)
        arrLines(i) = textFile.ReadLine
        i = i + 1
    Loop

    For i = Ubound(arrLines) to LBound(arrLines) Step -1
        splt = Split (arrLines(i),",")

        If (UBound(splt) < 19) Then
            i = LBound(arrLines)
        Else
            If Splt(19) <> "" Then
               If Not objDictionary.Exists(splt(1)) Then
                  objDictionary.Add splt(1),splt(19)
               End If
            End If
        End If
    Next

    ReDim arrLines(0)
    i = 0
    textFile.Close
Next

Set writeFile = objFSO.CreateTextFile(objStartFolder & "Stores.csv")
For Each strKey in objDictionary.Keys
   writeFile.WriteLine strKey & "," & objDictionary.Item(strKey)
Next
writeFile.Close

In this particular script the splt Array has 20 columns (or 19 for those items that were prior to me updating the script). Column 2 (or splt(1)) is the PC Name, and Column 20 (or splt(19)) is the Timestamp of the Image. This script reads through every file in the Logs folder (in the same path as the script) and reads the file in reverse until it comes across the entries with only 19 columns. For every unique PC Name that it finds it adds this into a Dictionary object with the Timestamp as the value. The Dictionary is then written to the new CSV file one at a time.

In order to get the stats on how effective this has been, I paste a couple of Excel Macros:

=COUNTIF(B:B,">22/08/2008")
=COUNT(B:B)

The magic date here is the 22nd of August 2008. This was chosen purely because it was a recent date, and it was newer than most of the Images for the PCs within the IT Department, who already had the AutoStore scripts working on their machines. Which provided for a controlled Environment for testing some of the modifications I was forced to make last minute.

One thing that I could do to improve the accuracy of this script is to pull out all the Workstation Names from Novell using LDAP and get a total overall status of where the Store dates are across all PCs, but that would pollute the pool with a large number of machines that have been decommissioned (they still appear as a Workstation in Novell until they have not been logged on to for 3 months, then they fall off the system).

On a side note, I have to pull in the Logs into the Logs directory in some way, which is achieved for me by running a Batch file which I have written as follows:

@ECHO OFF
ECHO Pulling Logs %DATE% - %TIME%>>Log.txt
ECHO.>>Log.txt
%~d0
cd %~dp0
FOR /F "tokens=*" %%A IN (Sources.txt) DO (
  FOR /F "tokens=1 delims=" %%Z IN ("%%A") DO (
     COPY "%%AlogsLogIn.csv" "%~dp0Logs%%Z.csv" /A /D /Y /Z >>Log.txt
  )
)
ECHO.>>Log.txt
ECHO Current Stores being Rebuilt at %DATE - %TIME%>>Log.txt
WScript Stores.vbs
Start Excel Stores.csv
ECHO Log Pull Finished at %DATE% - %TIME%>>Log.txt

This script uses a file called “Sources.txt” which is a list of paths on newlines which point to where each of the Logs are stored. Each line consists of something like \ServerNameSYSPUBLIC. The line FOR /F “tokens=1 delims=” %%Z IN (“%%A”) allows me to pull out the servername from each line in the file, so that when I copy the file from the server, I can rename it so that its source can be identified.

I think this will conclude todays lesson in VBScript and Batch, and I’d best get back to studying.

Cheers, Chris.