I’m in the process of creating a powershell script to check OU users against users already configured for file share archiving but I’ve hit a stumbling block. I can query AD to get a list of users per OU and their home directories, dumping all of the details out to text files for logs and basing subsequent queries on. Once I have these details I try to run a dos command, (Enterprise Vault) Archivepoints.exe passing variables to it. The command would usually be :
Archivepoints.exe find \\fopserver045v\ouone_users$
When I try to run the following code I get an error.
$app="D:\Enterprise Vault\ArchivePoints.exe"
$EVArg = "find"
$VolLine = "\\fopserver045v\ouone_users_r$"
Invoke-Item "$app $EVArg $VolLine"
Invoke-Item : Cannot find path 'D:\Enterprise Vault\ArchivePoints.exe find \fopserver045v\ouone_users_r$' because it does not exist.
At first I thought it was missing the first backslash of the UNC path that was causing the issue but I'm no longer sure.
The script and command run on the EV server and the UNC bath doesn't actually go to the server, it's only a reference path within EV so it's not a credentials issue.
I need to be able to log the output to file too if possible.
What should the code look like and should I be using invoke-command or Invoke-Expression instead ?
Thanks
Don't use Invoke-Item. External commands should be run using the call operator (&). You can use splatting for the argument list.
$app="D:\Enterprise Vault\ArchivePoints.exe"
$arguments = "find", "\\fopserver045v\ouone_users_r$"
& $app #arguments
Related
I have this function:
function traced()
{
write-host "$args"
invoke-expression -Command "$args"
}
and I use it in several places like traced cp "$($_.FullName)" (join-path $directory $newfile) so that I have a log of all of the places that get copied (or removed, or whatever)
But when the directory contains spaces and dashes, it results in invoke-expression throwing.
I guess I could just define traced-cp and traced-rm, but if I have a lot of functions I want to trace, what's the generic answer? I just want a function that prints, then evaluates, the exact command its given. From what I understand, the & operator isn't what I want here-- It won't work for shell builtins.
[...] so that I have a log of all of the places that get copied (or removed, or whatever)
I'd strongly recommend you use transcript logging for this!
You can start a transcript interactively with the Start-Transcript cmdlet, but if you want to keep a transcript of every single instance of PowerShell you launch by default, I'd suggest turning it on by default!
Open the local policy editor (gpedit.msc) on your Windows box and navigate to:
Computer Configuration
> Administrative Templates
> Windows Components
> Windows PowerShell
Select the policy setting named "Turn on PowerShell Transcription", set it to Enabled, and optionally configure your preferred output directory (defaults to your home folder).
This way, you'll always have a full transcript of your interactions in PowerShell :)
Consider using argument splatting to build your command instead of building a string-based command with Invoke-Expression. I also don't know where you heard that & doesn't work with shell built-ins but it works with both commands and cmdlets.
Here is the official Microsoft documentation on splatting in Powershell.
This approach also eliminates the difficulty in crafting a command string correctly, having to escape characters, and dealing with path spaces - using splatting with named or positional arguments takes care of most of this for you.
I would suggest using -verbose with copy-item or remove-item, and also -passthru with copy-item.
I'm trying to have a few scripts that I can map to run from my keyboard for quickly changing the monitor/screen brightness. After some searching on the internet, I found this script which works when I enter it into Powershell.
$monitor=#(gwmi WmiMonitorBrightnessMethods -ns root/wmi)[0]
$monitor.WmiSetBrightness(50,0)
After I saved it as a .ps1 file and tried running it from the file, powershell tells me: The term "path of the file" is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function... and so on.
I'm not familiar with Powershell at all, can someone help with what I need to add in order for the script to run properly?
By default you can't run a PowerShell script that is in the current directory without putting .\ in front of the script name, or calling the full path of the script.
This is a security feature.
If you are in the directory that contains the script, run it by executing in a PowerShell window:
.\yourscript.ps1
Where yourscript is the name of your script.
See here for more information: https://ss64.com/ps/syntax-run.html
You may also see this error if your script has spaces in its name. If that is the case, enclose the path in quotes:
.\'your script.ps1'
I am not a scripter at all. Someone else had created this script for me and it has previously worked. The only thing that has changed is the drive letter (which I did change in the script - it is currently drive E). But it is not working now. All it is supposed to do is pull back a list of files in a specified folder and save it as a text file in that directory; in this case, it's my karaoke song collection.
When I run the script now, I get:
Get-Process : A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument Get-ChildItem.
Here is the original script:
PS C:\Users\Tina> Get-ChildItem "F:\My Music\Karaoke\*.*" | Set-Content "F:\My Music\Karaoke\test.txt"
I'd like to make it so that it just pulls back all .mp3's, if that's possible, too. Thanks in advance for your help!
Since you appear to be copying and pasting this to the command line I will assume there was a typo that caused this issue. After a couple of quick tests to try and guess what the accident was I was unable to replicate exactly. Not being a scripter might make this harder but I recommend saving this code to a ps1 file so that you can just double click on it.
Get-ChildItem "F:\My Music\Karaoke\*.mp3" | Set-Content "F:\My Music\Karaoke\test.txt"
Warning
In order for the this file to work for you you have to allow PowerShell to execute it. If you run the shell as administrator once and run this code
Set-ExecutionPolicy remotesigned
It will allow your script to run. Keep in mind this is a site for scripters to get help. You should expect answers like this.
I'm writing a powershell cmdlet. From inside of my cmdlet BeginProcessing() method, I want to be able to retrieve the the directory that was the default directory at the time the cmdlet was invoked.
Example:
If the user does this:
cd \myDirectory
invoke-mycmdlet
I want for my code to know that the default shell directory was c:\myDirectory.
When I access Environment.CurrentDirectory, it's always c:\windows\system32
I've seen a similar post on SO where the poster needed to set Environment::Current directory from inside the shell using get-location. That won't work for me.
Basically, my cmdlet does some file system stuff, and I want the user to be able to just cd\ into a directory, and execute my cmdlet, with it operating on the directory that they switched into -- just like you would expect it to work from the old Command Console.
You might want to try this instead, CurrentLocation.Path could also point to other provider paths, such as the registery.
this.SessionState.Path.CurrentFileSystemLocation.Path
You know, I always seem to find it right after I post -- regardless of how long I spent looking before reaching for SO!
So, my cmdlet inherits from PsCmdlet. I found that I could get the path I wanted from
this.SessionState.Path.CurrentLocation.Path
(where "this" is a cmdlet class that inherits from PsCmdlet)
Try the Get-Location cmdlet. It should be the script's current executing location, rather than the powershell host startup folder.
myscript.ps1
Param(
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true,Position=1)]
[string]$computerName
)
echo "arg0: " $computerName
CMD.exe
C:\> myscript.ps1 -computerName hey
Output:
cmdlet myscript.ps1 at command pipeline position 1
Supply values for the following parameters:
computerName: ddd
arg0:
ddd
I'm simply trying to work with Powershell parameters in CMD, and I can't seem to get a script to take one. I see sites saying to precede the script with .\ but that doesn't help. I added the mandatory line to see if Powershell was reading a parameter or not, and it's clearly not. The parameter computerName is obviously the word "hey". The Param block is the very first thing in the script. Powershell appears to recognize a parameter computerName, but no matter how I enter the command, it never thinks I'm actually entering parameter.
What the heck's wrong with my syntax?
By default, Powershell will not run scripts that it just happens to find in your current directory. This is intended by Microsoft as a security feature, and I believe that it mimics behavior found in unix shells.
Powershell will run scripts that it finds in your search path. Your search path is stored in $env:path.
I suspect that you have a script named "myscript.ps1" in some other directory that is on your search path.
I have had this happen to me before. The symptom I saw was that the parameter list seemed different than what I had defined. Each script had a different parameter list, so the script bombed when I fed it a parameter list intended for the other script. My habit is to not rely on parameter position, so this problem was easy to find.
The addition of ".\" to the script ".\myscript.ps1" should force the shell to use the .ps1 file in your current directory. As a test, I would specify the full path to the file you are trying to execute (If there are spaces in the path, be sure to wrap the path in "quotes") or change it to some totally crazy name that won't be duplicated by some other file (like "crazyfishpants.ps1") and see if the shell still finds the file.
You can get into similar problems if you have a function ("Get-Foo") that is loaded out of a module or profile with the same name as a script file ("Get-Foo.ps1"). You may wind up running something other than what you intend.
Position values should be 0-based (0 for the first parameter). That said, I can't duplicate what you're seeing on either PowerShell 2.0 or 3.0.
Thank you all for your very informative responses. It looks like my question was slightly edited before I submitted it, in that the text leads you to believe that I was entering this command directly in Powershell.
I was actually running the command for the script in CMD, which totally explains why it was not passing parameters to the Powershell script. Whoever green-lighted my question probably changed C:\> to PS> thinking that I made a typo.
I assumed that if I could run the script straight from CMD, I could send parameters to it on CMD's command line, but apparently that's not the case. If I run the script in Powershell, it indeed works just fine, I'm now seeing.
My ultimate goal was to allow users to run the Powershell script from CMD. It's looking like I can make a batch file that accepts parameters, and then start powershell and send those parameters to the PS script. And so, in the batch file, I should do something like:
powershell -File C:\myscript.ps -computerName %1
This enigma was probably solved 100 times over on this site, and I apologize for the confusion. Thank you again, for your responses.