Scriptimus Ex Machina

There are times during deployments when you may need to manage the registry. For example, finding out what Internet Explorer version the machine is using. Or also, creating keys to run programs at start-up etc. Fortunately, there is a utility class in the ztiUtility.vbs called the oUtility class that can access pre-written functions to help with these issues.

To begin with, create an MDT Scripting Template (as per previous blogs). Then add the custom code below. The code has clever routines to determine the type of data(eg.REG_SZ, REG_DWORD).

To Read a Registry Key.

Dim sRegValue, sRegKey

sRegKey = "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Version"

sRegValue=oUtility.regread(sregkey)
oLogging.CreateEntry "IE Version is " & sRegValue, LogTypeInfo

To Write a Registry Key.

Dim sRegValue, sRegKey, sNewRegValue

sRegKey = "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\New Program"
sNewRegValue = "C:\Windows\Notepad.exe"

sRegValue=oUtility.regWrite(sregkey, sNewRegValue)

I’ve always wanted to blog about undocumented features and today’s that day. Recently, I’ve been demonstrating how you can save time on scripting by using the various classes in the ZTIUtility.vbs when creating your custom deployment scripts. However, there’s no documentation or examples explaining how to access the file handling functions in the Utility class. In fact the MDT scripts use the oFSO.DeleteFile and oFSO.MoveFile methods to manage files rather than the available file handling functions. So here’s my article on the undocumented file handling methods.

There’s a list of File System Object functions in the ZTIUtility.vbs from lines 3872 to 4065. These can be called by using oFileHandling property and the relative functions as the methods. I could not find any information on Google or anywhere on oFileHandling.

To Delete a file.

I’ve created a file called C:\Test.txt that I intend to delete. The function DeleteFile(sFile) will attempt to delete a target file and create a log file entry displaying either success or failure.

To begin with, create an MDT Scripting Template (as per previous blogs). Then add this custom code.

Dim sTargetFile
sTargetFile = "C:\test.txt"

oFileHandling.DeleteFile sTargetFile

Run the script twice. The first time, your script will be deleted and the second time, you will get an error. You will find this logged under MININT\SMSOSD\OSDLOGS\ and the log file will have the same prefix as your script. This will also be logged in the BDD.log file.

There’s a list of other file handling functions below. I’ve also written some simple code examples to help you get started. You can use these examples to manage all your basic file management tasks.

To Move a File.

Function MoveFile(sFile,sDest)
Usage Example:

Dim sFile, sDest

sFile = "C:\Folder1\test.txt"
sDest = "C:\Folder2\"

'// Move a file.
oFileHandling.MoveFile sFile, sDest

To Copy a File.

Function CopyFile(sFile,sDest, bOverwrite)
Usage Example:

Dim sFile, sDest, bOverwrite

sFile = "C:\Folder1\test.txt"
sDest = "C:\Folder2\"
bOverwrite = True

' // Copy a file.
oFileHandling.CopyFile sFile, sDest, bOverwrite

To Copy a Folder.

Function CopyFolder (sSource, sDest, bOverwrite)
Usage Example:

Dim sSource, sDest, bOverwrite

sSource = "C:\Folder1"
sDest = "C:\Folder2"
bOverwrite = True

' // Copy a folder.
oFileHandling.CopyFolder sSource, sDest, bOverwrite

To Move a Folder.

Function MoveFolder (sSource, sDest )
Usage Example:

Dim sSource, sDest

sSource = "C:\Folder1"
sDest = "C:\Folder2\"

' // Move a folder.
oFileHandling.MoveFolder sSource, sDest

To Delete a Folder and Subdirectorys.

Function RemoveFolder(sPath)
Usage Example:

Dim sPath
sPath = "C:\Folder1"

' // Delete a folder and subfolders.
oFileHandling.RemoveFolder sPath

During deployments, MDT has a powerful logging process. All the logs generated are in a format similar to SCCM so you can use the Trace32 tool to view the log files in a GUI. Your custom scripts will generate individual log files during execution. In addition, you can write your own custom messages that will appear time stamped as lines within these log files and also in the bdd.log file.

I’m going to demonstrate how to write a few simple information messages to a log file using the ZTIUtility.vbs ologging class with the CreateEntry method. It’s usage is as follows:

oLogging.CreateEntry(sLogMsg, iType)

As usual in your MDT Script Template, add these lines:

oLogging.CreateEntry "Scriptimus Ex Machina - Logging: Begining logging process", LogTypeInfo
wscript.echo "Hello world"
oLogging.CreateEntry "Scriptimus - This ia an Information Log Entry", LogTypeInfo
oLogging.CreateEntry "Scriptimus - This ia a Warning Log Entry", LogTypeWarning
oLogging.CreateEntry "Scriptimus - This ia an Error Log Entry", LogTypeError
oLogging.CreateEntry "Scriptimus Ex Machina - Logging: End logging process", LogTypeInfo

Run the script and examine the output. As you can see below, the log entrys include an echo to the command line.

These lines each create a log entry using the LogTypeInfo, LogTypeWarning and LogTypeError parameters. There are a number of parameters available for use.

LogTypeInfo        = 1   ‘ Informational Message
LogTypeWarning     = 2   ‘ Warning Message
LogTypeError       = 3   ‘ Error Message
LogTypeVerbose     = 4   ‘ Verbose Messages only logged when Debug has been set.
LogTypeDeprecated  = 5   ‘ Informational Message that is elevated to Error when Debug is set.

In the MININT\SMSOSD\OSDLOGS\ folder you will find a log file with the same name as your script. You can open it with Notepad or Trace32.

In the log file collected below you will see that Information logs have a type of 1, Warnings have a type of 2 and Errors have a type of 3.

<![LOG[Microsoft Deployment Toolkit version: 6.0.1763.0]LOG]!><time="01:00:36.000+000" date="07-21-2011" component="SEM-Logs" context="" type="1" thread="" file="SEM-Logs">
<![LOG[Scriptimus Ex Machina - Logging: Begining logging process]LOG]!><time="01:00:36.000+000" date="07-21-2011" component="SEM-Logs" context="" type="1" thread="" file="SEM-Logs">
<![LOG[Scriptimus - This ia an Information Log Entry]LOG]!><time="01:00:36.000+000" date="07-21-2011" component="SEM-Logs" context="" type="1" thread="" file="SEM-Logs">
<![LOG[Scriptimus - This ia a Warning Log Entry]LOG]!><time="01:00:36.000+000" date="07-21-2011" component="SEM-Logs" context="" type="2" thread="" file="SEM-Logs">
<![LOG[Scriptimus - This ia an Error Log Entry]LOG]!><time="01:00:36.000+000" date="07-21-2011" component="SEM-Logs" context="" type="3" thread="" file="SEM-Logs">
<![LOG[Scriptimus Ex Machina - Logging: End logging process]LOG]!><time="01:00:36.000+000" date="07-21-2011" component="SEM-Logs" context="" type="1" thread="" file="SEM-Logs">
<![LOG[SEM-Logs processing completed successfully.]LOG]!><time="01:00:36.000+000" date="07-21-2011" component="SEM-Logs" context="" type="1" thread="" file="SEM-Logs">

In Trace32 you will see that the warning messages appear in yellow and the error messages appear in red.

Other advanced logging methods are:

oLogging.ReportFailure (sMessage,iError)
Used to perform a structured exit if an unrecoverable error is detected.

oLogging.CreateEvent(iEventID, iType, sMessage, arrParms)
Write a message to the log file, and post the event to a defined server.