joeware - never stop exploring... :)

Back on Jan 21 I tipped my hand on a new capability in AdFind which for many people is extremely exciting based on the feedback in my inbox. To refresh your memory, that was the ability for AdFind to take in a list of Base DN’s to execute queries against. For short we will say piping AdFind into AdFind though you could, if for whatever reason gripped you, pipe dsquery into AdFind.

Well in a follow up conversation with my friend and co-Author Brian Desmond, he asked “How do I pipe DNs from AdFind into AdFind and then get counts for the number of users under each of those DN’s?” My response was… well you can’t. The whole counting mechanism is based on the number of objects AdFind returns period… But then I thought, I hacked in CSV when I didn’t think I could… then I hacked in the piping in multiple DNs when I didn’t think I could, let me give this a try before totally saying no… So voila, a new switch because you just know there aren’t enough switches in AdFind yet…. The new switch is -ic… where -c stands for count, -ic stands for intermediate count… That lets you do something like….

G:\>adfind -default -f ou=* -dsq | adfind -sc adobjcnt:user

AdFind V01.40.00cpp **BETA** Joe Richards (joe@joeware.net) February 2009

Using server: r2dc1.test.loc:3268
Directory: Windows Server 2003

BaseDN: OU=CharTests,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc
1 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=createtest,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc
10 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=Deleted,OU=XXXTest,DC=test,DC=loc
0 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=XXXTest,DC=test,DC=loc
0 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=Domain Controllers,DC=test,DC=loc
0 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=Email,OU=My,DC=test,DC=loc
1 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=GPOTest,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc
0 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=Groups,OU=My,DC=test,DC=loc
0 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=Groups,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc
0 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=HideTest,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc
0 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=joeperm,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc
0 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=My,DC=test,DC=loc
0 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=oneleveldown,OU=createtest,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc
1 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=Outlook,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc
0 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=permtest,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc
2 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=PoSTest,DC=test,DC=loc
700001 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=Skip,OU=TestXXX,OU=XXXTest,DC=test,DC=loc
1 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=TestXXX,OU=XXXTest,DC=test,DC=loc
4 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=TestDisable,OU=XXXTest,DC=test,DC=loc
0 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc
6 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=Users,OU=My,DC=test,DC=loc
2 intermediate objects returned

BaseDN: OU=Users,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc
10 intermediate objects returned

700039 Objects returned

Anyone think that is pretty handy??? If so, you can thank Brian, he asked the right question at the right time… I modified the adobjcnt shortcut such that when it detects it is in multi-DN mode it will also insert the -ic switch as well as set the search scope to one-level. If you wanted counts of all of the users in each OU but you wanted the counts to roll up to the higher OU’s as well you would simply add the -s sub or -s subtree switch to your command.

But then I thought, while that is useful, it would be even more useful if I could somehow get that in a CSV format so I could use this more easily from scripts when trying to get a snapshot of an environment… I looked and there was just no way I could get it into the CSV code path. When you do CSV the whole counting section isn’t used and even if it were, it is outside of the location where the CSV code is and in order to try and get it in there would cause me to use some wholly unnatural global variables and other things that just made me go, no, I will not go there, that is too ugly, too inelegant… I know I do some bad things in code, but I don’t want to do THAT bad of things in code.

All hope is not lost however. I decided to add… yes… another switch. I know I know, another one truly isn’t needed but I wanted this functionality and if you don’t like it, just ignore the fact that it is there. This switch is not a very flexible switch, there are no modifiers for it. It is called -ictsv and it simply takes the -ic output and makes it into a TAB Delimited format output. This isn’t going to be tweaked to allow different delimiters or anything like that. It is a hack completely outside the normal CSV routines which have all that flexibility. I chose tab delimited because DNs have commas and it is unlikely (impossible? I don’t know, didn’t test) to see a tab in a DN and to be honest, I like tab delimited output. I usually use TABs for my delimiters for CSV output. Anyway that output looks like…

G:\>adfind -default -f ou=* -dsq | adfind -sc adobjcnt:user -ictsv
OU=CharTests,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc   1
OU=createtest,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc  10
OU=Deleted,OU=XXXTest,DC=test,DC=loc 0
OU=XXXTest,DC=test,DC=loc    0
OU=Domain Controllers,DC=test,DC=loc    0
OU=Email,OU=My,DC=test,DC=loc   1
OU=GPOTest,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc     0
OU=Groups,OU=My,DC=test,DC=loc  0
OU=Groups,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc      0
OU=HideTest,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc    0
OU=joeperm,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc     0
OU=My,DC=test,DC=loc    0
OU=oneleveldown,OU=createtest,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc  1
OU=Outlook,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc     0
OU=permtest,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc    2
OU=PoSTest,DC=test,DC=loc       700001
OU=Skip,OU=TestXXX,OU=XXXTest,DC=test,DC=loc      1
OU=TestXXX,OU=XXXTest,DC=test,DC=loc      4
OU=TestDisable,OU=XXXTest,DC=test,DC=loc     0
OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc        7
OU=Users,OU=My,DC=test,DC=loc   2
OU=Users,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc       10

Pretty cool huh… Anyone think that is handy? If so… well you are welcome… But something still bothers me about that output… Anyone else bothered by it? It could be just me but I kind of like seeing things that normally have a hierarchical form to be displayed that way. I don’t mean in the white space, but instead, I mean I don’t want to see something like

OU=Outlook,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc     0
OU=permtest,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc    2
OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc        7

I want to see the TestOU first and then its sub-OU’s after… I tried modifying my search to see if I could force AD to return the info in that order but quite frankly, AD truly isn’t hierarchical, it just appears that way. It is actually a flat database. The idea of hierarchy is imposed on it for LDAP purposes. So I thought, I really need to do something about this… This will drive me nuts. However, trying to retrieve all of the information and maintain it in memory so I can then sort it is ridiculous, might as well just write this thing in PowerShell or .NET… (count it…) if I do it in such a silly way… Then I thought, wait, I already have what I need in memory to sort it hierarchically after the DNs have been piped in so I added, yes thankyou, another switch called -stdinsort. Why did I do this with a switch? Because I didn’t want to assume someone would want it sorted like I would and I didn’t want to assume I would always want it sorted. Also I wanted to give myself the ability to sort it hierarchically as well as alphabetically both case sensitive and case insensitive, so it is a switch with a default sort order of hierarchical but you can add cialpha or csalpha to get the other types of sort… Now that output looks like

G:\>adfind -default -f ou=* -dsq | adfind -sc adobjcnt:user -ictsv -stdinsort
OU=Domain Controllers,DC=test,DC=loc    0
OU=My,DC=test,DC=loc    0
OU=Email,OU=My,DC=test,DC=loc   1
OU=Groups,OU=My,DC=test,DC=loc  0
OU=Users,OU=My,DC=test,DC=loc   2
OU=PoSTest,DC=test,DC=loc       700001
OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc        7
OU=CharTests,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc   1
OU=createtest,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc  10
OU=oneleveldown,OU=createtest,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc  1
OU=GPOTest,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc     0
OU=Groups,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc      0
OU=HideTest,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc    0
OU=joeperm,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc     0
OU=Outlook,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc     0
OU=permtest,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc    2
OU=Users,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc       10
OU=XXXTest,DC=test,DC=loc       0
OU=Deleted,OU=XXXTest,DC=test,DC=loc    0
OU=TestDisable,OU=XXXTest,DC=test,DC=loc        0
OU=TestXXX,OU=XXXTest,DC=test,DC=loc    4
OU=Skip,OU=TestXXX,OU=XXXTest,DC=test,DC=loc    1

Much better… ;o)

This and more in the new version of AdFind… AdFind V01.40.00 is expected to emerge from the cocoon on Feb 13, 2009.

     joe

I received an email this evening that I swore I had previously wrote something up on the blog for and didn’t, so I will share…

The email

From: xxx@domain.gov
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 7:28 PM
To: ‘joe@joeware.net’
Subject: Adfind piped into admod question

Good evening Joe,

First I’d like to commend you on your books, website, and apps, I use many of them almost on a daily basis. 

So here it is:

We have users who’s home folders are being moved from \\xxx-home to \\abc-xxx
now \\abc-xxx and \\xxx-home aren’t the only home servers so it’s not like i can replace them all so I’ve written this script to test it out. In the servers OU I placed a user account and have populated the home directory as \\xxx-home2\joesmith$…again this account is just for testing.

run this script

adfind -b “ou=xxx,dc=domain,dc=gov” -f “(&(objectcategory=person)(objectclass=user)(homedirectory=\\xxx-home*))” samaccountname -adcsv | admod -unsafe homedirectory::\\abc-xxx.domain.gov\%username%$

the script runs just fine and updates joesmith’s home directory to \\abc-xxx.domain.gov\joesmith$ which was anticipated.
So this works all fine and dandy, where the problem is, is if down the road we want to utilize this again it doesn’t work. so for instance:
user account joesmith who’s home directory is now \\abc-xxx.domain.gov\joesmith$ (home directory was changed with utilizing the above script)
if \\abc-xxx was being retired and we were putting \\abc-home10 in it’s place. If you adjust the script find homedirectory=\\abc-xxx* it wont find anything to alter. The only way to make it find something is to tell it to find homedirectory=*

At first I thought it was because of AD replication (that is all DC’s aren’t up to date with the correct information), but I checked all our DC and it was updated before I ran the 2nd update.  Then I thought well what if there was a space before the \\ so I opened up ADUC and ADSedit and verified there wasn’t s space in the homedirectory attribute.  
Any clue why it wouldn’t update the 2^nd time around?  Also what does the -adcsv –dsq switch do? Tried to find some documentation on it but there was little.

Any information you could provide would be much appreciated.

Thanks again,

     xxx

I get questions like this pretty regularly which is why I guess I thought I blogged about it before, but I couldn’t find a blog entry for it so here was my response

Hey xxx, glad you like the tools, book, et al. 🙂

First off, I wanted to point something out… This first command

adfind -b “ou=xxx,dc=domain,dc=gov” -f “(&(objectcategory=person)(objectclass=user)(homedirectory=\\xxx-home*))” samaccountname -adcsv | admod -unsafe homedirectory::\\abc-xxx.domain.gov\%username%$

has an issue with the admod portion. Specifically the %username% won’t work. That will decode to the current environment variable for username which should be your current logon account. That little shortcut in ADUC is just that, a shortcut in ADUC, it isn’t a global AD thing. I think what you would really want would be

adfind -b “ou=xxx,dc=domain,dc=gov” -f “(&(objectcategory=person)(objectclass=user)(homedirectory=\\xxx-home*))” samaccountname -adcsv | admod -unsafe homedirectory::\\abc-xxx.domain.gov\{{samaccountname}}$

That will take the samaccountname that is returned from the query and piped across to admod and use that to populate the username piece of the share name so it would be specific to every user queried, it wouldn’t set the value to your current username environment variable for every account returned.

Second, the issue you see with the \\abc-xxx… is doing something you probably don’t expect… In an LDAP query, the backslash (\) character is an escape character. It tells LDAP that something special is coming – specifically a hex character sequence like \2a for example. This is generally not a problem and it all sorts itself out so you likely never have an issue using \\someserver… However if you follow a backslash with character that is a valid HEX character the escape and the HEX character are taken together… In that case, the proper way to search for a value that has embedded back slash literals is to use \5c for each backslash, so it would be \5c\5cabc-xxx. You can check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms675768(VS.85).aspx which discusses this and more about creating query filters.

    joe

And then I realized I didn’t answer his last two questions so I added

Sorry, didn’t answer the other questions:

-adcsv : As the adfind usage indicates, it is a special CSV mode that embeds some extra info in the CSV for AdMod or whatever tool being piped to to better understand the request, for example some things that can get embedded would be hostname, userid, password, etc used in the adfind query.

   -adcsv xxx    Special CSV mode for interacting with other joeware tools.
                 xxx is an optional string that specifies value to use for
                 use for empty attribs.

-dsq : This is simply quoted DN output like DSQuery outputs.

  -dsq          DSQuery style quoted DN output

   joe

 

So a little more discussion on the embedded backslashes, as the MSDN article above discusses the following characters all need to be escaped with “need” being a little more loosely defined for the backslash character itself than the other characters.

*	\2a
(	\28
)	\29
\	\5c
NUL	\00

 

So now I know at least one or two of you are thinking… wow… so joe, why don’t you just help the guy out and likely help me out too and just make AdFind smart enough to do that embedding work for me… Well I could try… But I really really try hard not to mess with the actual LDAP query that is entered. The minimal amount I do for -bit to do a find/replace on some specific strings is fired off by the actual -bit switch. If people have to specify a switch to encode backslashes why don’t they just instead encode the backslashes themselves since it isn’t that much more and I don’t have to try and guess which backslashes should and shouldn’t be encoded. But joe… \5c is a pain in the butt to remember… Yes, for me too… The way I remember it when I need to is to query for the object I know that has one of the troublesome homedirectories in it and then tell AdFind to return the homedirectory value in binary so I can quickly see the HEX characters I need to enter. Like so

[Thu 01/29/2009  3:32:04.61]
G:\new1\Dev\Current\CPP\AdFind\Release>adfind -default -f “&(name=someuser)(homedirectory=*)” homedirectory

AdFind V01.40.00cpp **BETA** Joe Richards (joe@joeware.net) January 2009

Using server: TEST-DC1.test.loc:389
Directory: Windows Server 2003
Base DN: DC=test,DC=loc

dn:CN=someuser,OU=Users,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc
>homeDirectory: \\abc-xxx\someuser$

1 Objects returned

[Thu 01/29/2009  3:32:06.72]
G:\new1\Dev\Current\CPP\AdFind\Release>adfind -default -f “&(name=someuser)(homedirectory=*)” homedirectory;binary

AdFind V01.40.00cpp **BETA** Joe Richards (joe@joeware.net) January 2009

Using server: TEST-DC1.test.loc:389
Directory: Windows Server 2003
Base DN: DC=test,DC=loc

dn:CN=someuser,OU=Users,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc
>homeDirectory;binary: 5C5C 6162 632D 7878 785C 736F 6D65 7573 6572 24

1 Objects returned

Note the 5C5C right there at the front…

 

    joe

Example 1: Get tokenGroups attribute for every direct member of the domain admins group.

F:\Dev\Current\CPP\AdFind\Release>adfind -default -f name="domain admins" member -list | adfind -s base tokengroups -resolvesids

AdFind V01.40.00cpp **BETA** Joe Richards (joe@joeware.net) January 2009

Using server: TEST-DC1.test.loc:389
Directory: Windows Server 2003

dn:CN=TestAdminClone,OU=Users,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc
>tokenGroups: BUILTIN\Users
>tokenGroups: BUILTIN\Administrators
>tokenGroups: TEST\DnsAdmins
>tokenGroups: TEST\Domain Users
>tokenGroups: TEST\Domain Admins

dn:CN=$joe,OU=Users,OU=My,DC=test,DC=loc
>tokenGroups: BUILTIN\Users
>tokenGroups: BUILTIN\Administrators
>tokenGroups: TEST\DnsAdmins
>tokenGroups: TEST\Schema Admins
>tokenGroups: TEST\Enterprise Admins
>tokenGroups: TEST\Domain Users
>tokenGroups: TEST\Domain Admins

dn:CN=Administrator,CN=Users,DC=test,DC=loc
>tokenGroups: BUILTIN\Users
>tokenGroups: BUILTIN\Administrators
>tokenGroups: TEST\DnsAdmins
>tokenGroups: TEST\Schema Admins
>tokenGroups: TEST\Enterprise Admins
>tokenGroups: TEST\Domain Users
>tokenGroups: TEST\Group Policy Creator Owners
>tokenGroups: TEST\Domain Admins

3 Objects returned

 

Example 2a: Get sAMAccountName for all direct members of Domain Admins group

F:\Dev\Current\CPP\AdFind\Release>adfind -default -f name="domain admins" member -list | adfind -s base samaccountname

AdFind V01.40.00cpp **BETA** Joe Richards (joe@joeware.net) January 2009

Using server: TEST-DC1.test.loc:389
Directory: Windows Server 2003

dn:CN=TestAdminClone,OU=Users,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc
>sAMAccountName: TestAdminClone

dn:CN=$joe,OU=Users,OU=My,DC=test,DC=loc
>sAMAccountName: $joe

dn:CN=Administrator,CN=Users,DC=test,DC=loc
>sAMAccountName: Administrator

3 Objects returned

 

Example 2b: Get sAMAccountName for all direct members of Domain Admins group (alternate method using attribute scoped query)

F:\Dev\Current\CPP\AdFind\Release>adfind -default -f name="domain admins" -dsq | adfind -s base -asq member samaccountname

AdFind V01.40.00cpp **BETA** Joe Richards (joe@joeware.net) January 2009

Using server: TEST-DC1.test.loc:389
Directory: Windows Server 2003

dn:CN=Administrator,CN=Users,DC=test,DC=loc
>sAMAccountName: Administrator

dn:CN=$joe,OU=Users,OU=My,DC=test,DC=loc
>sAMAccountName: $joe

dn:CN=TestAdminClone,OU=Users,OU=TestOU,DC=test,DC=loc
>sAMAccountName: TestAdminClone

3 Objects returned

 

Example 3: Dump the serviceBindingInformation attribute for any ADAM serviceConnectionPoint objects that belong to Windows XP Professional machines. And no, this isn’t contrived, this is something I have wanted to do a few times to find people playing with ADAM on workstation class machines as well as something I have been asked how to do in the past… Normally this would take a script.

F:\Dev\Current\CPP\AdFind\Release>adfind -default -f "&(objectcategory=computer)(operatingsystem=Windows XP Professional)" -dsq | adfind -s one -f "&(objectcategory=serviceconnectionpoint)(serviceclassname=LDAP)" servicebindinginformation

AdFind V01.40.00cpp **BETA** Joe Richards (joe@joeware.net) January 2009

Using server: TEST-DC1.test.loc:389
Directory: Windows Server 2003

dn:CN={cb226d48-e9a7-420a-bce0-98edcc6b8cf2},CN=SFMXP64,CN=Computers,DC=test,DC=loc
>serviceBindingInformation: ldaps://sfmxp64.test.loc:636
>serviceBindingInformation: ldap://sfmxp64.test.loc:389

dn:CN={e4756748-fc8b-4166-8b7b-498bd97c9949},CN=SFMXP64,CN=Computers,DC=test,DC=loc
>serviceBindingInformation: ldaps://sfmxp64.test.loc:636
>serviceBindingInformation: ldap://sfmxp64.test.loc:389

dn:CN={3991aa1d-c87d-46cd-a08c-c52af9ae168e},CN=SFMXP32,CN=Computers,DC=test,DC=loc
>serviceBindingInformation: ldaps://sfmxp32.test.loc:636
>serviceBindingInformation: ldap://sfmxp32.test.loc:389

dn:CN={d3c0e3ee-d888-496d-acf0-6e4078052476},CN=HOMEXP,CN=Computers,DC=test,DC=loc
>serviceBindingInformation: ldaps://homexp.test.loc:636
>serviceBindingInformation: ldap://homexp.test.loc:389

4 Objects returned

 

When working on fixing several typos and mistakes in V01.39.00 I realized I had figured out a way to handle the piping from one instance of AdFind to another. I am still looking for holes but it looks good thus far. This is something I have wanted for some time but couldn’t see how to handle it with the current framework. Well out of the blue while looking at part of the code it struck me how to pull it off so I added it. Aside from that are the correction of some typos folks reported to me as well as adding some Windows 7 support (i.e. decoding some of the Windows 7 attribute values and support for the new object deletion/recycling capabilities).

   joe

Not really an issue or at least it shouldn’t be, if something is generating more than 50 concurrent NSPI connections, it likely needs to be checked out anyway…

 

NSPI connections from Microsoft Outlook to a Windows Server 2008-based domain controller may fail with an error code: “MAPI_E_LOGON_FAILED”

This behavior occurs because Windows Server 2008 only allows for a default maximum of 50 concurrent NSPI connections per user to any domain controller. Additional NSPI connections are rejected with a MAPI_E_LOGON_FAILED error code.

See the whole support KB here —> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949469