In my experience, higher-education, research institutions are complex places:

• There is no conformity.
• Most users are administrators of their own machines.
• While not completely open, the network is so unrestricted, IT professionals in business are left aghast when they see it.
• Knowledge of information technology covers the entire imaginable spectrum.
• IT needs range from 20+ year-old hardware/software to state-of-the-art number-crunching and storage.
• Administrative control is delegated in overlapping ways and to multiple levels.
• User status and access rights are changing constantly.
• Very few rules can be applied across the board.

The scripts that I have created to help me and my colleagues manage and support some parts of our large college within a research university might be useful somewhere else, so I am sharing them.

I try to make my scripts as generally applicable as I can. However, I am self-taught, so if there are better ways to do these things, please keep the insults to yourself or suggest how I might fix them.

Some of these tools are polished, some are not. Some are well documented (I think), some are not. They are what they are, and I will not take responsibility for damages caused by your use of them. You should read and test them carefully to ensure they will work for your situation. Most of them I am willing to discuss or modify, but I do have other responsibilities that may take precedence.