[chef] RE: Re: knife exit codes on windows?

[Adam Edwards < >]

In this case I wouldn’t blame WinRM – the knife plugin really should return the exit code.

 

You can definitely get a true / false status of a remotely executed command, though the process exit code for non-powershell cmdlets is tricker. For example, $? is $true in the first success case below, $false in the second:

 

Invoke-command {echo hi}

# $? == $true

Invoke-command {throw ‘sad’}

# $? == $false

 

Throwing an exception will cause invoke command to set $? to $false. Since cmdlets only return $true or $false as an exit status, that’s as good as it gets.

 

If you want to translate that into a process exit code, you can add logic to your script to check $LASTEXITCODE. If you just want a failure status, you can throw an exception. If you’d like the actual code, you’ll need to do as suggested below – parse it, possibly by  encoding all script output as xml or json, or simply emitting the exit code as the last line of your script.

 

Regarding the original issue, I would expect knife winrm to return a nonzero exit code if the command it is executing fails.

 

-Adam

 

 

From: Larry Wright [mailto: "> ]
Sent: Monday, February 10, 2014 7:54 PM
To: ">
Subject: [chef] Re: knife exit codes on windows?

 

WinRM is… special. Ok, that’s being too nice. It’s an abomination, but it’s all we have on Windows unless you want to install an SSH daemon. There is not, as far as I can tell, any way to get the exit code of a process called via WinRM. Your best bet is to parse the output, unless someone else knows of something that I have overlooked.

 

Larry Wright

 

On Feb 10, 2014, at 9:17 AM, Brian Anderson < "> > wrote:

I feel like I'm missing something obvious here.  No matter what happens in the run, knife winrm always seems to return 0.

 

To demonstrate this I did a remote run of chef-client, calling an invalid override run list.

 

First on linux:

 

~ ]$ knife ssh -m linhost -x user -i key.pem "sudo chef-client --force-logger -l info -o recipe[nosuch::recipel]"
[...]
linhost [2014-02-10T09:57:56-05:00] FATAL: Chef::Exceptions::RecipeNotFound: could not find recipe fooszl for cookbook affdex
~ ]$ echo $?
1

 

 

 

Then Windows:

 

knife winrm -m winhost -x Administrator -P password "chef-client --force-logger -l info -o recipe[affdex::fooszl]"
[...]
winhost [2014-02-10T09:58:33-05:00] FATAL: Chef::Exceptions::RecipeNotFound: could not find recipe fooszl for cookbook affdex
~ ]$ echo $?
0

 

Then I tried using the --returns arg to knife winrm:

 

 

knife winrm --returns 0 -m winhost -x Administrator -P password "chef-client --force-logger -l info -o recipe[affdex::fooszl]"
[...]
winhost [2014-02-10T09:59:03-05:00] FATAL: Chef::Exceptions::RecipeNotFound: could not find recipe fooszl for cookbook affdex
ERROR: Failed to execute command on winhost return code 1
~ ]$ echo $?
0

 

 

Is there some way that I am missing to get knife winrm to return 1 when the chef run fails, like knife ssh does?

 

 

Thanks,

 

Brian

--
Brian Anderson | Operations Engineer
Phone 781.696.1304 

www.affectiva.com