Windows command line Tricks for Better, Faster Administration

Windows CMD commands for life made easy for WebLogic, OFMW, WebSphere, Tomcat, JBoss Administrators.

Windows shortcuts will shave our time more. Especially working on Windows 8.1 is more complex than previous so I pulled out some of the important commands which will make your life easy.

Some of them are collected from the daily works in OFMW administrator.

Mapping of SHELL command with CMD commands

How to set the proxy in CMD?

You need to run the following command in the CMD to set the proxy.

set HTTP_PROXY=http://your_proxy:your_port
set HTTPS_PROXY=https://your_proxy:your_port

How to add a IP, DNS to your Windows hosts file?

The Linux OS maintains /etc/hosts and it can be editable only by root user. Whereas, in Windows OS same file is available at c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts. This will be same for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. You could also check in the hot Windows 10. Hence the command to edit this :

start notepad c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

You can also use WindowKey + R and paste:

notepad c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts 

in the Open text box and click on 'Ok' button.

How do I open Environment Variables Windows   from command prompt?

When you work for installing OFMW product installation on Windows system you might setting the PATH, WL_HOME, CLASSPATH, JAVA_HOME in the environment variables to work more efficiently from the command prompt instead of setting in the command prompt. If you set these variables in the User defined environment variables we must open a fresh cmd prompt.

I've Windows 8.1 system on command prompt executed the following command

rundll32 sysdm.cpl,EditEnvironmentVariables

You could also run in the Run window :
 

Where is Java installed in Windows (which/where commands like in Linux)?

You can find the path where Java is installed using the following dir command with search option applied on java.exe file:

C:>dir /b /s java.exe

How to find WebLogic server PID with Port in Windows?

On Windows platform you can use netstat command with -n -a -o options which works same as in Linux platforms. Filter of the process id list can be done with ^| (cap followed by pipe).  Then you can use it for terminating by taskkill command.

FOR /F "tokens=4 delims= " %P IN ('netstat -a -n -o ^| findstr :7001') DO ^
@ECHO TaskKill /PID %P /f /t

In batch scripts you can use %%P if it is command line you can only use %P. If your system is Windows 7 then you need tokens=5. Above command only that matches :7001 port mapped pid with message taskkill command option. You can kill by copy paste out of them which are really matches to weblogic running process or you directly remove the @echo and execute, if that above command give accurate process list. Note: Double check the process list.

How to find the Free Available Memory from CMD as in Linux free -m?

In Windows about Total, Free, Virtual Memory info we can get from systeminfo, it is a command that will output system information, We can filter out Mem string using findstr

D:\>systeminfo |findstr Mem
Total Physical Memory:     16,294 MB
Available Physical Memory: 12,798 MB
Virtual Memory: Max Size:  20,390 MB
Virtual Memory: Available: 15,792 MB
Virtual Memory: In Use:    4,598 MB

Killing NodeManager in Windows using Taskkill command

In the Windows we can do this task from the task manager. Here I can get the PID of NodeManager using jps command.
It is Linux kill/pkill like command is taskkill for Windows. You need to know the options how to use it for terminating the process. You could get the help by typing the

 taskkill /? 

Sample taskkill example for killing NodeManager process.

C:\>jps
6312 NodeManager
2524 WLST
10376 Jps

C:\>taskkill /pid  6312 /f /t
SUCCESS: The process with PID 6312 (child process of PID 2524) has been terminated.

I use this whenever I want to force an immediate reboot:

shutdown -t 0 -r -f

For a more friendly "give them some time" [GRACEFUL SHUTDOWN] option, you can use option with time interval like this:

shutdown -t 30 -r

As you can see in the comments, the -f is implied by the timeout.

Here's how to do the shutdown functions via a batch file:

·        shutdown -r — restarts

·        shutdown -s — shutsdown

·        shutdown -l — logoff

·        shutdown -t xx — where xx is number of seconds to wait till shutdown/restart/logoff

·        shutdown -i — gives you a dialog box to fill in what function you want to use

·        shutdown -a — aborts the previous shutdown command....very handy!

·         

Additional options:

·        -f — force the selected action

·         -m -- option for remote shutdown:

shutdown -r -f -m \\machinename

Note that:

• The -r parameter causes a reboot (which is usually what you want on a remote machine, since physically starting it might be difficult).
• The -f parameter option forces the reboot.
• You must have appropriate privileges to shut down the remote machine, of course.

What is the CMD line continuation character?

A. The caret (^) symbol is the cmd.exe line-continuation character that allows you to continue a command on multiple lines

Java silent mode installation in Command line in Windows

This would be typical requirement where you could do the automation for your Window box installations of your OFMW produtcts. Where JDK is pre-requisites for all products. Hence lets know this awesome trick JDK installation from command :

c:\OFMW\jdk-7u79-windows-x64.exe /s /v /qn  ADDLOCAL=ToolsFeature INSTALLDIR=C:\Java /L C:\jdk.log

The above command will install the JDK at give INSTALLDIR here it is C:\Java. Normally JDK installer will run a wizard and ask questions in GUI, when you use /qn it will off the UI for installer.

where this also include the installation of tools.jar, locale features also installed with ADDLOCAL option.

Note: The INSTALLDIR cannot be overridden, if one time JDK installed you cannot install in other path. You need to uninstall from control panel.

RDP

Remote Desktop starting from CMD

You can run with ‘mstsc’ command utility

start mstsc

Run Services

·        Type "start services.msc" to open services Window

Windows Tools

Daily works sometimes we need boost up our work with using external tools that won’t be available with Windows OS. Here I’ve collected some of the useful links for everyone.

ProcessExplorer

This works like Linux utility ‘top’ command gives us the clear sorted process related info. You could kill a process or manage them to avoid issues.

http://filehippo.com/download_process_explorer/

bareTail

tail command like tool with effective UI for Windows.

https://www.baremetalsoft.com/baretail/

Gow

GNU on Windows people who are more habituated with Linux/Unix platforms feel uncomfortable to work on Windows CMD. Here is a alternative. After downloading this update your environment variable PATH with this will give Linux commands outputs from C++ compiled code.

https://github.com/bmatzelle/gow/downloads

Everything

Microsoft search sometimes makes us stuck, no worries we have Everything’’  search tool helps you to find faster way for searching files.

http://www.voidtools.com/

TCPView

To see the TCP ports in use on a Windows

https://download.sysinternals.com/files/TCPView.zip