Scripting & Automation on Wojciech Marusiak IT Blog

How to remove annoying startup prompt in Windows Terminal

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 08:27:58 +0100

Since switching my blog to static webpage generator Hugo I am using more and more command line tools and programming tools. For coding I am using Visual Studio Code, on my macOS I am using iTerm with Oh My ZSH and of course GitHub to store content of the webpage. However on Windows as the default I switched to Windows Terminal as my main command line tool. But, on Windows 10 or 11 in Windows Terminal there is this annoying popup when you start it.

Windows PowerShell
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Install the latest PowerShell for new features and improvements! https://aka.ms/PSWindows

In this post you will learn how to remove it.

So back to in my opinion annoying post. Well, Microsoft I am already using the latest Windows Terminal and this popup is irrelevant and stupid.

Main Solution

Generally speaking solution is quite easy. You just need to add -nologo parameter into the execution file before powershell.exe.

Removal of annoying message in Windows Terminal

In order to remove it in Windows Terminal we need to do following steps:

Go to Windows Terminal Settings.
In Settings search for powershell.exe
After the powershell.exe add -nologo argument.
Save setting and restart terminal.

And voila, stupid prompt removed :)

How to backup and restore vSphere Distributed Switch

Wed, 14 Jun 2017 07:00:04 +0000

In one of the previous posts How to backup NSX? I showed you how the process of NSX backup. As a best practice, I suggested aligning NSX backup with vSphere Distributed Switch backup. Today I will show you how to backup and restore vSphere Distributed Switch.

vSphere Distributed Switch backup using vSphere Web Client

Click Networking and click Actions from the main vSphere Web Client GUI.
From the Actions menu click **Settings **and Export Configuration. Choose Distributed switch and all port groups. This allows us to have all settings exported and have full backup of vDS.
The final step is to save exported backup on the local disk.
Give the file meaningful name like backup_DATE_vCenter_vDS_NAME.zip.

vSphere Distributed Switch backup using PowerCLI

Once we saved the backup using vSphere Web Client we can do the same with PowerCLI. Why would you do it from PowerCLI? The answer is automation. Backup using PowerCLI means you can schedule it as scheduled task and run it periodically.

Use the following one-liner to export all vDS from vCenter Server.

`1`	`Get-VDSwitch -Name vDS \| Export-VDSwitch -Description "vDS Backup 15.05.2017" -Destination "c:\vDS_backup.zip"`

Where vDS is the name of the switch and vDS_backup.zip is the backup filename.

Of course, there are other (better or more complicated/sophisticated) ways to do it. Please check below blog articles for other ways to backup vDS using PowerCLI:

vSphere Distributed Switch restore using vSphere Web Client

On the vDS where will we try restore I created two PortGroups. I will delete the whole vDS from Web Client and then we will restore it from the backup.

As you see my inventory has only one vDS.
Navigate to vCenter Server level and click Actions/ Distributed Switch / Import Distributed Switch.
What we have to do is to point to backup file previously created. I selected Preserve original distributed switch and port group identifiers. It is done to force vCenter Server to assign the same value as the Managed Object ID to the key property during port group creation. Some applications might rely on port group identifier.
On the Ready to complete section we have a short summary of vDS, its uplinks and port groups. Hit Finish to finalize Distributed Switch import/restore.
The Distributed Switch is successfully restored from the backup.

vSphere Distributed Switch restore using PowerCLI

Restore is nearly as easy as backup using PowerCLI. Simply execute one-liner listed below.

`1`	`New-VDSwitch -BackupPath c:\vDS_backup.zip -Location SDDC -KeepIdentifiers:$true`

Where -BackupPath is path to vDS backup file, -Location is datacenter we restore vDS to and -KeepIdentifiers:$true preserves port groups IDs.

Summary

I hope you enjoyed this article about how to backup and restore vSphere Distributed Switch.

Remove Custom Attribute script from Virtual Machines annotation

Wed, 24 Jun 2015 14:02:40 +0000

In Today post I would like to show you quick method of replacing annotations which quite a lot of people use to store details about Virtual Machines. As usual this short script was created to automate things rather than do it all manually.

In my company we use annotations to store information about Virtual Machines. I was quite often asked about VMs I deployed three Years ago - like I remember it now 🙂 So to remove information about myself I used following script.

###
# Purpose        : Replace custom attribute in Virtual Machines
# Created        : 24.06.2015
# Author         : Wojciech Marusiak
# Pre-requisites : none
###
Add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core
If ($globale:DefaultVIServers) {
    Disconnect-VIServer -Server $global:DefaultVIServers -Force
    }
    
$vCenter = Read-Host "Please provide name or IP address of the vCenter Server"
$credentials = get-credential
connect-viserver -server $vCenter -Credential $credentials

$vms = Get-VM | where {(get-annotation -Entity $_ -CustomAttribute Creator).Value -eq "searched phrase"} 
foreach($vm in $vms){
Set-Annotation -Entity $vm -CustomAttribute "Creator" -Value " "
}

Disconnect-VIServer "*" -Confirm:$False

In my case I am replacing custom attribute Creator with space. If you want to replace another custom attribute you first need to find it.

To show which custom attributes you have run following oneliner.

`1`	`get-vm -name vmname \| Get-Annotation`

Afterwards simply change in line 16 value for -CustomAttribute and in line 18 the one in quotation mark.

Znalezienie odłączonych sesji terminalowych z pomocą Powershella

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 09:19:14 +0000

Piątek. Ostatni dzień pracy - próba logowania do vCenter. Błąd

Kolejna - błąd. Oczywiście pojawia się pierwsza myśl - WTF!?! Nie zrażając się następuje kolejna próba logowania do serwera przy użyciu RDP. Konto zostało zablokowane.

Przyczyna

Jak zwykle okazało się, że miałem zostawioną sesję terminalową na serwerze - w tym przypadku sprzed 192 dni.

Rozwiązanie

Jak zwykle bardzo proste: wylogowanie sesji i odblokowanie konta. Wkurzyłem się niemiłosiernie bo to już kolejny raz w ciągu miesiąca więc postanowiłem coś z tym zrobić.

Chwila spędzona z goolge i udało mi się znaleźć moduł Terminal Services do Powershella. Ściągamy go stąd - https://psterminalservices.codeplex.com/ i instalujemy według instrukcji.

Po zainstalowaniu odpalamy Powershella i wykonujemy komendę:

`1`	`Get-TSSession -ComputerName NAZWAKOMPUTERA -State Disconnected -UserName USERNAME`

Jeżeli chcemy zobaczyć wszystkie odłączone sesje na komputerze to usuwamy

`1`	`UserName USERNAME`

Oto przykładowy skrypt utworzony z pomocą kolegi (pętla ForEach 🙂 ). W skrypcie pobieram komputery z Active Directory, które mają w nazwie ciąg znaków - można użyć *.

Przykładowo:

`1`	`"Name -like 'LSR'"`

Co pozwoli znaleźć wszystkie komputery zaczynające się od litery L i zawierające w nazwie SR.

Import-module ActiveDirectory
Import-Module PSTerminalServices
$Computers = Get-ADComputer -Filter "Name -like 'L*SR*'" | ForEach-Object {$_.Name}
ForEach ($Computer in $Computers) 
{
Get-TSSession -ComputerName $Computer -State Disconnected -UserName _k748050 -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
}

W skrypcie dodałem również kontynuację po błędach - ponieważ komputer może istnieć w AD ale może być niedostępny i skrypt zatrzymuje się bo nie odpowiada RPC.