objCommand.CommandText = _\n \"SELECT ADsPath FROM 'LDAP:\/\/dc=fabrikam,dc=com' WHERE \" & _\n \"objectCategory='organizationalUnit'\"\n<\/pre>\nActually there\u2019s nothing especially fancy about this query; we\u2019re simply asking the script to search the fabrikam.com domain and return the ADsPath<\/b> attribute for each object that has an objectCategory<\/b> equal to organizationalUnit<\/i>. And yes, you\u2019re way ahead of us: anything with an objectCategory equal to organizationalUnit<\/i> is going to be, well, an organizational unit.<\/p>\n
After we execute the query we\u2019ll get back a recordset consisting of all the OUs in that domain; what we have to do now is try to figure out which computers reside in each of those OUs. To do that, we set up a Do Until loop that runs until we\u2019ve looped through each and every OU. (Or, more technically, until the recordset\u2019s EOF<\/b> \u2013 end-of-file \u2013 property is True.)<\/p>\n
In order to retrieve a list of all the computers that belong to a given OU we need to first bind to that OU; that\u2019s something we can do by using the ADsPath attribute, the very same attribute we requested when configuring our search query:<\/p>\n
Set objOU = GetObject(objRecordSet.Fields(\"ADsPath\").Value)\n<\/pre>\nAfter we make the connection we echo back the value of the OU\u2019s distinguishedName<\/b> attribute; that\u2019s going to be something similar to this:<\/p>\nOU=Administration,DC=fabrikam,DC=com\n<\/pre>\nBy default connecting to an OU brings back a collection of all the objects contained in that OU; that means we can echo back a list of those objects simply by setting up a For Each loop similar to this one:<\/p>\n
For Each objItem in objOU\n Wscript.Echo \" \" & objItem.CN\nNext\n<\/pre>\nHowever, we don\u2019t want to do that just yet. Why not? Because that would list all<\/i> the objects in the OU, and we aren\u2019t interested in all the objects; we\u2019re interested in only the computer accounts. Therefore, before we do anything else we set a Filter<\/b> that restricts the returned data to computer objects: <\/p>\nobjOU.Filter = Array(\"Computer\")\n<\/pre>\nNow<\/i> we can execute our For Each loop, indenting two spaces (for aesthetic purposes) and then echoing back the value of each computer\u2019s CN<\/b> attribute. That\u2019s going to result in output similar to this:<\/p>\nOU=Administration,DC=fabrikam,DC=com\n atl-ws-001\n atl-ws-002\n atl-ws-003\n atl-ws-004\n<\/pre>\nWhich is exactly the kind of output we wanted.<\/p>\n
After we\u2019ve dispensed with the first OU in the recordset we use a pair of Wscript.Echo<\/b> statements to insert a couple of blank lines in our output, then call the MoveNext<\/b> method to move on to the next record in the recordset. From there we simply repeat the process with the next OU.<\/p>\n
Like we said, this approach might seem a little backwards. In the end, though, it works: we wind up with a list of each OU in the domain as well as a list of all the computer accounts residing in each of those OUs.<\/p>\n
In case you\u2019re wondering, it wasn\u2019t just the weather that bedeviled the Scripting Guy who writes this column last week. Friday afternoon he went to the bathroom, and when he came out he, well, discovered that he couldn\u2019t<\/i> come out; that\u2019s because there was a crew working on the lights or something and they had parked several big dollies full of equipment right in front of the bathroom door. For a brief moment it looked like the Scripting Guy who writes this column might have to spend the rest of the day in the bathroom.<\/p>\n
Which, considering the way the rest of the week went, might not have been all that bad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I get a list of all the computers in my domain, grouping those computers by the OU in which the computer account resides? — TA Hey, TA. Well, today is Monday, and the Scripting Guy who writes this column is actually glad it\u2019s Monday. Not that he\u2019s all that excited […]<\/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":[7,46,43,3,8,5],"class_list":["post-55883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-active-directory","tag-computer-accounts","tag-ous","tag-scripting-guy","tag-searching-active-directory","tag-vbscript"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I get a list of all the computers in my domain, grouping those computers by the OU in which the computer account resides? — TA Hey, TA. Well, today is Monday, and the Scripting Guy who writes this column is actually glad it\u2019s Monday. Not that he\u2019s all that excited […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55883","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=55883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55883\/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=55883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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