Powershell PS Session script files with includes - powershell

Question

So i'm trying to run a powershell script against a remote machine, using Enter-PSSession. I can connect and run a single script file and its contents no problem. However when i run this:
.\RemoteFile.ps1 "dev-web01" "builder" "test" "2.5.0.0" "Web" ".\stage_properties.xml"
As you can see there are 5 parameters to this script.
param (
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
$Computername,
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
$Username,
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
$Password,
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
$Version,
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
$Packagenames,
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
$Propfile
)
$securePassword = ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force $Password
$cred = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential $Username, $securePassword
Enter-PSSession -ComputerName $Computername -Credential $cred
Invoke-Command -ComputerName $Computername -Credential $cred -FilePath
.\DeploymentRun.ps1 -ArgumentList $Propfile -EnableNetworkAccess
When it gets to running the Invoke-Command with the $Propfile argument (stage_properties.xml) , it's looking on the remote machine since, i'm assuming the location context has changed, instead of the same local directory where RemoteFile.ps1 and DeploymentRun.ps1 reside. Here is the error I receive:
Cannot find path 'C:\User\builder\Documents\stage_properties.xml' because it does not exist.
How do i get around this? I've done a bit of searching, but can't seem to find a solution.
Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

It is as you described; the the file name you're passing is a path relative to the local machine, so the code running on the remote machine cannot find a file in that path.
There isn't a way to get "around" it as you're just running code on the remote machine. The results are serialized and sent back to the calling client.
Your best bet is probably to send the file contents as a parameter instead of the file itself. Then of course the target script must be modified to deal with that.
You could also pass the path as a UNC path to a share on the local machine, perhaps even an administrative share, like \\localmachine\c$\users\builder\documents\stage_properties.xml. But there's a chance you'll run into authentication issues (double hop).
(Un)related question:
Why are you using Enter-PSSession and then using Invoke-Command?
Edit based on your comments:
First, if you want to make multiple calls in a single session to a remote machine, first create a PSSession:
$session = New-PSSession -ComputerName $ComputerName
Then use that session in all subsequent calls:
Invoke-Command -Session $session -File $filename
Invoke-Command -Session $session -ScriptBlock {
# Some code
}
Then close the session when you're done:
Remove-PSSession -Session $session
Note that Enter-PSSession is purely for interactive uses. You generally wouldn't use it inside a script. But it too takes a -Session parameter that can use a previously created session.
As to the issue of calling multiple files, you have a few pickles here. First, let's remember that when you call Invoke-Command with the -File parameter, it's the same as if you read the contents of the file yourself, made a script block out of it, and passed it to the script block.
All of those commands are executed on the remote side in the context of a process on the remote side. So if those scripts refer to any resources, including other scripts, modules, etc., those resources must be access from the context of the remote execution.
Based on that, you could in theory put all of these files on a share, accessible to both sides, and use UNC paths.
In practice, you have a different issue there: The so-called "double hop" authentication problem which prevents a remote machine from delegating your credentials. This means that once you've authenticated to the remote machine, you can't then pass off your credentials to a third machine (like a file server hosting a UNC share).
In most of the articles out there about this (including the one I linked) they'll talk about "enabling" multi-hop through the use of CredSSP. It's easy enough to enable CredSSP without fully understanding it. In my opinion, it's not a good solution generally; in most cases you want to re-think how you're doing things.
Back to this case:
If your script files didn't need to call or reference other script files, then you could easily just do multiple Invoke-Command calls, executing each one in sequence.
You touched upon a possible solution to your issue: copy all of the files to the target machine first. You just have to make sure that the paths used in the scripts will work (not an issue if you're passing it as a parameter!).
Another thing you can do: don't execute the code remotely! Just run it locally.
But I imagine that's not possible otherwise you wouldn't have tried remoting, so what you can do instead is create a scheduled task (or series of tasks) on the remote machine (they can be on-demand tasks only).
You could then reduce your remote calls to something like:
Invoke-Command -Session $session -ScriptBlock {
# PowerShell 3.0+
Start-ScheduledTask -TaskName 'My Special Task'
# Any version of PS
schtasks.exe /RUN /TN "My Special Task"
}