You can use PowerShell to pretty much get anything you want out of Active Directory. Let’s say you want to see when the last time a user changed their password was. You can use the Get-ADUser commandlet to obtain any attribute for a user in the Active Directory schema. To use Get-ADUser, you’ll need to define a scope. In this example, we’ll do so using the -filter option and filter for everyone, using an *. That could be a lot of data, so we’re also going to look for the property, or attribute of PasswordLastSet using the -Properties option: Get-ADUser –filter * -Properties PasswordLastSet We can then add a little…
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Obtain UPN from PowerShell
A UserPrincipalName (or UPN) is an attribute that contains an Internet-style login name for a user based on the Internet standard RFC 822. The UPN is used for a lot of different tasks, notably for Kerberos/Single Sign-On. As such, there are a lot of scripts that can now key off of a UPN. You can use the Get-ADUser cmdlet to query accounts for the UserPrincipalName attribute. To do so, we’re going to -Filter our results to display everyone (although we could include a username to only get one user) and then define the Search Base (using -SearchBase) to refine where in the query that the search will begin. Use the –Properties parameter…
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Configuring Out of Office Messages in Lion Server
One of the more common administrative tasks for any administrator of a mail server is to work with users on enabling various rules. One such rule is the Out of Office email messages. These messages can be enabled to automatically send responses to people that send email to those accounts when a user is not going to be checking mail. These can be somewhat frustrating for people on list serves, but they are a great way to be able to step away from your email in the event that you’re, I don’t know, Out of the Office. I should learn to rely on these more when I’m on vacation, but…
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Bootp Relaying & Troubleshooting NetBoot
I’ve seen a couple of posts on groups recently with people asking why they’re unable to NetBoot clients. Personally, I always verify that clients are able to obtain a DHCP lease and that the NetBoot server shows up in the Startup Disk System Preference pane. Provided those two things work then you will usually be able to NetBoot. Both of these can be verified when booted from an installer or an installed system (checking both never hurt anyone). Next, break out your crossover cable (well, many a Mac doesn’t need one any more). If you can NetBoot when connected directly to a server then you’re usually looking at an infrastructure…
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RightThumb Windows XP Image Augments in Batch
Save time. Don’t touch a lot of photos one at a time. You can resize images en masse using a variety of tools on the Mac or Windows. Most notably, Photoshop. But there are also less expensive tools, if not free ones out there. For example, RightThumb. RightThumb lets you resize images, filter images, change formats, add prefixes, etc. Nice little tool and free to boot.
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ProCon Firefox Plug-in Filter
Firefox users who wish to filter browsing (eliminate filtered words, etc) can use ProCon Latte, a Plug-in for Firefox. ProCon is available at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1803 and can easily be deployed alongside Firefox.