How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Powershell

So, as a precursor to my next blog post where I actually do something SQL related with Powershell, I'll post my first two powershell scripts here.  They are completely unrelated to SQL, but was my first exposure to Powershell 2.0 and all its majesty.

I am a consultant, and my Cisco VPN client app has half a dozen different VPN connections.  I spent a lot of time on client sites, or, on a VPN to the client side from the office or the home office.  Needless to say, there's lots of stuff I do (such as non-billable with like this exercise, and other efforts that are billable) while not on a VPN.

And since I don't want certain apps running on my machine while I'm on VPN, that I usually run while I am not on VPN, I wrote a pair of Powershell scripts, one called onvpn and another called offvpn.

Here's what they do:

offvpn.ps1 starts up my google calendar sync (which syncs my google calendar to exchange to my iphone, very handy), tweetdeck, firefox, and MSN Messenger.

Clear-Host
if (-not (Get-Process googlecalendarsync -ea 0) ) { Start-Process "C:\Program Files\Google\Google Calendar Sync\GoogleCalendarSync.exe" }
if (-not (Get-Process firefox -ea 0) ) { start-process "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" }
if (-not (Get-Process msnmsgr -ea 0) ) { start-process  "C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Messenger\msnmsgr.exe" }

if ( Get-Process vpngui -ea 0 ) { Stop-Process -name vpngui }
if ( Get-Process vpnui -ea 0 ) { Stop-Process -name vpnui }

what does onvpn.ps1 do?  Just the opposite, plus a few more things like the amazonmp3downloader app that only starts up on demand.  It also starts up my vpngui client and my Remote Desktop Client manager app, which I'll inevitably be using over the VPN client.

Clear-Host

Get-Process firefox -ea 0 | % { $_.CloseMainWindow() } 
if ( Get-Process googlecalendarsync -ea 0 ) { Stop-Process -name googlecalendarsync }
if ( Get-Process msnmsgr -ea 0 ) { Stop-Process -name msnmsgr }
if ( Get-Process amazonmp3downloader -ea 0 ) { Stop-Process -name amazonmp3downloader }
if (-not ( Get-Process vpngui -ea 0 ) ) { Start-Process "C:\Program Files\Cisco Systems\VPN Client\vpngui.exe" }
if (-not ( Get-Process RDCMan -ea 0 ) ) { Start-Process "C:\Program Files\Remote Desktop Connection Manager\RDCMan.exe" }

The Get-Process call determines if the processes are running before starting or stopping them.

One small annoyance is that the Stop-Process command isn't that graceful. Firefox always starts up with the "well, this is embarrassing" screen asking me if I want to try and restore the previous session. If there was a way to more gracefully shut down these apps, I'd be open to it.

(Also, as a corollary, I figured out how to post nice code.  The Visual Studio 2010 PowerTools has a copy-to-HTML feature.  Much nicer, eh?)

Questions and comments are welcome.

UPDATE: Updated the onvpn.ps1 script to use a kinder, gentler way of shutting down some apps.  See the comments.