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I have a PowerShell script for installing software on remote computers.

To date I have been successfully using the following code:

$prog = "ping"
$arg = "localhost"
$computername = "MACHINE01"
invoke-command -computername $computername {param($p,$a)& $p $a} -ArgumentList $prog,$arg

I now need to install an MSI, Eg. 'msiexec /i c:\file.msi /passive'.

I cannot get MSIEXEC to treat everything after 'MSIEXEC' as parameters. Instead, PowerShell just tries to execute it as one big command. I have had tried numerous things mostly involving the placement of literal quotes but cannot get this to work.

I have now abandoned the call operator (&) in favour of 'Start-Process' which has an '-ArgumentList' parameter. The MSI now executes correctly. Great!

invoke-command -computername $computername {param($p,$a) start-process $p -argumentlist $a -nonewwindow -wait -redirectstandardoutput c:\output.txt; get-content c:\output.txt} -ArgumentList $prog,$arg

The problem with 'Start-Process' is that it does not produce any console output when run remotely using 'Invoke-Command'. I have had to resort to redirecting the output to a file and then reading the file. Is there a better way?

Fitzroy
  • 331

1 Answers1

0

I would try piping it to the tee-object cmdlet, then saving your file there if needbe (I don't know if sending the file output to $null would work, too bad this isn't linux and we could send it to /dev/null, but I digress)

This is the tee-object cmdlet http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee177014.aspx

invoke-command -computername $computername {param($p,$a) start-process $p -argumentlist $a -nonewwindow -wait | tee-object -file c:\output.txt} -ArgumentList $prog,$arg

that's untested code, but that's generally what you would want. 

invoke-command -computername $computername {param($p,$a) start-process $p -argumentlist $a -nonewwindow -wait | tee-object -file $null} -ArgumentList $prog,$arg

might work as well.

MDMoore313
  • 6,336