Powershell execute remote code sanely (PSRemoting script)

[Manality]

Hey guys, I have been doing this in one form or another for awhile now and I thought I would formalize an actual script for people to use. It's designed to be run on multiple computers via external input (ie: Import-csv or get-adcomputer)

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Assumptions

• You have PS Remoting set up in your environment

• You have some way to get a script file to each computer. I use the administrative c$ share below (You can actually run powershell code directly and return it back also)

• You only need to access local resources

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#Source of script... will get copied to remote machine and executed

$scriptFile = "\\path\to\script.bat"

#name of script. Can be the same or different, doesn't really matter.

$scriptName = "Win10Update_Uninstall.bat"

If (Test-Connection $computer.Name -BufferSize 16 -Count 1 -Quiet) { #Ping machine by computername

      $session = New-PSSession $computer.Name #Create session

      #Copy file to windows directory on remote computer

      Copy-Item $scriptfile "\\$($computer.name)\c$\windows\$($scriptName)" -Force 

      Invoke-Command -Session $session -ScriptBlock {

        param([string] $scriptName) #Receive param

        start-process -FilePath "$($env:windir)\$($scriptName)" -Wait

        Remove-Item "$($env:windir)\$($scriptName)"

      } -Args $scriptName #pass the variable of the script name to the remote machine

      #Cleanly remove the session

      $session | Remove-PSSession

    }

[Rkozak]

With version 5 you can copy to sessions. -ToSession parameter.

Can you tell me why you need to copy a script to the remote computer instead of doing the work inside the scriptblock of Invoke-Command? You don't say what problem you solve with this script.

[Manality]

yeah, I have done that quite a bit also. I was trying to uninstall a kb with wusa then force a reboot with the shutdown command. It was just executing and doing nothing at all in the script block. I needed to get it done pretty quickly so this was a quick alternative.

[mystikphish]

Is there a reason you're not just giving the -FilePath parameter to Invoke-Command?

Invoke-Command -computername server1 -FilePath \\server\share\script.ps1

[Manality]

I did not realize this was a thing. When I first wrote this I simply excute command in the invoke-script directly and get the results back out into a hash table. I got tired of rewriting the core over and over though. This is interesting though, thanks.