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I've searched all over and tried different variations of commands, but I am still not there yet.

My goal is to run an exe that already resides on a remote machine and pass in command line arguments. I've tried invoke-command, but I can't seem to get my syntax to recognize the arguments.

Methods tried:

  1. Win32_Process.Create()
  2. Invoke-Command
  3. Start-Process
  4. [diagnostics.process]::start
  5. Invoke-WmiMethod

From my tests, the closest I can get is with the following command:

$command = "program.exe -r param"
Invoke-Command -ComputerName $server -ScriptBlock {$command}

The command completes without error or return code, but on the remote machine, it did not run with arguments. I've played around with single/double quotes to see if any change, but none.

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2 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

Did you try using the -ArgumentList parameter:

invoke-command -ComputerName studio -ScriptBlock { param ( $myarg ) ping.exe $myarg } -ArgumentList localhost

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd347578.aspx

An example of invoking a program that is not in the path and has a space in it's folder path:

invoke-command -ComputerName Computer1 -ScriptBlock { param ($myarg) & 'C:\Program Files\program.exe' -something $myarg } -ArgumentList "myArgValue"

If the value of the argument is static you can just provide it in the script block like this:

invoke-command -ComputerName Computer1 -ScriptBlock { & 'C:\Program Files\program.exe' -something "myArgValue" }
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Thanks for the quick response. For some reason, when I try it that way, I get it to print out the expanded command that would work if I ran it manually, but it's not actually running it. I had to remove the "&" as it said it was a reserved character for future use. –  gregs Mar 2 '12 at 16:34
    
@gregs I had to enable remoting on my machine to test. I changed the command to a simple ping test sending an argument of localhost. The above succeeding for me. –  Andy Arismendi Mar 2 '12 at 17:16
    
I may have figured out the hold up, but not the solution. This line does work if I use ping.exe and "localhost" as the arg, but I am having to put quotes around my executable path since the path has spaces. When I do that, it simply echos my string in quotes back to me, but I don't think it runs. –  gregs Mar 2 '12 at 18:24
1  
Thanks for the examples. I actually found my problem, it doesn't like it you try to slam 2 arguments into a single variable, I had to end up doing two params $myarg1, $myarg2 so the remote command would honor them both. –  gregs Mar 2 '12 at 19:41
1  
@gregs Right, ArgumentList is an array. –  Andy Arismendi Mar 2 '12 at 19:58
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up vote -1 down vote 
$sb = ScriptBlock::Create("$command")
Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock $sb

This should work and avoid misleading the beginners.

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