I've a PS script which I use to keep track of my VMWare ESX servers. I need to run it as a service so that I'm not permanently logged on. Unfortunately, the script runs more slowly if I use a runspace inside a service rather than just running the script through the powershell console. It's taking 2-5 minutes to make calls to the VMWare web service instead of a second or so.
Is there some sort of magic I should be using when I invoke the runspace?
You can run the script as a scheduled task.
Without seeing what you're doing, I can't think of many things that would make that big of a difference:
Do you have profile customization that might be helping it out when it runs in PowerShell (test with PowerShell -noprofile)
Are you counting the time it takes to initially import a module or snapin in your service, but not in PowerShell.
Are you re-creating the whole runspace each time in your service?
Have you tried using the 2.0 API of PowerShell with PowerShell.Create() to run it?
Finally, you could also take a look at some of the open source PowerShell hosts like PoshConsole or bgHost on CodePlex ... if they don't run it slowly, then you could follow the process they use for creating their runspace.
Does the service authenticate as a user with the same rights you do? I suspect something is timing out when it runs as the service, which you don't see when you run the script yourself.
The script in question runs equally slowly whether it runs in a service using its
usual service account, or if I run as myself in a very basic console app (create
runspace, add script, execute).
Apart from the usual suspects (account rights, Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned, and firewall configuration) I can't think of a good reason why PowerShell shouldn't work exactly the same in a Windows Services as it does in a console application, which makes me think it might be something environmental. It's not something silly like poor DNS resolution, is it? Assuming you're running this on a server, does it also perform slowly on your development machine too?
PS: I wonder if this question might be more appropriate for ServerFault?
Related
currently I am writing a deployscript for our build system.
I have an ec2 machine that i want to push my installer to, install the program and then run the program (exe). The program is in fact a server that should run forever. I already tried doing this with Powershell Remoting, this is not satisfying because a permanent connection is needed (if the powershell remote session disconnects, the process terminates).
Now I am looking into Invoke-WMIObject, is this really the best way to go, or am I missing something obvious?
Requirement is that the whole build process can be run from a powershell script (which is executed by our build server).
The server is running windows 2008 Server R2
kind regards
You could run your server program as a Windows Service - just wrap it with one of available free service wrapper utilities like nssm. You can use PSRemoting to recreate and start the service on the remote server each build by running Stop-Service, & nssm remove, & nssm install and Start-Service.
Alternatively (though probably not so easily managed in your build), you could remotely create and run a task in Task Scheduler with Scheduled Tasks Cmdlets.
You can use PsExec from SysInternals, but that's a standalone utility. However, you can still embed the logic in your PS script. If you are still in need of WMI, then you might wanna check this. It includes snippets of VB scripts and a detailed explanation of what to do.
My Scenario looks like:
There is a Appache Tomcat 8 Server where a Schedular-application runs on. Via a browser i can start tasks there and configure the parameters for these tasks.
The tasks itself containing jobs which are like a single command line execution with needed parameters. Therefore i usually call bat files in there.
The problem in a special case the job-process need to have administrator rights.
I know how to use runas and i know how to run processes as administrator. But i dont know how to automate the authentication via a bat.
What could be a way to do this?
p.s.: all articles i found need at least one click to go ahead with authentication however thats not possible in the given scenario.
I found a solution that works for me. I just create link to the batch file by doing these i can set the default run as administrator. In addition to lower the uac of level in windows the execution works with no interupts.
Is there a possibility to run AppleScripts from a server or from a cloud service?
I want to have some scripts that can run if my computer is sleeping/off.
I looked around a bit on Google, but haven't found anything promising.
If this doesn't exist I basically need to remove the password from my computer and wake up the computer whenever the script needs to run.
It largely depends on what you want to do with the script. There are a few options.
You can use 'stay open' script bundles that, for example, check a certain folder and run when you interact with this folder
You can launch certain scripts when the server boots.
You need to have a server that is always on for this to work. I have this running myself and it works just fine. However, as I said before, it largely depends on what you want to do with your scripts.
I have a windows server 2003 up in the internet.
But sometime I need to restart it.
After restart, I want one of the applications to run.
I want to do this all programatically.
I can now remotely restart the server.
But the question is how can I ask that piece of software to be executed (more precisely, I want to execute a .BAT file to ask a tomcat to run)?
Because I don't want to manually log in to the machine and start that application. That is time consuming. Is there any possible way, once the machine is started, my application will be run as well?
If you're developing an application that should always be running on the server, you probably need to implement it as a Windows service. For C#, see the classes in the System.ServiceProcess namespace -- you will need to inherit from ServiceBase.
Alternatively, you can set the program to be run as a scheduled task on boot. See the Task Scheduler API to do this.
You can install Cygwin and then do it the same way we'd do it on a Linux box: via ssh, using keys.
OpenSSH is not part of the default Cygwin install, so be sure to select it. It's in the Net category.
Then, after you've installed Cygwin and sshd, read /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/openssh.README to learn how to set up sshd as a service, so it will answer requests automatically, without you having to start the ssh daemon manually.
Finally, set up keys, as described in the link above.
Part of the ssh protocol is a way to ask a remote machine to launch a program. Setting it up with keys lets you do it without needing a password.
You could try xCmd, which is a freeware app to run a command on a remote machine.
This is a Windows 2003 (or later) machine that gets switched on every morning, but no one logs on until some hours later.
I want to use the time in between to run a backup script c:\script\backup.cmd
How can I start this unattended after the machine has come up?
I tried 2 registry keys, but this resulted in the script being run after a user logs on (which is too late):
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServices
In the end I used Windows TaskScheduler, who has such an option, but I was wondering if there is another possibility?
Short answer: GPEDIT.MSC (Start, Run, GPEdit.msc)
Windows 2000 and above [1] offer a computer Startup Scripts collection in the policy editor:
Computer Settings -> Windows Settings -> Scripts (Startup/Shutdown)
There's an equivalent logon script area (i.e. after computer startup, when a user logs on) in the User configuration bit.
Longer:
GPEDIT.MSC is the Group Policy editing console, and runs against the local computer's Local Group Policy store when it's used directly, so it's useful for setting local-only parameters. When using Active Directory, a similar interface is used to edit AD Forest-hosted group policy objects (GPOs), so the same settings are available across a bunch of machines.
The computer startup scripts run in the computer context, i.e. as LocalSystem, as you noted, so they often can't access network drives which require a certain user or group membership to work. When domain-member computers access network resources, they generally (with exceptions) authenticate using their MACHINENAME$ account - which lets you set Share/NTFS permissions to allow a computer to access those resources.
A startup script is a quick and easy way of getting a process running when the machine boots.
The computer startup process will be affected by the time it takes to run the program, though, so you might want to ensure you call it with the START command from a batch file, or specifying not to wait for the executable to complete in whatever script language you use. (the key point there is: run the script asynchronously unless it's critical, or doesn't need to be run asynchronously cos it will always take no time at all. Long boots = unhappy users).
Using a Win32 Service is an alternative option - you can use the SRVANY utility from the Resource Kit to "service-ify" pretty much any executable. VS.Net 2002 and later also let you build a managed service directly.
And Task Scheduler gets much more capable as of Vista/2008, able to run scripts at startup, on idle, and/or when Event Logs are generated or certain other conditions are met: it's pretty cool! Scheduled Tasks has the possible advantage of being able to specify the user account under which the task runs, if that's important to you.
Caveat Scriptor:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/256320
Run Startup Scripts Asynchronously:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms811602.aspx
Vista Task Scheduler (what's new):
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/appcompat/aa906020.aspx
[1] Windows XP, 2003, Vista/2008, Windows 7/2008R2, Windows 8/2012, Windows 8.1/2012R2, Windows 10/Windows Server 2016. Everything. But NT4 didn't!
You have already outlined a good solution:
Setup a scheduled task to run at Start Up and allow the job to run when the user isn't logged on.
You can run a script at system startup using group policy gpedit.msc
The way you aleady do this seems fine to me; however if you want an alternative approach then services get started when the machine boots so you could write a service that detects if it's a new day (to allow for reboots) and if it is then run your backup.
If I was doing this as a service I'd use TCL because I know it and like it and it has an extension twapi that allows you to run a script as a service. Other scripting languages may well have similar facilities.
There is, if you're using Active Directory. If you can isolate the computer to its own OU or use WMI filtering, you could assign a GPO which has a startup script for the computer. This would ensure that even if someone went in via safe mode and disabled the Task Scheduler, upon startup and connection to the domain, the script would run.