I often go to execute a stsadm command and find it is not in the path on the server I am working on, so I looked for a while of a way of adding it permanently through powershell and then realised it's a straightforward task with .NET code. The following will add the BIN folder within the program files structure to the PATH environment variable at local machine level so that all users will benefit.

   1:  $envpath = [environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("Path","Machine")

   2:  $binpath = $env:Programfiles + "\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN"

   3:  if ($envpath.contains($binpath) -ne $true ) {

   4:  $envpath = $envpath + ";" + $binpath

   5:  [environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Path",$envpath,"Machine")

   6:  Write-output "BIN Path added."

   7:  }

   8:  else

   9:  {

  10:  Write-output "BIN Path already added."

  11:  }

I have added a check to not add it if it is already present as the traditional method of using

SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\Program files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN

ends up with multiple copies of the BIN path in the variable and only applies for the current session.

A strange thing that I came across...

While trying to add a solution to the farm using stsadm -o addsolution -filename e:\RikobbaMasterPages.WSP I was given the error message RikobbaMasterPages.WSP has an unsupported file extension and cannot be added to the store. strange.....

As noted here and here the file extension above is capitalised and the stsadm appears to only like lower case! (the file above had been manually renamed)

So - the file extension for a solution MUST be lower case

It shows that you can still learn something new about SharePoint every day

For those that haven't yet looked at Powershell, please do. Aside from being an extremely powerful means to interact with SharePoint and control items that are not available from the web UI, it is more than likely that as with Exchange, Powershell will be the means of interacting with SharePoint v.next (as opposed to stsadm)

Some links to interesting resources and example scripts....

http://www.u2u.info/Blogs/karine/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=9

http://darrinbishop.com/blog/archive/2007/04/08/54.aspx

http://blogs.flexnetconsult.co.uk/colinbyrne/PermaLink,guid,1665700b-e0de-4b8a-bb1c-014d6fbcf2db.aspx

Powershell download

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/download.mspx

Useful Powershell editor

http://www.powergui.org