Creating a Shell Scripting Tools Menu System

Users often ask me to check user group memberships, troubleshoot desktop-PC or server problems, determine who's logged on to a PC, or perform other simple administrative or troubleshooting tasks. Usually, before the request is complete, I've typed a few commands and answered the question, much to the user's amazement. I can't count how many times someone has said, "That's incredible! Can you teach me how to do that, too?" This starts a cycle of me teaching the user a few commands, the user forgetting the commands, and me reteaching the commands the next time the task needs to be done.

If you don't use command-shell tools frequently, you can easily forget which command will accomplish a particular task or the command's usage syntax. Even experienced scriptwriters often need to refer to the online Help for the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit, third-party tool, or internal command to refamiliarize themselves with a command's syntax. Users on your security and support teams would certainly benefit from using command-line tools, but often they just don't use the commands frequently enough to remember which command or utility to use in a particular situation or the utility's syntax.

Using the Choice Utility with the Set Command
Before Windows XP and Win2K, you could use the Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Resource Kit's Choice utility to create a menu of especially helpful tools, but you had no easy way to capture the user inputs most tools require and send the input to the tool as an argument. XP and Win2K provide new ways to use the Set command to capture user input and effectively run resource kit and third-party tools from a menu. When you use the Set command with the /p switch, you can capture users' keyboard input into an environment variable. For example, you can use the Choice utility to direct a script's flow to the code for a tool that you select from the menu. Then, to prompt the user for the input that the tool requires, you can use the Set /p command. Listing 1, page 2, shows an example of how you can use the Set /p command to capture the arguments that the Local command needs to run (i.e., the group name and domain).

In the script ToolsMenu.bat, I use the Choice utility and the Set /p command to create a menu from which users can run nine common tools and internal commands used to diagnose PC and server problems. The simple menu interface that the script creates can help even advanced users and administrators more quickly accomplish repetitive tasks.

In ToolsMenu.bat, I use the Choice command to present users with a rudimentary menu from which they can select options (e.g., letter A, B, C, D, or E). If the user enters an invalid choice, such as the letter Z, the Choice command triggers an audible warning and pauses until the user enters a valid value. The code that Listing 2 shows tests the errorlevel exit code that the Choice command returns to determine the user's menu selection and uses the Echo command to display a message that tells the user which key he or she pressed. ToolsMenu.bat then uses the Goto command to direct script flow to a label that marks the beginning point for a section of code for that menu option.

To create the menu and run the various tools, ToolsMenu.bat uses the Local, Global, Findgrp, Srvinfo, and Uptime tools from the Win2K resource kit. ToolsMenu.bat also uses Sysinternals' PsLoggedOn and PsExec tools, which you can download from http://www.sysinternals.com.

Customizing ToolsMenu.bat
You can download ToolsMenu.bat from the Code Library on the Windows Scripting Solutions Web site (http://www.winscriptingsolutions.com, InstantDoc ID 38666). As written, the menu that ToolsMenu.bat creates includes the following commands and tools: Local, Global, Fndgrp, PsLoggedOn, Uptime, Srvinfo, Ipconfig, Net Send, and Time Sync Check. However, the script provides space for 14 more utilities. To customize ToolsMenu.bat with additional tools, follow these steps:

Introduce the Power of Scripting
ToolsMenu.bat is a useful script that packages frequently used troubleshooting tools and commands. It's also a great way to introduce users who have command-shell phobia to the power of command-shell scripting. Maybe a few of your scripting disciples will take the next step and start learning the commands after ToolsMenu.bat introduces them to the power of scripting.