Weekend Scripter: Run PowerShell Scripts from Remote File Share: Part 2

  • Article

Weekend Scripter: Run PowerShell Scripts from Remote File Share: Part 2
Summary : Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, continues his discussion about running scripts on a remote file share.
Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. This week has been absolutely bizarre. I have been really busy working with a select group of Honorary Scripting Guys for upcoming blog posts. I must say, there is some absolutely way cool, knock-out stuff in the works. But of course, to make all of this streamlined, I had to set up a shared Office 365 SharePoint site, grant permissions, create views, test things out, and all of that. You know what? Dude, it was easy!!! As you may guess from the three exclamation points, I was surprised. I must say that I was dreading it. I will also say that it was so intuitive that I did not once have to use Help or search for How-To articles. It really makes sense, and it has actually been a fun project. As one twentieth-century philosopher said, “I love it when a plan comes together.”
Examining script execution policy
Note This is the second in a multipart series of posts. The first post was Running Scripts from a Remote File Share . For good background info about running Windows PowerShell scripts from a remote file share, check out the guest blog post written by June Blender and Judith Herman: How to Run PowerShell Scripts from a Shared Directory .
By default when you open Windows PowerShell, the execution of scripts is disabled. This is because the default script execution policy in Windows PowerShell is restricted. To see the current script execution policy, use the Get-ExecutionPolicy cmdlet. For the current user, all you need to do is type the cmdlet name. This is shown here:
PS C:\> Get-ExecutionPolicy
RemoteSigned
To see all of the execution policies, use the –List switch as shown here:
PS C:\> Get-ExecutionPolicy -List

Scope ExecutionPolicy
----- ---------------
MachinePolicy Undefined
UserPolicy Undefined
Process Undefined
CurrentUser RemoteSigned
LocalMachine Unrestricted
You can see that there are multiple levels to which the script execution policy can be set. An ordinary user can change the CurrentUser script execution policy (unless it is specified via Group Policy. In that case, it cannot be modified by a local user). When the execution policy is first checked, it is restricted; therefore, no scripts will run. In the following example, the execution...(read more)