What a great feeling when your blog is up and running! I think, I should post something here while it is still up :)

Today I want to post about new release of my PowerShell PKI module which is released today on CodePlex.

What’s new

1) Introduced module components

After a brief talk with a colleague I decided to split the module in two parts: client and server. Previously my module required RSAT installation in order to use it, while there were a lot of commands which do not require them and are not related to ADCS management. Therefore I divided module in two components: Client and Server. Client component contains commands which are related to local PKI management and do not require RSAT installation. Server component is intended for ADCS management and requires RSAT installation. Here is a module folder structure:

Hello S-1-1-0! Recently I was extremely busy on various stuff including PS PKI Module writing, as the result I hadn’t enough much time to write here. Today I would like to announce a new Manning book called PowerShell Deep Dives. the project started last year and by bringing PowerShell MVP community, the stuff went quite quickly.

Why I’m advertising this book?

1. The book is believed to be very interesting to all sort of IT Pro and Devs who is interesting in PowerShell. The book is divided in four general sections: Administration, Scripting, Development, PS for Platforms. Everyone of you will find something interesting for yourself.
2. All chapters in the book are written by PowerShell MVPs = quality guaranteed!
3. No one from writers or book coordinators will get a cent from book sales. All revenue will go to charity: to the memory of Will Steele, one of our co-authors and important member of the PowerShell community.

Hello folks, today I want to present you my another product in PKI integration with Windows PowerShell. I worked hard on server-side extensions: PowerShell PKI Module, which is (so far) the biggest project I have developed.

Now I got a time to work on client side extensions. Some prototypes are already published in this blog. The first complete tool (which is a part of client-side extensions) is self-signed certificate creation for testing purposes. The reason why I developed this tool is that makecert.exe (from Windows SDK) is now deprecated. The blog post provides a replacement for makecert — certreq.exe tool. Although, certreq is very cool, there are few things to note:

1. certreq uses external INF file which may be a bit complicated.
2. if there is a mistake in the INF file, certreq raises exception message box. It is a pain when the message box is raised in PowerShell remoting session. You never will see it and unable to close it!

Just let you know, it is pushed (with sources) to CodePlex.

>> Welcome <<

Update 18.11.2013: pointed URL to a CodePlex project page.

Phinally!!!

Abstract

As you already know, last time I worked on my next PowerShell PKI module and encountered in an issue with Microsoft’s Cmdlet Help Editor. When I tried to open my module (and any other built-in module) I got very nice message:

Ok, I tried to download sources (thanks, they are available for download) and was stuck with WPF. I heard that WPF is a modern replacement for WinForms, and that was the only what I knew about WPF. I was able to fix mentioned message issue, but failed with application layout. The form has fixed size and no scroll bars. So I couldn’t access textboxes and commands which are outside of my screen (even if I worked on a 1680*1050 display). And I decided to create my own Help Editor with with “blackjack and hookers”.