Ezine 156 - PowerShell's Profile.ps1 and Add-PSSnapin
Ezine 156 - PowerShell's Profile.ps1 and Add-PSSnapin
If you wish to control the settings when PowerShell's launches, then add
instructions to a special file called profile.ps1. One key command to
include in this text file is add-PSSnapin. What this does is load extra
cmdlets into the PowerShell environment.
PowerShell Topics for Profile.ps1 and Add-PSSnapin
♣
Once you achieve mastery in a particular area, any difficulties that you endured during the
learning process seem to fade into the background. So it is with
understanding Profile.ps1. Configuring this file is ridiculously easy once you have mastered it, but impenetrably difficult
when you try and figure it out for the first time.
The secret of setting-up profile.ps1 is attention to spelling. In
particular, the filename 'profile' must be singular, and the directory name must be precisely:
'WindowsPowerShell'.
As we will see, the killer reason for mastering profile.ps1 is so that you
can load PSSnapins. As a result of this procedure PowerShell will load extra cmdlets
effortlessly every time it starts.
My mission this week is to introduce you to the file profile.ps1 and
the command add-PSSnapin .
Profile.ps1 is rather like the old autoexec.bat file in that it runs a series
of commands at start time. A more modern analogy would be the way Windows
loads the contents of the
Startup folder. Actually, there is connection in that each User's
profile has its own Startup folder.
PSSnapin translates to PowerShell Snap-in. The benefit of this command
is that you can add extra
third-party cmdlets. For example, active directory commands supplied by
QAD (Quest Active Directory).
At this point, perhaps you are reading my mind, and thinking why don't we incorporate the
add-PSSnapin command into the profile.ps1 file? Perfect, that will be this week's
mission.
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Example 1 - Pure Profile.ps1
Let me give you a few pointers with the text file profile.ps1. The file must be called precisely profile.ps1. The name profileS.psL would be
doubly wrong because of the plural filename and 'L' instead of a 1
in the extension.
You must save profile.ps1 into a specific directory. Begin your
drill-down by navigating to the C:\Documents and
Settings folder. Next you need to know the Windows profile name for the user who is logged on, in
my case \guyt. The rest of the path is My Documents\WindowsPowerShell.
Pay close attention to the folder name: WindowsPowerShell. Here is my full path.
C:\Documents and Settings\guyt\My Documents\WindowsPowerShell
It is in the above WindowsPowerShell folder that I save profile.ps1.
There is a whole micro-industry in creating clever instructions for
profile.ps1, (just as there was tweaking the old DOS autoexec.bat). For
our mission we will focus on just two instructions, setting the HOME directory
and loading snap-ins.
# Simple instruction for Profile.ps1 (Feel free to amend c:\)
set-Location c:\
I always like to build on success, thus I include the simple command, 'set-Location c:\'
merely to show that PowerShell is in fact reading profile.ps1. If this
works and PowerShell opens at the c:\ prompt, then you could try a more realistic 'home' directory for
your PowerShell, for example, set-Location c:\PowerShell (Providing you have a folder
called precisely, PowerShell).
Pre-requisites
The only slight problem with this challenge is that we need two
pre-requisites over-and-above installing PowerShell. Firstly, download the third party snap-in from the
Quest site. Without a snap-in the command, add-PSSnapin makes no sense.
Your plan B would be to substitute one of the growing number of third-party
snap-ins.
Secondly, to get any action from this active directory snap-in you need to logon as
administrator of a
domain. I downloaded and installed the snap-in, then I ran the following command on a Domain Controller.
I say again, if you don't have a domain, research the internet for alternative
snap-ins.
# Instruction for Profile.ps1 to add a Snap-in
set-Location c:\
add-PSSnapin quest.activeroles.admanagement
Note 1: There are two ways to test that you have really
added this QAD snap-in to the PowerShell interface type:
connect-QADService
or
get-PSSnapin |ft name
Note 2: If these commands don't reveal the quest
snap-ins, you probably missed one of my pre-requisites. As I mentioned earlier, you
must download and install the quest.activeroles.admanagement snap-in from Quest's site, and you need to have
an active directory domain.
If you are looking for handy network utilities, try some of the free downloads at
Tools4Ever
Example 2a - Check your snap-ins
If you substitute the verb 'get' for 'set', then PSSnapin will display all snap-ins including the
Microsoft default sets.
# Optional instruction to display all Snap-ins
get-PSSnapin |ft name
Expected result:
Name
----
Microsoft.PowerShell.Core
Microsoft.PowerShell.Host
Microsoft.PowerShell.Management
Microsoft.PowerShell.Security
Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility
quest.activeroles.admanagement
Note 1: Did you get just the 5 Microsoft
snap-ins? Or
did you get a 6th snap-in from quest?
Summary of PowerShell's Profile.ps1 and add-PSSnapin
If you need to employ PowerShell to manipulate active directory, then seek
additional cmdlets. One of the best sources is Quest (or PowerGUI).
Additionally, when you need to control PowerShell's start-up environment, then
take the time to create and configure profile.ps1.
Once you have installed the snap-ins, you
need a command to load them each time PowerShell launches, that command is :
add-PSSnapin. Why not get the best of both worlds? Master profile.ps1 and
make sure that the quest.activeroles.admanagement snap-in is always available.
If you like this page then please share it with your friends
See more Microsoft PowerShell tutorials
• PowerShell Tutorials •
Methods • Cmdlets
• PS Snapin •
Profile.ps1 • Exchange 2007
•
Command & Expression Mode •
PowerShell pipeline (|) •
PowerShell 'where' •
PowerShell 'Sort'
If you see an error of any kind, do let me know. Please report any factual mistakes, grammatical errors or broken links, I will be happy to not only to correct the fault, but also to give you credit.
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