geogboe Geogboe

I'm buiding a command line tool in Go that has an option to install itself as a service on Windows, which it needs admin rights for. I wanted to be able to have it reliably detect if it was running as admin already and if not, relaunch itself as admin. When the user runs the tool with the specific switch to trigger this functionality (-install or -uninstall in my case) they are prompted by UAC (User Account Control) to run the program as admin, which allows the tool to relaunch itself with the necessary rights.

To detect if I was admin, I tried the method described here first:
https://coolaj86.com/articles/golang-and-windows-and-admins-oh-my/
This wasn't accurately detecting that I was elevated, and was reporting that I was not elevated even when running the tool in CMD prompt started with "Run as Administrator" so I needed a more reliable method.

I didn't want to try writing to an Admin protected area of the filesystem or registry because Windows has the ability to transparently virtualize those writes

An Ansible summary

Jon Warbrick, July 2014, V3.2 (for Ansible 1.7)

Configuration file

intro_configuration.html

First one found from of

	# 2021 - George Bowen
	# Usage:
	# Add this to your vscode powershell profile "code $profile",
	# then, select any text in your editor, type alt+shift+s, select Convert Code Block to Snippet,
	# which will return a json code block for you to add to your vscode snippets file

	function ConvertTo-JsonCodeBlock {

	<#
	.SYNOPSIS

	{
	"$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-07/schema",
	"description": "Taskfile YAML Schema",
	"oneOf": [
	{
	"type": "object",
	"properties": {
	"version": {
	"description": "Specify the Taskfile format that this file conforms to.",
	"anyOf": [

	#cloud-config

	packages:
	- apt-transport-https
	- ca-certificates
	- curl
	- gnupg-agent
	- software-properties-common

	# Enable ipv4 forwarding, required on CIS hardened machines

	# For a high level over see video at https://www.ansible.com/blog/how-to-extend-ansible-through-plugins

	# Standard base includes and define this as a metaclass of type
	from __future__ import (absolute_import, division, print_function)
	__metaclass__ = type

	# Important contants
	from ansible import constants as C
	# Common error handlers
	from ansible.errors import AnsibleError

	function Get-MsiProducts {
	[CmdletBinding()]
	param()

	function ConvertFrom-PackedGuid {
	<#
	.SYNOPSIS
	Converts a packed globally unique identifier (GUID) string into a GUID string.
	.DESCRIPTION
	Takes a packed GUID string and breaks it into 6 parts. It then loops through the first five parts and reversing the order. It loops through the sixth part and reversing the order of every 2 characters. It then joins the parts back together and returns a GUID.

	class DependsOn : System.Attribute {
	[string[]]$Name

	DependsOn([string[]]$name) {
	$this.Name = $name
	}

	}

	function Invoke-Step {

	# The initial version
	if [ ! -f .env ]
	then
	export $(cat .env \| xargs)
	fi

	# My favorite from the comments. Thanks @richarddewit & others!
	set -a && source .env && set +a

	Import-Module -Name Lability

	$hotfixes = @(
	#region Normal Patches
	@{
	Id = 'windows8.1-kb2939087-x64_76a6b26de1edc9114c11e3da7394dfbcabe4afd8.cab'
	Uri = 'http://download.windowsupdate.com/d/msdownload/update/software/crup/2014/03/windows8.1-kb2939087-x64_76a6b26de1edc9114c11e3da7394dfbcabe4afd8.cab'
	},
	@{
	Id = 'windows8.1-kb2954879-v2-x64_7e2146477888153e6308977bfc2bc14fea2f56b9.cab'