Rick Drizin

Install Chrome using Powershell Script

06 Mar 2020 on powershell

I know everyone hates Internet Explorer, and only use Internet Explorer to download Chrome or Firefox.

To avoid you further pain, this is a Powershell script that you can use to install Chrome without even touching IE. Enjoy! :-)

# Install Chrome
$Path = $env:TEMP; 
$Installer = "chrome_installer.exe"; 
Invoke-WebRequest "http://dl.google.com/chrome/install/375.126/chrome_installer.exe" -OutFile $Path\$Installer; 
Start-Process -FilePath $Path\$Installer -Args "/silent /install" -Verb RunAs -Wait; 
Remove-Item $Path\$Installer

Zabbix UI showing UTC timezone on Timeline

08 Dec 2019 on zabbix

I’m using Zabbix 4.4.3 (latest version), installed using RedHat packages, and the timezone was showing UTC and I needed to change it to my local timezone (EST).

In dozens of different sites I found instructions explaining to configure timezone in php.ini (for me it was in /etc/php.ini) like this:

[Date]
; Defines the default timezone used by the date functions
; http://php.net/date.timezone
;date.timezone =
date.timezone = "America/New_York"

I restarted the services and it wasn’t still working. Although the Local Clock works, the Problems Timeline was still showing UTC timezone:

So I decided to put directly this configuration in the PHP application (Zabbix). I found the UI configuration to be in /etc/zabbix/web/zabbix.conf.php, and just had to add this line:

date_default_timezone_set('America/New_York');

And now it works (no need to restart the services):

PS: Somewhere I read thatI should configure /etc/apache2/conf-available/zabbix-frontend-php.conf, but I couldn’t find this file anywhere in my RedHat installation.

Powershell script to Stamp pictures with Date/Time

04 Dec 2019 on powershell

Quick tip:

I hate having my pictures automatically named like IMG_0384.CR2, because during backups (moving around hard drives, cloud, etc) it happens that I lose the original date of the files. And although I group pictures in folders, it’s still sometimes easy to lost the original date.

So I just created (well, I copied from others but made some adjustments) this helpful Powershell script, which will stamp the filenames with the date when the picture was taken.

# Based on https://ss64.com/ps/syntax-stampme.html
# usage: PS C:\>./stampme.ps1 "F:\somepicture.png"
# usage: PS C:\> foreach ($file in get-ChildItem *.CR2) { ./stampme.ps1 $file.name }


#StampMe.ps1
param( [string] $fileName)

# Check the file exists
if (-not(Test-Path $fileName)) {break}

# Display the original name
"Original filename: $fileName"

$fileObj = get-item $fileName

# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6834259/how-can-i-get-programmatic-access-to-the-date-taken-field-of-an-image-or-video
try {


  $pic = New-Object System.Drawing.Bitmap($fileName)
  $bitearr = $pic.GetPropertyItem(36867).Value 
  $string = [System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString($bitearr) 
  $DateTime = [datetime]::ParseExact($string,"yyyy:MM:dd HH:mm:ss`0",$Null)
}
catch 
{
  $DateTime =  (Get-Item $fileName).LastWriteTime
}

# Get the date
#$DateStamp = get-date -uformat "%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S"
$DateStamp = $DateTime.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd_HHmmss")

$extOnly = $fileObj.extension

if ($extOnly.length -eq 0) {
   $nameOnly = $fileObj.Name
   rename-item "$fileObj" "$DateStamp-$nameOnly"
   }
else {
   $nameOnly = $fileObj.Name.Replace( $fileObj.Extension,'')
   rename-item "$fileName" "$DateStamp-$nameOnly$extOnly"
   }

# Display the new name
"New filename: $DateStamp-$nameOnly$extOnly"

Look how my pictures were badly organized before: