I am trying to update Pester on Windows 2016 to 4.x because the preshipped Pester 3.4.0 emits a note about the depreciation of the -quiet switch when I use the quiet switch. This get's scooped into stdout when executing via AWS SSM remote commands. Version 3.x complains it does not understand "-Show None".

I want to update to 4.x - in which I ran into all the problems documented here: https://github.com/OneGet/oneget/issues/215

But ended up with "Install-module pester -force -SkipPublisherCheck.

So far so bad, but when I go to remove the 3.4.0 version (with admin rights) from: 'c:\program files\windowspowershell\modules\pester\3.4.0' I get errors because only TrustedInstaller has permissions.

If this scenario wasn't horrible enough, putting preinstalled modules under Windows Resource Protection really throws it over the top.

Could someone please make sure that preinstalled modules can be *replaced* cleanly? Or don't preinstall them?

In Azure Automation DSC the whole MOF file gets encrypted without the need to manually issue certificates for every node and then to collect the public keys.

From Azure documentation:
"Keeping credentials secure in node configurations (MOF configuration documents) requires encrypting the credentials in the node configuration MOF file. Azure Automation takes this one step further and encrypts the entire MOF file."

This extremely useful feature sould also be implemented in the on-premises DSC pull server. Especially because the needed functionality must alread be in the WMF 5 as nothing more than WMF 5 is needed to use the Azure Automation DSC service.

This would be huge improvment for the DSC pull server.

Thx!

At some point in the 5.0 time period, Update-Help installed About topic files in the en-US directory for the PSWorkflow module with .txt (not .help.txt) file name extensions.

e.g. about_Foreach-Parallel.txt

Later, this was fixed and Update-Help installed the same help files in the same directory with the (correct) ".help.txt" file name extension.

e.g. about_Foreach-Parallel.help.txt

Now, the PSWorkflow\en-US directory has 9 pairs of files that are identical except for the file name extension.

about_ActivityCommonParameters.help.txt
about_ActivityCommonParameters.txt
about_Checkpoint-Workflow.help.txt
about_Checkpoint-Workflow.txt
about_Foreach-Parallel.help.txt
about_Foreach-Parallel.txt
about_InlineScript.help.txt
about_InlineScript.txt
about_Parallel.help.txt
about_Parallel.txt
about_Sequence.help.txt
about_Sequence.txt
about_Suspend-Workflow.help.txt
about_Suspend-Workflow.txt
about_WorkflowCommonParameters.help.txt
about_WorkflowCommonParameters.txt
about_Workflows.help.txt
about_Workflows.txt

Get-Help should ignore the .txt files (must have changed in 4.0), but it does not. Instead, it finds both .txt and .help.txt. So, when you run Get-Help, instead of displaying help for the topic, it lists the duplicate base names.

PS C:\ps-test> Get-Help about_Foreach-Parallel

Name Category Module Synopsis
---- -------- ------ --------
about_ForEach-Parallel HelpFile Describes the ForEach
about_Foreach-Parallel HelpFile Describes the ForEach

I'm not sure why Get-Help is recognizing About.txt files.

But, we had a similar problem in a module when we shipped a file with corrected capitalization in the base name.

about_FileName.help.txt
about_filename.help.txt

We might want to tweak Get-Help so that when it detects an exact duplicate base name, it displays the content in the newest file.

Also, in modules, Get-Help should display the help only for the version of the module that it's processing. That would allow module authors to update help topic names without causing unintended duplicates.

For some reason DSC errors out with a credential object contains a null password. Unfortunately that is the mechanism use to set group managed service accounts.
Here is a link to a relevant bug in xWebAdministration: https://github.com/PowerShell/xWebAdministration/issues/80#issuecomment-171364644

And here is an example of the output your recieve when you attempt to use a managed service account:

"VERBOSE: [COMPUTERNAME]: LCM: [ End Test ] [[xWebAppPool]testpool] in 0.0070 seconds.
The password supplied to the Desired State Configuration resource MSFT_xWebAppPool is not valid. The password cannot be null or empty.
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidResult: (:) [], CimException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : InvalidPassword
+ PSComputerName : localhost

It would be very useful if Out-Gridview provided a build in display of the number of objects in the grid. This could be in a status bar at the bottom or at the top along with the Add Criteria button.

This would update as the filters are applied. It would also be nice if the selected items had a count as well.

It would be especially useful with -passthru as you could have an estimate on the number of objects being passed to the next cmdlet in the pipeline.

You can come up with the count by using measure-object, but that number only comes after committing to pass objects back through the pipeline.

I often pass things from the clipboard or csv files to cmdlets and it would be nice to know how many are going through at execution time.

Love PowerShell!

Votes from Connect: 391

Original Date Submitted: 5/21/2015 12:20:32 AM

Description:
********Contact Information********
Handle: June Blender
Site Name: PowerShell
Feedback ID: 1351032
***************************************

Problem Description:
PowerShell users often read .NET reference pages in MSDN. It's all but required, because Get-Help doesn't describe object members. However, in the Examples section of .NET reference pages, there are no PowerShell examples; not even a PowerShell tab.

MSDN says they cannot demonstrate a demand for PowerShell examples. I'd like to use this feature request to demonstrate the demand.

Product Studio item created by Connect Synchronizer due to creation of feedback ID 1351032 (http://connect.microsoft.com/PowerShell/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=1351032).

Repro Steps:

Internal BugId: 14500

Advances to the current PullServer are, quite frankly, slow and moving in a direction questionable to most MVPs. Microsoft should follow their own lead they took with the DSC modules: opensource it and place it on GitHub so that the community can invest in making a tool that we'd actually like to use.

Example of features still missing that everyone wants:
1. certificate management (use self-signed or pki)
2. web interface for compliance reporting

Example of features added that are questionable/actually bad ideas:
1. partial configurations (multiple pull server sources, mofs, and reports all being _managed_ by the node? who thought this was a good idea when we could do this with composite configurations more elegantly?)
2. specific LCMConfiguration class (why should I _have_ to now maintain two configuration files when 1 used to be just fine? Is it so i can use a feature #1?)

The pullserver is a critical component when it comes to the success of DSC but it's evolving too slowly. Open it up and let the few who are dedicated to DSC succeeding develop an ecosystem that will allow that to happen.

The New-LocalUser cmdlet available in Windows 10 Anniversary Update cannot perform a function described in the documentation.

Local user accounts may be connected with existing Microsoft accounts. New-LocalUser should support this by accepting a -Name parameter of the form "MicrosoftAccount\<user>@outlook.com". This is described in the detailed help.

However this fails because the parameter fails validation as it is over 20 characters in length (already true with "MicrosoftAccount\" and "@outlook.com" let alone the "actual" user name). The 20 character limit is valid for a regular local account name, but shouldn't be valid for an MS account name.

There appears no other way I can find to create a local user account with an existing MS account; so this is rather major.

Note that also the error message from the "problematic" call is also of spurious grammar (where it inserts the length of the name parameter provided):

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> New-LocalUser -name 'MicrosoftAccount\me@outlook.com'
New-LocalUser : Cannot validate argument on parameter 'Name'. The character length of the 31 argument is too long. Shor
ten the character length of the argument so it is fewer than or equal to "20" characters, and then try the command agai
n.
At line:1 char:21
+ New-LocalUser -name 'MicrosoftAccount\me@outlook.com'
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidData: (:) [New-LocalUser], ParameterBindingValidationException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : ParameterArgumentValidationError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.NewLocalUserCommand

In 5.0, objects returned from a script will appear in the console only after the script has completely finished if no formatting data is defined for that object type.

Example:

Write-Warning "Before"
Get-Service E* | select Status, Name, DisplayName
Write-Warning "After"

Output:

WARNING: Before

WARNING: After
Status Name DisplayName
------ ---- -----------
Stopped EapHost Extensible Authentication Protocol
Running EFS Encrypting File System (EFS)
Running eventlog Windows Event Log
Running EventSystem COM+ Event System

Details
- This did not happen before PowerShell 5.0
- This happens both in the PowerShell console and ISE
- The issue affects all objects that have no formatting data, for example:
<anything> | Select-Object -Property …
[pscustomobject]@{one=1;two=2}
Get-Acl C:\
Get-Location
- Output that is sent to other streams is not affected (errors, Write-Host, Write-Warning, Write-Verbose etc.)
- The issue only occurs in table view (i.e. does not happen if the object has more than 4 properties)
- The issue also occurs if the script output is piped to a file, but not if it is piped to another command (e.g. Out-GridView).

This issue can create unexpected results for scripts that worked fine in previous PowerShell versions. Running this (contrived) script will highlight the issue:

$RandomProcess = Get-Process | Get-Random
Write-Host "Random process:"
$RandomProcess | select Name, ID
Read-Host "Press Enter to stop the listed process"
$RandomProcess | Stop-Process -WhatIf

What makes this potentially dangerous is that making subtle changes to the code (e.g. in the previous examples, removing the select command) could change the output significantly. At the very least it violates the "principle of least surprise".

This may be caused by the new default formatter waiting for all pipeline objects so it can display them in the new auto-sized column layout (essentially an implicit Format-Table -AutoSize). It would be better if the behavior reverted to the previous formatting style for “unknown” objects so it displays all output in the proper order.

Workarounds:

- If the objects do not really need to be sent to the pipeline, append “| Out-Host" or "| Out-String" to the command generating the objects.