Hello Alex,
I remember your posts from the early MONAD days!
Post by unknownThis has been a thorny issue for me, too. I explored ways to deal with
local group management about 4-5 years and the only built-in solution
then was the WinNT provider. Doing a check now on some resources and
then exploring WMI on even Win7, I don't find anything else for it.
Looking at the security-related methods and properties in WMI, what
you'll see is that properties are almost universally read-only, and
methods that do anything substantial are designed to perform tasks that
you can't do with WinNT: and ldap:.
Yes, that is exactly the problem I'm seeing. Some extensive testing
suggests WMI is slightly more accurate when dealing with local accounts,
especially service accounts. I also find it more concise when it comes
to SID to account translation.
Post by unknownThat's even more of an irritation to
me now than it was back then because I use PowerShell frequently and the
way .NET binding to those providers works forces you to map out method
bindings on your own. : /
My take on it, was that WMI could have been a potentially a very
powerful technology, but it's terribly damaged by
1. Wrappers contain the bad as well as the good, and ultimately end up
stuck in time.
2. Providers are closed source, part of Windows, and not easily updated
3. Bugs lie broken for years and can't be fixed because of "backward
compatibility"
4. Providers get added/removed on a whim (e.g. MSI Provider in Win2003).
Technologies like PowerShell then add another wrapper layer and no one
fixed the underlying problem. I have a number of open WMI cases with
Microsoft, nothing is being done.
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/microsoft.public.win32.programmer.wmi/browse_frm/thread/d74c0ca865887e6b/
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/microsoft.public.win32.programmer.wmi/browse_frm/thread/244a44a7428bc885/
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/microsoft.public.win32.programmer.wmi/browse_frm/thread/b1a2274446bb1dc0/
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/microsoft.public.win32.programmer.wmi/browse_frm/thread/67f46d60f81e5433/
There's also a major problem when using Associators on many objects
where the performance is terrible because the enum algorithm is flawed!
Post by unknownIs there a particular kind of situation you're trying to handle with this?
Yes. I have a WMI application that sets up templated security on
numerous SQL back-end data servers, such that dev teams can create
database applications without admin rights. It involves creating folders
and shares, setting FileSystem security and Share security, setting DCOM
permissions etc.
WMI does not seem able to create a new folder (without hacking) and I
then need to set security and add users to groups etc. Since my app uses
handles to WMI objects I don't want to have to switch out of that
context into an ADSI context back on the client.
I asked about creating new folders in the PowerShell group, but they
didn't seem to understand the difference between a local machine context
and a UNC context (which relies on SMB) - it's not the same thing!
Quote from "Brandon Shell MVP"
"In regards to your need for a robust app. I think you have serious problems
at work if you need a fully robust client server application just to create
folders."
LOL!
--
Gerry Hickman (London UK)