Being a Windows NT enthusiast, I enjoy getting as much mileage out of native commands and utilities as I can, especially at the command line. I hate hearing that I can't carry out a command that the UNIX world considers stock-in-trade.
This passion came in handy recently. An administrator was making rounds at midnight to reboot machines so that a backup could catch files that were still open. I was helping close files after hours, and I came up with an idea: A scheduled batch file could automatically close open files. Much to the administrator's surprise (this person had a UNIX background), I put the
following command in a batch file:
for /f "skip=4 eol=T" %%i in ('net file') do net file %%i /close
The /f option parses output, and for this example, passes the first
white-spaced token on to the rest of the line. (Other tokens can pass.) The
eol=T keeps the command from generating an annoying message when fed an empty line. You need the double percent signs for shell variables inside batch files.
You can then use an at command to schedule when the batch file will run:
at 01:00 /every:m,t,w,th,f d:\users\davidk\kill_open_files.bat
An alternative way to perform this process is through Control Panel,
Server, but you can't schedule the process if you use this method. So try a "for /?" sometime and get familiar with its options. It's a useful, robust command.
—David Krider
dunkirk@sprynet.com
Use Your Dial-Up Monitor Icon Effectively
When the Microsoft Internet Mail program starts a dial-up connection, the
Dial-Up Monitor icon does not show up in the tray bar. If you need the icon,
start any dial-up connection that uses the same port. It won't dial, alerting
you that the port is in use. Clicking Cancel will stop the dialing, but the
Dial-Up Monitor will surface in the tray bar.
You can also use a shortcut to quickly hang up a connection. Usually, you right-click the Dial-Up Monitor icon in the tray bar, choose Hang-Up, choose the
connection, and click OK. But if you double-right-click the icon and click OK,
you shut down all the connections at once.
—Andre Gurgel
andre@tecfil.com.br
Automate for Easy Installation
I recently installed a large NT 4.0 network with out-of-the-box Dell
computers. The computers came preinstalled with NT Workstation 4.0. But when I
turned on the power, I found that they required a lot of data input and protocol
changes to suit my environment.
I came up with an easy solution to automate installation. I found the NT
unattended configuration file, winnt.sif, in the hidden subdirectory
$win_nt$.~bt on the c: drive. I modified this file to meet my needs (you can
find documentation on all parameters at Microsoft's Web site,
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange) and saved it to multiple subdirectories
on a bootable floppy. Then, in each file, I changed ComputerName to a unique
name. Finally, I created a batch file to copy the appropriate file to
c:\$win_nt$.~bt.
This solution made installation easy. After hooking each new PC to the
network, I booted it with my floppy, typed INSTALL "workstation name"
to copy my winnt.sif file over the Dell file, removed the floppy, and rebooted
the PC. I was in business!
—Dmitrii Lezine
dmitrii.lezine@stepconsulting.com
The Solution Might Be Right in Front of
You
How many times has a solution for a problem come along at just the right time (and at the right price--free)? Although this timing doesn't happen often, the solution might be right before your eyes this time. I had initially missed this solution, even though I had looked through the Microsoft Windows NT Server Resource Kit a hundred times. It had been in the kit's \KIX95 subdirectory all along. It is KiXtart.
KiXtart is a 32-bit freeware application that performs logon-script and
enhanced batch-file processing. You can find it in the Resource Kit or on The KiXtart Archive Web site at http://netnet.net/~swilson/kix/. With
KiXtart, you can connect to network drives, set variables, and read and write to the NT Registry. If you require custom functionality but lack strong programming skills, KiXtart is a simple, but powerful tool for network management.
I used KiXtart to solve a problem that involved using FTP with a script
file to copy files for the current date. I used the FTP command, MGET, to
transfer on wild card filenames (e.g., mget *970725*). Initially I had planned to use a batch scheduler to run this command every day. But I realized that this approach would require me to edit the script file daily to correct the date or copy all files, which would consume bandwidth. There had to be a better way. That's when I discovered KiXtart.
I configured KiXtart to take the current date, reformat the date to
correspond to the required file syntax, write the new format to the FTP script file (ftpscr.txt), and execute the FTP command from within the script file. Listing 1 contains the FTP script file. After testing the KiXtart script (when
working with the NT Registry, you must test any script before implementing it),
I ran it. It worked so well that I used KiXtart to solve several problems with dates:
* The wild card requires a two-digit month to copy the filenames. But the
output for July was 7 instead of 07. So I used the IF-ELSE-ENDIF command to add
"0" if @MONTHNO was less than 10. (KiXtart uses handy common macros
such as @MONTHNO.)
* The @DATE macro output was yyyymmdd, but the wild card accepts only a
two-digit year. So I used the SUBSTR and LEN functions to send only the last two
digits to the script file.
* The REDIRECTOUTPUT function requires an IF-ELSE-ENDIF command to prevent
writing a successful 0 result code as text on the first line of the ftp scr.txt file
I used the syntax \\server\sharename\kix32.exe makefile.scr for these
solutions. Listing 2, page 38, contains the script.