Modify .ini files to reflect system-side updates with this admin script

by Guest Contributor | Oct 13, 2005 2:34:00 PM

Tags: Network administration, NETWORKING, Guest Contributor, Kurt Hudson

Takeaway: TechRepublic asked members to submit their favorite Network Administration scripts. You can use this script to modify a .ini file.

TechRepublic recently asked members to submit their favorite Network Administration scripts for possible publication. One of the first to make a submission was Kurt Hudson. For his effort, Kurt earned $100 and the satisfaction of seeing his script published on the Internet.

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Earn $100 for your admin script

Let us pay you for your original scripts so that we can publish them as downloads on TechRepublic and allow your fellow IT professionals to benefit from your scripting savvy. We only ask that you put in the appropriate comments to your scripts so that it's easy to tell what the script is doing and which variables might need to be customized. Send us your original Windows admin scripts and we'll pay you $100 for each one that we publish as a TechRepublic download.

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Here in his own words and code is Kurt's admin script:

I developed this script (Listing A) to help a network administrator colleague to modify the Lotus Notes notes.ini file for all of the client computers in his enterprise network. The script was distributed through Group Policy as a startup script to ensure that all client computers would have their .ini files updated to reflect a new notes database that my colleague created.

I originally did not comment any of my code, but I just spent a little while explaining almost every line or section in this file. I think this will be educational and useful for network administrators who need to modify system files (especially for programs that still rely on .ini files). I hope you agree.

Listing A

' This is an example script that can be used to modify an ini file in
' a Windows client operating system. I developed this script to modify
' the Notes.ini. However, it could be used to modify any file on a
' client computer.

' Defining constants - meaningful names that replace values
Const ForReading = 1, ForWriting = 2, ForAppending = 3
Const TristateUseDefault = -2, TristateTrue = -1, TristateFalse = 0

' Declaring variables that are used to perform functions in later lines
Dim orgfile, newfile, fs, strLine

' Setting variables to perform built in functions

' The variable fs will be set to create a file system object
set fs = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

' The variable orgfile is used to open the existing notes.ini file
set orgfile = fs.OpenTextFile("notes.ini")

' The variable newfile is used to create a new file names notes.tmp
' This file will create a notes.tmp file that has the existing values
' in the current notes.ini file as well as the replacement values
' that I need in the new notes.ini so this will become the new notes.ini
set newfile = fs.CreateTextFile("notes.tmp")

' Copies the existing notes.ini file to a new file named notes.old
fs.CopyFile "notes.ini", "notes.old"


' The following section reads the entire notes.ini file looking for
' the NAMES section and replaces it with a new text stream

Do while not orgfile.AtEndofStream
      strLine = orgfile.ReadLine
      select Case strLine
            case "NAMES=names.nsf, mdc.nsf, itcontacts.nsf"
                  newfile.WriteLine "NAMES=names.nsf, newmdc.nsf, itcontacts.nsf"
            case else
                  newfile.WriteLinestrLine
      end select

' the loop statement causes this section run until the entire file is evaluated
loop

' the following statements close the original and new files
orgfile.close
      set orgfile = nothing
newfile.close
      set newfile = nothing

' Remove the existing notes.ini
fs.DeleteFile "notes.ini"
' Rename the notes.tmp file notes.ini to make it the new notes.ini file
fs.MoveFile "notes.tmp", "notes.ini"

Print/View all Posts Comments on this article

Admin scriptsMark W. Kaelin  | 10/13/05

Very NiceDemo_Dog  | 10/14/05

but assumes everyone has same dbsDWRandolph  | 10/14/05