Category: How To | Page 5

How to Change the Time Stamp of a File Using PowerShell

From time to time, you may need to modify the time stamp of a file for archiving or any other reasons.

This PowerShell script comes in handy when you need to do it. This is for a one-off tweak of a file. If you’re doing this in bulk, it’s probably better to use Robocopy with a /copy:T option (see an example here) to copy all the attributes including the time stamp.

(Get-Item "C:\Temp\ITNota.txt").LastWriteTime=("6/1/2022 15:00:00")

(Get-Item "C:\Temp\ITNota.txt").LastWriteTime=("1 June 2022 15:00:00")

Two versions of the script were provided to eliminate ambiguity of the date system. You just need to use one of them.

If you use the US date format, the first one will work. Otherwise, it’s always safer to spell out the date and the month.

How to Find All References to an Object in a SQL Server Database

You can use the following scripts to find all affected objects that make any references to your search term.

You can either use sql_modules or syscomments to accomplish this purpose. Generally, they should give you the same results, but from time to time, I found that they may give you slightly different results and I haven’t had the chance to look closer how big the difference is. Just to keep in mind.

However, Microsoft has put a warning not to use syscomments in new development work as the feature will be removed in a future version of Microsoft SQL Server.

Using sql_modules:

SELECT DISTINCT OBJECT_NAME(m.object_id) AS "object name", m.*
FROM sys.sql_modules m
WHERE m.definition LIKE '%SearchTerm%'

Using syscomments:

SELECT DISTINCT OBJECT_NAME(c.id) AS "object name", c.*
FROM sys.syscomments c
WHERE c.text LIKE '%SearchTerm%'

sys.sql_modules

Returns a row for each object that is an SQL language-defined module in SQL Server, including natively compiled scalar user-defined function. Objects of type P, RF, V, TR, FN, IF, TF, and R have an associated SQL module. Stand-alone defaults, objects of type D, also have an SQL module definition in this view. For a description of these types, see the type column in the sys.objects catalog view.

sys.syscomments

Contains entries for each view, rule, default, trigger, CHECK constraint, DEFAULT constraint, and stored procedure within the database. The text column contains the original SQL definition statements.
Important
This feature will be removed in a future version of Microsoft SQL Server. Avoid using this feature in new development work, and plan to modify applications that currently use this feature. We recommend that you use sys.sql_modules instead. For more information, see sys.sql_modules (Transact-SQL).

How to Force HTTPS in IIS

This is a short tutorial on how to force an HTTPS connection to your website in IIS. The way we do it is by adding a URL Rewrite rule that will redirect any unsecured incoming traffic to HTTPS.

Steps

The first step you need to check is if you have URL Rewrite module installed. If you don’t have it installed, you can download it from the link at the bottom of this post.
You can either use the GUI on IIS to set this up, or apply the rules in web.config file of your website. You just need to substitue the target URL with your own.

Open your web.config in a text editor and add the rewrite rule inside the system.webServer child element:

<system.webServer>
  <rewrite>
    <rules>
      <rule name="Force HTTPS" enabled="true" stopProcessing="true">
        <match url="(.*)" />
        <action type="Redirect" url="https://www.itnota.com" />
        <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll">
          <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="^OFF$" />
        </conditions>
      </rule>
    </rules>
  </rewrite>
</system.webServer>

Or if you use IIS GUI, it should look something similar to this:

IIS Rules using URL Rewrite to force HTTPS connection

That’s all there is to force HTTPS connection to your website. In this day and age, this should be the minimum setup for any websites.

Download

URL Rewrite

How to Check Installed .NET Framework Version

This is a quick way to check an installed version of .NET Framework (as opposed to .NET Core). This works for any .NET Framework 4.5 or later.

We’re doing this by using a PowerShell script to get the value from the registry and a Python script to quickly match the release number to the associated .NET Framework version. This has been used so many times to get the value quickly on production servers, but use it at your own risk.

Steps

On the server where you want to check the .NET Framework version, open a PowerShell window and run the following script:
```
(Get-ItemProperty "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4\Full").Release
```

Once you see the value, you can check it using the following Python script to see what version of .NET Framework that number corresponds to.

#! python3
# Check .NET version based on the release number
# Reference https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/migration-guide/how-to-determine-which-versions-are-installed

releaseVersion = input("\nEnter .NET release number: ")

def checkVersion(release):

    relNo = int(release)

    if relNo >= 528040:
        print('.NET Framework 4.8')
    elif relNo >= 461808:
        print('.NET Framework 4.7.2')
    elif relNo >= 461308:
        print('.NET Framework 4.7.1')
    elif relNo >= 460798:
        print('.NET Framework 4.7')
    elif relNo >= 394802:
        print('.NET Framework 4.6.2')
    elif relNo >= 394254:
        print('.NET Framework 4.6.1')
    elif relNo >= 393295:
        print('.NET Framework 4.6')
    elif relNo >= 379893:
        print('.NET Framework 4.5.2')
    elif relNo >= 378675:
        print('.NET Framework 4.5.1')
    elif relNo >= 378389:
        print('.NET Framework 4.5')
    else:
        print('No match')

checkVersion(releaseVersion)

I’m sure there’s a more elegant way to do this by just running one script to do all these things but this is provided as it is.

How to Remove .NET Runtime and SDK on Mac

Check Installation

Determine which version is installed with the command line.

According to Microsoft documentation, we need to remove the SDKs and runtimes separately:

Pay attention to the difference in installed locations between the Intel Mac vs. Silicon M series chip.

Arm-based mac: /usr/local/share/dotnet/
Intel-based mac: /usr/local/share/dotnet/x64/dotnet/

In this example, I want to remove the .NET 6 RC on an M1 silicon Mac from previous test.

% dotnet --list-runtimes
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 6.0.0-rc.1.21452.15 [/usr/local/share/dotnet/shared/Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 6.0.0-rc.1.21451.13 [/usr/local/share/dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App]

% dotnet --list-sdks
6.0.100-rc.1.21463.6 [/usr/local/share/dotnet/sdk]

Uninstall .NET

From the example above, we’ll remove all instances. All these commands can be entered all at once in the Terminal, it will ask you to enter sudo password just once.

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/share/dotnet/sdk/$version
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/share/dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App/$version
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/dotnet/shared/Microsoft.AspNetCore.All/$version
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/share/dotnet/shared/Microsoft.AspNetCore.App/$version
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/share/dotnet/host/fxr/$version

That’s it.

You can re-run the dotnet –list-runtimes and dotnet –list-sdks to verify that there’s no longer any .NET installed. You should see something similar to this:

% dotnet --list-runtimes                          
A fatal error occurred. The folder [/usr/local/share/dotnet/host/fxr] does not exist

% dotnet --list-sdks
A fatal error occurred. The folder [/usr/local/share/dotnet/host/fxr] does not exist

Now you can install the new version for your .NET development.

How to Change the Time Stamp of a File Using PowerShell

Further Reading

How to Find All References to an Object in a SQL Server Database

sys.sql_modules

sys.syscomments

Further Reading

How to Force HTTPS in IIS

Steps

Download

How to Check Installed .NET Framework Version

Steps

Further Reading

How to Remove .NET Runtime and SDK on Mac

Check Installation

Uninstall .NET

Further Reading

Recent Posts

Further Reading

sys.sql_modules

sys.syscomments

Further Reading

Steps

Download

Steps

Further Reading

Check Installation

Uninstall .NET

Further Reading

Recent Posts

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