PowerShell on wporter.org

Granting a principal API access to a single SharePoint site with Sites.Selected permissions - Graph API and PowerShell

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 21:00:00 +0000

Introduction

When granting a principal access to anything, it’s best practice to scope that access down as much as possible. As of 2026, the only way to avoid granting full access to every SharePoint site to your application when you need to access some SharePoint data is to use the Sites.Selected Graph permission. Unfortunately, to grant Sites.Selected access to SharePoint Online, you’ll need to make API requests; this permission is not available through the Entra app registration admin interface. You’ll also need to create the read/write permission on the SharePoint site you want the application to have access to (Sites.Selected permissions are an implicit deny; the ’exclusions’ are applied to the SharePoint site and also cannot be modified through the web interface).

PowerShell Core (Microsoft Graph and Az) in a toolbox container on your Linux box

Sun, 24 Aug 2025 22:00:00 +0000

If you’re like me (god, for your sake I hope you aren’t) you love PowerShell and use Linux.

I’m also super lazy. And I don’t like Microsoft adding 5,000 repositories to my system to keep PowerShell updated. The solution? A container!

Toolbox lets you very easily jump into a podman container for a development environment. In this container, you can typically install whatever you’d need as if it was on a bare metal install - no special anything required. Since all I need is PowerShell, we’ll keep things simple.

Passing a function to a PowerShell subprocess (without making a terrible, terrible mess)

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 19:30:00 +0000

This took a bit of experimenting. I’m still not completely certain that this is the most reasonable way to go about this, but I’ve already lost a few hours of my life to it, so oh well. It works.

I had a script, we’ll call it Charles.

Charles has functions.

I need to run some of Charles’s functions in a subprocess, so I can be sure all of Charles’s son’s handles are closed and collected by the GC.

Enumerating user profiles on a device with PowerShell

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 13:30:00 +0000

I was working on a script to set values in all existing profiles’ HKEY_USER hives (more on that soon) and wound up coming up with a quick function to enumerate all the users that have a profile on a computer.

It would probably be fairly simple to compare the profiles for which no SID to name mapping was possible and delete their C:\Users directories to free up disk, but I won’t be doing that just yet.

Using the Dell Command | Update CLI to update drivers from PowerShell

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 14:30:00 +0000

Dell Command | Update is the only piece of Dell software that I intentionally put on machines. It’s one of the two useful Dell apps, alongside the Power Manager applet. It’s a driver manager that can be used to fetch the most recent drivers validated and published for a piece of Dell hardware, and it’s a nice utility to have.

It’s better (in my opinion) than HP and Lenovo’s options (Support Assistant and Commercial Vantage, respectively) because it’s available via the Winget packages Dell.CommandUpdate (Classic, v4.6) and Dell.CommandUpdate.Universal (.NET 8, v5.5), and it has a usable CLI interface that can be used to configure the software with PowerShell!

Removing lingering VMware PowerShell modules

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 14:30:00 +0000

Problem

After removing VMware PowerShell modules with Get-Module | Where Name -like VMware* | Uninstall-Module, VMware cmdlets are lingering around:

Administrator in ~
❯ get-module

ModuleType Version    PreRelease Name                                ExportedCommands
---------- -------    ---------- ----                                ----------------
Script     0.0                   Copy-PubKey
Manifest   7.0.0.0               Microsoft.PowerShell.Management     {Add-Content, Clear-Content, Clear-Item, Clear-It…
Manifest   7.0.0.0               Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility        {Add-Member, Add-Type, Clear-Variable, Compare-Ob…
Script     2.3.6                 PSReadLine                          {Get-PSReadLineKeyHandler, Get-PSReadLineOption, …


Administrator in ~
❯ get-vmhost
WARNING: Please consider joining the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program, so you can help us make PowerCLI a better product. You can join using the following command:

Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -Scope User -ParticipateInCEIP $true

VMware's Customer Experience Improvement Program ("CEIP") provides VMware with information that enables VMware to improve its products and services, to fix problems, and to advise you on how best to deploy and use our products.  As part of the CEIP, VMware collects technical information about your organization’s use of VMware products and services on a regular basis in association with your organization’s VMware license key(s).  This information does not personally identify any individual.

For more details: type "help about_ceip" to see the related help article.

To disable this warning and set your preference use the following command and restart PowerShell:
Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -Scope User -ParticipateInCEIP $true or $false.
Get-VMHost: 6/8/2025 12:32:42 PM        Get-VMHost              You are not currently connected to any servers. Please connect first using a Connect cmdlet.

Solution

Use the Get-InstalledModule cmdlet instead of the Get-Module cmdlet:

Administrator in ~
❯ get-installedmodule | where Name -like VMware*

Version              Name                                Repository           Description
-------              ----                                ----------           -----------
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.CloudServices                PSGallery            PowerShell module that contains command …
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.DeployAutomation             PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerCLI…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.ImageBuilder                 PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerCLI…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.PowerCLI                     PSGallery            This Windows PowerShell module contains …
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.PowerCLI.Sdk                 PSGallery            Product agnostic types definitions for t…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.PowerCLI.Sdk.Types           PSGallery            Types definitions for the VMware.PowerCL…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.PowerCLI.VCenter             PSGallery            Modules for automating and managing VMwa…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.PowerCLI.VCenter.Types.Appl… PSGallery            Types definitions for the VMware.PowerCL…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.PowerCLI.VCenter.Types.Cert… PSGallery            Types definitions for the VMware.PowerCL…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.Sdk.Nsx.Policy               PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains cmdlets …
1.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.Runtime                  PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.Sdk.Srm                      PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains cmdlets …
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.Sdk.Vcf.CloudBuilder         PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains cmdlets …
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.Sdk.Vcf.SddcManager          PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains cmdlets …
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.Sdk.Vr                       PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains cmdlets …
13.3.2099.24145081   VMware.Sdk.vSphere                  PSGallery            This PowerShell module is a parent modul…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.Appliance        PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.Appliance.Access PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.Appliance.Health PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.Appliance.Infra… PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.Appliance.Local… PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.Appliance.Loggi… PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.Appliance.Netwo… PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.Appliance.Recov… PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.Appliance.Suppo… PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.Appliance.System PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.Appliance.Tls    PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.Appliance.Update PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.Cis              PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.Cis.Tagging      PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.Content          PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.ContentLibrary   PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.Esx.Hcl          PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.Esx.Hosts        PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.Esx.Settings     PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.SnapService      PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.VAPI.Metadata    PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter          PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Authent… PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Authori… PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.CertMan… PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Consump… PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Content  PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Datasto… PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Deploym… PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Guest    PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.HVC      PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Identity PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Invento… PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.ISO      PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.LCM      PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Namespa… PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Namespa… PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.OVF      PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Services PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Storage  PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.SystemC… PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Tagging  PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Topology PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Trusted… PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.VCHA     PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.Vm       PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vCenter.VmTempl… PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphere.vStats           PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.0.2099.24145081    VMware.Sdk.vSphereRuntime           PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerShe…
8.3.0.24145081       VMware.Vim                          PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerCLI…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.VimAutomation.Cis.Core       PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerCLI…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.VimAutomation.Cloud          PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerCLI…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.VimAutomation.Common         PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains function…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.VimAutomation.Core           PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains Windows …
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.VimAutomation.Hcx            PSGallery            This Windows PowerShell module contains …
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.VimAutomation.License        PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerCLI…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.VimAutomation.Nsxt           PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerCLI…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.VimAutomation.Sdk            PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerCLI…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.VimAutomation.Security       PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerCLI…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.VimAutomation.Srm            PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerCLI…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.VimAutomation.Storage        PSGallery            This Windows PowerShell module contains …
1.6.0.0              VMware.VimAutomation.StorageUtility PSGallery            This Windows PowerShell module contains …
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.VimAutomation.Vds            PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerCLI…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.VimAutomation.Vmc            PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerCLI…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.VimAutomation.vROps          PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerCLI…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.VimAutomation.WorkloadManag… PSGallery            PowerShell commands for automation of wo…
13.3.0.24145081      VMware.VumAutomation                PSGallery            This PowerShell module contains PowerCLI…

Remove all of these modules:

Lazy PowerShell ssh-copy-id for Windows with SSH keys stored in 1Password

Sun, 11 May 2025 16:30:00 +0000

Introduction

The version of OpenSSH bundled with Windows does not include the ssh-copy-id utility for quickly copying a SSH key to a remote machine.

I use 1Password’s SSH agent, and store my SSH key in 1Password, so I can unlock it with biometrics (Windows Hello) instead of a passphrase, easily synchronize it between my machines, and avoid storing it on local disks. However, this means I can’t just copy my id_ed25519.pub from one of my boxes using the 1Password SSH agent (because that file isn’t created!)

Quick and dirty - install KB5002623 fix for Office 2016 crashing after KB5002700 installation via executable patch

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 18:30:00 +0000

Really dirty quick fix to install Microsoft’s executable April 10, 2025 patch for Office 2016, KB5002623 that resolves a number of crashes caused by the KB5002700 security fix from April 8, 2025.

While it is not especially pretty, it works. Replace the $Fileserver variable with a parent directory that has the four executables for KB5002700 and KB5002623 (64 and 32-bit) as children, like so:

[liam@server ~]$ sudo ls -l /srv/www/files
-rw-r--r--. 1 nginx nginx 262752112 Apr 11 00:15 mso2016-kb5002700-fullfile-x64-glb.exe
-rw-r--r--. 1 nginx nginx 134911608 Apr 11 00:15 mso2016-kb5002700-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
-rw-r--r--. 1 nginx nginx   3556192 Apr 10 21:17 msodll202016-kb5002623-fullfile-x64-glb.exe
-rw-r--r--. 1 nginx nginx   3556144 Apr 10 22:10 msodll202016-kb5002623-fullfile-x86-glb.exe

And, without further ado, here’s the script:

Adventures with secedit.exe and PowerShell, pt. 1

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 12:13:59 +0000

I have a problem

Secedit is a bit confusing to use at first, so let’s build a PowerShell wrapper to do our bidding!

First, how do we use this darn thing?

After a brief detour to MS Learn and some poking around…

Secedit is funky! It wants you to treat it with care and take it on long walks. No slamming random SIDs at it and making it figure the hard stuff out (at least, not yet)!

Writing something like free in PowerShell

Sun, 23 Mar 2025 12:13:59 +0000

The free utility is great - just look at it!

[liam@m920q-1 ~]$ free -h
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            30Gi       2.9Gi        11Gi       9.0Mi        17Gi        28Gi
Swap:           31Gi          0B        31Gi

Yeah! Woo!! Doesn’t that look great?

But getting at it generally requires us to use a proper OS. Boo!! Not great!!

The Linux sysadmins are going to give us crap for not having this wonderful, amazing tool! How do we ~~copy it~~ create ~~the same thing~~ an even better tool on our lovely NT machines?

Updating multiple M365 mailboxes' autoreply settings

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 12:13:59 +0000

Quick one for a personal reminder.

You can also schedule an autoreply by setting State to Scheduled, and providing a StartTime and EndTime.

# set autoreply for multiple users

$Message = @"
This mailbox is no longer monitored.<br>
<br>
If you require assistance, please contact so-and-so in the Doing Stuff office.<br>
<br>
Thank you,<br>
IT
"@

@('user1@domain.net','user2@domain.net') | % { 
    Set-MailboxAutoReplyConfiguration `
        -Identity $_ `
        -AutoReplyState Enabled `
        -ExternalMessage $Message `
        -InternalMessage $Message `
        -ExternalAudience All
}

Revisited: Working with Hyper-V NAT switches

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 10:12:59 +0000

Foreword

This is an update to a similar post from back in October 2024.

I’ve been going through and cleaning up a lot of my setup scripts and the like in pursuit of ~~SCIENCE~~ easier to use and quickly reproducible testing environments.

Occasionally, I want to configure NAT switches for small-scale, self-contained environments. I didn’t have anything that made this process nice, so I decided to fix something up.

Of course, before I knew it I’d wound up redoing the original post linked above - so I’d might as well post it!

Getting started with Cloud-init on Hyper-V

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 10:10:10 +0000

Intro

This will go over setting up an environment to build Cloud-init nocloud data drives (ISO, not vfat), converting nocloud disk images to VHDX, and then using those to hands-off provision VMs on Hyper-V hosts that can then be configured with Ansible.

More specifically, this will demonstrate using Cloud-init and the Alma Linux genericcloud image to stand up an Alma Linux VM on a Server 2025 host.

What is Cloud-init?

Cloud-init is a Canonical project that’s become the defacto standard for touchless configuration of Linux VMs over the years. Cloud-init is a package that can be installed on a Linux or Unix system that will read configuration files and provision a template VM on first boot for its environment.

Enabling Hyper-V in Windows Home editions

Sat, 11 Jan 2025 10:10:10 +0000

There’s a batch script floating around that does this, but I was curious to see if it still worked and wanted to rewrite it in PowerShell.

Tested and working with a Media Creation Tool version of Windows 10 Home Single Language 22H2 and Windows 11 Home 24H2.

PowerShell:

Function Enable-HyperVOnWinHome {
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param ()
    $ssp = "$($env:SystemRoot)\Servicing\Packages"
    Get-ChildItem -Path $ssp |
    Where-Object Name -like "*Hyper-V*.mum" |
    ForEach-Object { & dism.exe /online /norestart /add-package:$ssp\$_ }

    & dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Hyper-V /all
}

# this is not required, but you might want to enable the VM Platform while you're here
# if it's missing, WSL won't work.

& dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /all /norestart

Proof:

The Bitlocker Script

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 10:10:10 +0000

Problem

Needed to enable BitLocker on lots of machines with varying configurations.

Really didn’t want to do it manually, especially since this problem will not go away.

Solution

Uhh. Couple hours of PowerShell.

It works OK. Couple things I could still improve. I’ve run this probably a couple thousand times by now. It should be more or less idempotent and plays nicely with common edge cases (does not catastrophically fail.) It will happily encrypt my USB disks since they’re just exposed to the system as fixed NVMEs, but that’s not the script’s fault… as annoying as it can be.