{"id":15021,"date":"2011-04-03T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-03T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2011\/04\/03\/discover-which-powershell-providers-support-credentials\/"},"modified":"2011-04-03T00:01:00","modified_gmt":"2011-04-03T00:01:00","slug":"discover-which-powershell-providers-support-credentials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/discover-which-powershell-providers-support-credentials\/","title":{"rendered":"Discover Which PowerShell Providers Support Credentials"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary<\/b>: Microsoft Scripting Guy Ed Wilson shows how to discover which Windows PowerShell providers support credentials.<\/p>\n

Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, here. When I was in Redmond, Washington a couple of weeks ago teaching a Windows PowerShell class to a group of Microsoft networking engineers, a question came up about using alternate credentials. For example, the New-Item<\/b> cmdlet has a credential<\/i> parameter. The New-Item<\/b> cmdlet can be used when operating the different PS drives that are supplied with the PS Provider. The cool thing about this is that I should be able to use New-Item<\/b> to create a new file, and I should be able to supply credentials to this operation. This would enable me to create files in locations where the current user did not have rights. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, that exact scenario does not work. I remembered a “Lessons Learned” sidebar that I wrote in my Microsoft Press book, Windows PowerShell 2.0 Best Practices<\/i><\/a>, and I referred the student to that page in my book. <\/i>Since then, the question has come up again via the scripter@microsoft.com<\/a> email alias. <\/i>Therefore, I decided to share my sidebar with you here today. <\/p>\n

The –credential<\/i> switch was present in Windows PowerShell 1.0 in only one cmdlet: Get-WmiObject<\/b>. <\/b>This switch allows for the use of alternate credentials when making remote connections. This switch has been added to several cmdlets such as Add-Content<\/b> and Get-Content<\/b>. However, when I tested this by trying to access a file on a remote computer, it came back with the error message shown here. <\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

We can investigate this by examining the capabilities of the providers. First we need to see what types of capabilities the providers could support. To do this, we use the GetValues()<\/b> static method from the System.Enum<\/b> .NET Framework class. The GetValues()<\/b> method takes one argument, the name of the .NET Framework class where it is to retrieve the enumeration values. The System.Management.Automation.Provider.ProviderCapabilities<\/b> <\/i>class contains the enumeration values that we are interested in. The code that obtains these values is shown here.<\/p>\n

\n

[enum]::getValues(“System.Management.Automation.Provider.ProviderCapabilities”)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We obtain the following list of provider capabilities. <\/p>\n

\n

None<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Include<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Exclude<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Filter<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

ExpandWildcards<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

ShouldProcess<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Credentials<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Transactions<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Now that we have a listing of the capabilities available to providers, we need to see which default Windows PowerShell 2.0 providers support the Credentials<\/b> capability. To see this, we can use the Get-PsProvider<\/b> cmdlet. As seen here, none of the default Windows PowerShell 2.0 providers support the use of capabilities. <\/p>\n

\n

Get-PSProvider<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Name                 <\/span>Capabilities                            <\/span>Drives<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

—-                 <\/span>————                            <\/span>——<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Alias                <\/span>ShouldProcess                           <\/span>{Alias}<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Environment          <\/span>ShouldProcess                           <\/span>{Env}<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

FileSystem           <\/span>Filter, ShouldProcess                   <\/span>{C, D, dle, apw…}<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Function             <\/span>ShouldProcess                           <\/span>{Function}<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Registry             <\/span>ShouldProcess, Transactions             <\/span>{HKLM, HKCU, HKCR}<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Variable             <\/span>ShouldProcess                           <\/span>{Variable}<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Certificate          <\/span>ShouldProcess                           <\/span>{cert, certCU}<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

WSMan                <\/span>None                                    <\/span>{WSMan}<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I invite you to follow me on Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a>. If you have any questions, send email to me at scripter@microsoft.com<\/a>, or post your questions on the Official Scripting Guys Forum<\/a>. See you tomorrow. Until then, peace.<\/p>\n

Ed Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: Microsoft Scripting Guy Ed Wilson shows how to discover which Windows PowerShell providers support credentials. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, here. When I was in Redmond, Washington a couple of weeks ago teaching a Windows PowerShell class to a group of Microsoft networking engineers, a question came up about using alternate credentials. For example, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[51,3,4,61,45],"class_list":["post-15021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-getting-started","tag-scripting-guy","tag-scripting-techniques","tag-weekend-scripter","tag-windows-powershell"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Summary: Microsoft Scripting Guy Ed Wilson shows how to discover which Windows PowerShell providers support credentials. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, here. When I was in Redmond, Washington a couple of weeks ago teaching a Windows PowerShell class to a group of Microsoft networking engineers, a question came up about using alternate credentials. For example, […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/595"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}