Windows Scripting... Get around SOENT limitations.

[William Grim]

Hey there!

I know when you read the topic you will think "I can now crack SOENT?"  No, that's not what I'm going to talk about.  I'm going to talk about writing Windows scripts to extend your SOENT Windows environment and improve upon the job the administrators have done in order to create your own customized environment.

Basically, I have written a couple scripts for SOENT.  The first, most important script adds an extra location to the Windows PATH variable when you log into the system, Z:\bin.  The second script goes into Z:\bin and is called ssh.bat.  It supercedes the ssh.bat script the administrators wrote and lets you pass multiple command line options to putty.

To view and install these scripts, go here and fetch them.  Install startup.js into Z:\profile\Startup, and place the script(s) in bin/ into Z:\bin (you'll have to create this directory).

I, myself, just learned how to use Windows Scripting Host (WSH) to be able to do what I am demonstrating.  However, it makes me wonder just how powerful scripts could be made in Windows...not too shabby.

WSH comes on all Windows systems since at least Win2K... maybe even before that, but it's not really relevant in the EB.

PS: I have tested these on the WinXP images we have; let me know how they do on the Win2K images if you don't mind.

[R. Andrew Lamonica]

They will not work on the Win2k images.  This is because none of the Win2k imaged machines are run by the CS department and only computers run by the CS department allow students to run software at login.  You could manually execute them after you login, but that might kill the convenience.