John Croson's Blog Home

Image via Wikipedia I recently had the need to provide printer admin access on an ERP server to ordinary users. Nothing makes me shudder more than elevating a users access on a machine that holds your entire business operation on it's drives... I was able to come up with a solution using CPAU.exe which I've written about here . The scenario: An active label printer and a backup. When one goes down, the other needs to be put into service, but it needs to have the same name as the active one did. The users then also need to be able to "flip a switch" to put the active one back into service. First, I needed the guts of the switching script, which makes use of Microsoft 's prncnfg.vbs script, stored on all Windows boxes in the %windir%\ system32 directory (Called ChangePrinter.cmd) : @ECHO OFF @SET _ONE=ACTIVEPROD @SET _ONE_DOWN=ACTIVEPROD_146 @SET _TWO=BACKUPPROD @SET _HOST=BAPFSVR03 :: PRINTERS RECEIVE ADDRESSES VIA DHCP :: WHEN NO ERROR CONDITIONS E...

After all the work I did on these batch files that decrypt PGP files, and un-tar the contents, I've found an error, and a pretty major *duh* one at that. Seems my logic was way off when it came to doing some date checking. Since the files I check have a naming convention that uses the previous days date, I was simply subtracting one from %TODAY%. Seems ok, right? No. This is the *duh* part. I simply subtracted 1. From 1001, that makes 1000. That's not a day, when you are using MMDD as the convention. What I was looking for was 930. NOT the same. SSSssoooooo, I added a bit I found on Experts Exchange (THANK you..for saving me MUCHO time). I was also having some issues trapping the ERRORLEVEL. Apparently, since FOR loops in DOS batch scripts are executed as one command, PGP never has a chance to pass it's exit code to my IF check, so this was also modified. The modded file is here .

I really like highlighting my code in this blog. Ever since finding the Google SyntaxHighlighter Widget at FaziBear's , I've been going through all my old code, and cleaning up my posts. I read a nice article at WaltCo Tech about extending it to incorporate other brushes for WordPress. He also seems to do what I do, but a bit better when it comes to explaining things: WriteItDownNowBeforeYouForgetHowYouDidThatOldMan I'm really not that old, but I do tend to stick my fingers in many things, and coding tends to be one of them. At times, I'll find myself trying in vain to use a function from VB in PHP, or something of that nature. One of the hazards of not being fluent maybe? In any case, I've created my own brush for DOS Batch scripts: dp.sh.Brushes.Batch = function() { var builtins = 'APPEND ATTRIB CD CHDIR CHKDSK CHOICE CLS COPY DEL ERASE DELTREE ' + 'DIR EXIT FC COMP FDISK FIND FORMAT FSUTIL HELP JOIN ' + ...

This process outlined is not unlike what I wrote about in my post here , but involves a bit more logic. The script has to check for files that were posted that morning, but also have a file naming convention of the previous day. I've also got about 200 EMR postscript files to sort by date of service. First, the source PGP/tar files must be checked for existence, and must be a pair with the proper date formatted file name. @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION :: ////////////////////////////////////////////// :: :: Set path variables for key access, passphrase, :: and source our key files. SET PGPPATH=C:\PGP_keys\ SET PGPPASS=MYPGPPASS :: The "KEY" to a successful import of our keys is running these coMMands as the user :: that will be running this script. :: pgp +batchmode -ka %PGPPATH%SECRING.SKR :: pgp +batchmode -ka %PGPPATH%PUBRING.PKR :: pgp -ke 0xEC671710 > %_LOGFILE% ECHO -- START %DATE% - %TIME% -- >> %_LOGFILE% ECHO -----------------------...

This script was recently written to automatically process files on our FTP server. They come in daily, in pairs, and dated with todays date, e.g. XXERUP0912.dat.pgp. The script checks for existence, ensures a pair is found, makes sure they are the right and same date, then decrypts them and calls an external program I wrote to inject them into a SQL database for querying via ASP, which I also wrote. If any of the steps fail, it gets logged, and an email notification is sent to a number of folks. I had a bit of an issue with expansion, but found the error of my ways in short order... @ECHO On SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION :: ////////////////////////////////////////////// :: :: Set path variables for key access, passphrase, :: and source our key files. SET PGPPATH=C:\PGP_Keys\ SET PGPPASS=MYPGPPASS :: The "KEY" to a successful import of our keys is running these commands as the user :: that will be running this script. :: pgp +batchmode -ka %PGPPATH%SE...

I've been putting together a lot of automation in the way of login/logout scripts, and documenting on our company Intranet that I put together [FlexWiki.com]. Here are the scripts. UPLOAD.BAT Location: F:\DATA\DOWNLOAD\OUTPUT. Explanation: Used by persons scrubbing data to upload to Misys server and change permissions for interfacing purposes. Without this script, the files would not be set to the correct permissions, and a root user would have to manually change those at the AIX CLI. @ECHO OFF :: Create the temporary script file >script.ftp ECHO ftputil >>script.ftp ECHO mypassword >>script.ftp ECHO ascii >>script.ftp ECHO prompt n >>script.ftp ECHO cd /src/APPS/HT/bin >>script.ftp ECHO mput *.TXT >>script.ftp ECHO debug . :: Create the file list dir /b *.TXT > FILES.LST FOR /F "tokens=1" %%I IN (FILES.LST) DO >>script.ftp ECHO quote SITE chmod 666 %%I :: Exit FTP >>script.ftp ECHO quit :: Use the tempo...

I needed a method to update a database application across a WAN, and found that I could do this with my Linux firewalls, and Windows batch scripting. The topology is this: Win2k Svr -> Linux FW -> Internet Win2k Svr batch file: @ECHO OFF SET _LOGFILE=mydb.log Net Stop "SQL Anywhere - mydb" >> "%_LOGFILE%" ATTRIB -R "C:\Program Files\mydb Software\mydb\mydb.db" ATTRIB -R "C:\Program Files\mydb Software\mydb\mydb.log" NET USE Z: \\win2ksvr\home\backup\backup\mydb admpass /USER:domain\admin FOR /F "tokens=2,3,4 delims=/ " %%i in ('DATE /T') do set d=%%k%%i%%j FOR /F "tokens=1,2,3 delims=:. " %%i in ('TIME /T') do set t=%%i%%j%%k XCOPY "C:\Program Files\mydb Software\mydb\mydb.log" Z: CALL :REPORT %ERRORLEVEL% "C:\Program Files\mydb Software\mydb\mydb.log" XCOPY "C:\Program Files\mydb Software\mydb\mydb.db" Z: CALL :REPORT %ERRORLEVEL% "C:\Program Files\mydb Softwar...