Reading the otherWellKnownObjects attribute with PowerShell

24 Jun

I wanted to read the otherWellKnownObjects attribute from an Active Directory object.

In my case this was the Microsoft Exchange container in the Configuration partition:

The otherWellKnownObjects attribute is of type ADSTYPE_DN_WITH_BINARY which unfortunately cannot be viewed or edited with ADSI Edit:

So I wrote a script to read the values with PowerShell but it’s not very straightforward how to do this.

Reading the otherWellKnownObjects property returns a collection of IADsDNWithBinary interfaces but this interface is unknown in PowerShell.

Using reflection we can read the values:

$objCN = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry(&quot;LDAP://CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=zorg,DC=local&quot;)
$gp = [Reflection.Bindingflags]::GetProperty

foreach ($objWKO in $objCN.otherWellKnownObjects)
{
    $objType = $objWKO.GetType()
    $DNString = $objType.InvokeMember(&quot;DNString&quot;, $gp, $null, $objWKO, $null)
    $BV = $objType.InvokeMember(&quot;BinaryValue&quot;, $gp, $null, $objWKO, $null)
    $Guid = [GUID][System.BitConverter]::ToString($BV).Replace(&quot;-&quot;, &quot;&quot;)
    Write-Host &quot;DNString=$DNString&quot; -foregroundcolor Blue
    Write-Host &quot;Guid=$Guid&quot; -foregroundcolor Blue   
}

$objCN = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry("LDAP://CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=zorg,DC=local")

$gp = [Reflection.Bindingflags]::GetProperty

foreach ($objWKO in $objCN.otherWellKnownObjects)

{

$objType = $objWKO.GetType()

$DNString = $objType.InvokeMember("DNString", $gp, $null, $objWKO, $null)

$BV = $objType.InvokeMember("BinaryValue", $gp, $null, $objWKO, $null)

$Guid = [GUID][System.BitConverter]::ToString($BV).Replace("-", "")

Write-Host "DNString=$DNString" -foregroundcolor Blue

Write-Host "Guid=$Guid" -foregroundcolor Blue

}

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Filed under: Active Directory, PowerShell

One Response for "Reading the otherWellKnownObjects attribute with PowerShell"

Exchange 2010 well-known object entry install error June 24th, 2011 at 12:52 1
[…] script.First I read the the otherWellKnownObjects attribute with PowerShell (I wrote about that earlier).This returns a Collection that I walk backwards with a for loop, this is important when removing […]