Mark Minasi
Article from Windows NT Magazine
Write a few logon batch scripts, and you'll soon be disappointed with
their shortcomings. The basic problem with batch scripts is that they're
only batch files. As a result, they're no more capable than batch files.
For example, suppose you're writing a batch file and you want one kind
of action to occur when an administrator runs the file and another kind of
action to occur when a user runs the file. More specifically, say you have
a share with some administrative tools in it called \sxl0\atools; you want
to map that share to drive W when an administrator logs on but not map the
drive when a nonadministrative user logs on. How do you make this
distinction? How do you tell a batch file that someone's in a particular
group? The command interpreter, cmd.exe, doesn't provide one simple tool,
but the Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit includes a couple of
useful tools. This month, I describe these resource kit tools that let you
write more powerful batch files.
For those of you who are old-time NT, Windows, or DOS batch experts,
the resource kit provides Ifmember. Many resource kit utilities run on a
server, so you don't need to distribute them to workstations. But
Ifmember.exe is a client-side tool and needs to be present on or available
to each user's workstation to work. You can put ifmember.exe on every
user's hard disk, but that's too much work. An easier way is to put
ifmember.exe into the same directory as the logon batch files. (The
Netlogon directory is the default directory when the logon batch file is
running. Ergo, putting a program into Netlogon installs the program
instantly, hands-off.)
If member is a simple program; it looks like
IFMEMBER groupl group2 group3...
where the groups are the names of user groups. If the group's name
includes a space between letters, such as Domain Admins, enclose the name
in quotation marks. If the person running Ifmember is a member of one of
the groups named, then Ifmember ends with return code 1. You can then use
Errorlevel to test for this occurrence, as in the following example:
@echo off
ifmember "domain admins"
if not
errorlevel 1 goto user
echo you're an admin!
goto
quit
user:
echo just a regular user
This batch file checks your groups to see if you're a member of the
Domain Admins group. (Note that Ifmember isn't case-sensitive.) The next
line, if not errorlevel 1 goto user, checks to see if your return
code is equal to 1. If the code isn't 1, the batch file skips ahead to the
line user:. Then, the file displays the message just a regular
user and ends. However, if the return code is equal to 1, the batch
file runs the next line, displays you're an admin!, and jumps to
the end of the batch file. You can implement the previous drive map
example as follows:
@echo off
ifmember administrators "domain
admins"
if not errorlevel 1 goto quit
net use w:
\\sxOl\atools
:quit
However, Ifmember works on only NT workstations. For Windows 9x
machines, KiXtart is your only option. Although the official name is
KiXtart 95, you can use KiXtart to build very flexible batch files on NT
and Win9x workstations. KiXtart is a complete programming environment,
with a comprehensive programming language using If...Then...Else
constructs and Goto and Select statements, and includes nearly all the
program control you find in Basic programming. KiXtart also has a rich set
of built-in functions, including a function named Ingroup that lets you
write program lines such as
IF INGROUP("Domain Admins") RUN "net use w:
\\sxOl\atools"
Logon batch scripts might still cause you some frustration, but
Ifmember and KiXtart will help you write significantly more flexible logon
batch scripts.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Minasi is a contributing editor for Windows NT
Magazine, an MCSE, and the author of the upcoming Mastering Windows
2000 Server (Sybex). He writes and speaks around the world about NT
networking. You can reach him at mark@minasi.com.
The above article is courtesy of Windows NT Magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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